Customizing Cover Letters: They Inspire Me, I Inspire Them

The advice for cover letters in academia is the same as for cover letters everywhere: Always address them to a specific person, convince the reader that you're perfect for the job in question, and do it concisely. The greatest challenge for non-academic jobs is probably being concise; at least in academia we get two pages instead of a few paragraphs. The greatest challenge for academic jobs, at least for me, is customizing the letter for different jobs.

Sometimes that little extra is easy. With the right college, or at least an informative website, those little tweaks to put at the end or beginning of a sentence are easy: I am particularly intrigued by this program you offer, which demonstrates your commitment to undergraduate research. I believe my philosophy of teaching matches your department's statement endorsing a liberal arts education. Whether it's a special summer research program, unique courses offered in a special January term, or just some quirk about the college's history, there's something worth writing about.

Other times, however, that little extra effort turns into a lot of extra effort. The advertisement was cut-and-dried in its expectations. The college had no standout philosophy or curriculum. The department pages don't even supply much unique character, just the bare bones of research topics and course descriptions. I can search and search, and find nothing that inspires a single extra sentence about my qualifications and why I match their culture.

On the bright side, this customization works both ways. The hiring committee uses it to judge whether I'm really interested in their job; I also used it to judge whether I'm really interested in their job. The little statements I add are genuine, and make me feel excited about the prospect of being hired or even getting an interview with this particular college. That unique character will make me eager to get a position, even if it's asking me to specialize in my less-favored subfield. The fact that I couldn't find anything worth writing about says as much about whether I would want a job at that college as whether they would want to hire me.

I do not feel guilt or worry about my boilerplate applications. The cookie-cutter advertisement and website convinced me that there's enough possibility of a match to send my cookie-cutter application. Perhaps I'll get an interview anyway, and discover the wonders of a college that doesn't represent itself online as well as it should. Or perhaps I'll simply save my time and effort for colleges that do move me, and find the best match possible.

Or perhaps, if I'm still writing cover letters in the Spring, I'll become desperate enough to learn how to fake those custom sentences. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

First Day of Class

Today I am a professor. Or I should be. Let's run through the becoming-a-professor checklist and see how I'm doing.

*Get hired. Well, the unofficial hiring process has been completed - I was offered the job, I gave some poor admin assistant a bit of a headache trying to arrange my class time, and the department chair confirmed as of yesterday that I am teaching the class (specifically, that the students are excited, but I'm taking that with a grain of salt). The official hiring process, on the other hand, has barely begun, thanks to a months-long delay in gathering my information for a background check (the fact that my eventual login had the wrong domain suggests the underlying cause).

*Familiarize myself with the department. Not so much, no. To date, my only trip to this department was my hiring interview, in which I learned the location of the building, water fountain, and chair's office. I think I know where the main office is, because there are only a few reasons for secretary's window in a campus building lobby. I do not know where my classroom is, I don't know where my office is, I don't even know how many floors the building has. I know adjunct professors are academic temps and don't qualify for benefits, but I was kind of hoping for some form of orientation. Hopefully the main office admin people will be forthcoming with information like how to get my syllabus photocopied.

*Review my class roster. Nope. Due to the above hiring delay, I do not have a login for any of the campus websites that might let me access my roster; but that's okay, because due to the above disorientation, I don't even know what the websites are. As of a few weeks ago, when a student asked for permission to enroll, I had six students enrolled, with another two possibles. Once again, I'm relying on the main office to help me out.

*Get campus ID. Nope. Again, this can be blamed on the slow hiring process. Fortunately, I'll blend right in to a college campus, with my trusty red-and-black swiss army backpack advertising my student status, so I'm not too worried about being stopped by campus security and asked for proof I belong.

*Prepare my class syllabus. At last, something I can check off. My syllabus is 7 pages long, with one page of course information and six pages of readings. I read or skimmed every reading, about 850 pages of scholarly work, and several dozen additional articles that were discarded as not fitting my grand plan for each class. I know when papers will be due, and even have a list of potential topics. Only one day, our final discussion, may need a little something extra, if I judge that additional readings are needed to get my students discussing for the entire two hours.

*Prepare lesson plan for the first day of class. Check. There is of course the obvious: Introducing myself to the class, having the students introduce themselves to me and each other, and reviewing the syllabus, These are all necessary, but I don't like limiting the first day of class to such administrative tasks. The first day of class sets the tone. In undergraduate courses, this means they need to break out their notebooks and preferably their minds at some point. In a graduate seminar, this means discussion of some sort. My advisor, experienced in the ways of graduate seminars, provided the topic: A discussion of discussions. Everyone knows what makes a good discussion and what makes a bad discussion, but it's helpful to spell it out that first day and come up with class tactics for halting bad discussions.

*Dress like a professor. Or perhaps not like a professor. Most professors are distinguishable from students only by age - it was in a seminar much like the one I'm teaching that I first realized that my professor and I wore the same sneakers. I am not distinguishable from my students by age, and will have to rely on wardrobe. A suit or even dress pants seems overkill, as these are typically reserved for job interviews, but jeans are certainly out. I rely on the button-down shirt and black slacks to convey the right impression.

And then it's just a matter of killing time until class starts. Preferably by, say, getting hired, finding my office, and all those minor details.

One Last Vacation Before the Storm

Next week the teaching begins, and my schedule will lose a great deal of its flexibility. The day-to-day "wake when I want, work at whatever time of day seems best" flexibility will remain, but the broader flexibility of escaping for long weekends as needed will be gone. I'll be teaching a Tuesday/Thursday class, and suddenly a short weekend is the best I can do. Cancelling class is acceptable for the conference I will be attending, but not, say, to visit family or just get away from grad school.

So Labor Day weekend became my last escape, five days to relax and recharge before the semester begins in earnest. It was a truly American vacation, consisting of sleeping until noon, staying up late watching movies with my sister and brother-in-law, and fitting in some quality bonding time with my two-month-old nephew (whose idea of bonding is finding new and interesting places to spit up on me, then smiling as evolutionary survival mechanisms kick in).

Now, of course, the post-vacation stress begins to kick in as I attempt to finalize 8 weeks of readings in just seven days, on top of all my usual dissertation and mentoring work. The replenished energy stores should last just long enough - and then I'll actually be teaching. If only they weren't graduate students, and I could convince them to call me "Prof" on a regular basis.

Customizing Cover Letters

Every piece of advice I have read about applying to faculty positions emphasizes the importance of the cover letter. It should be brief, it should introduce all the critical pieces of your application, and it should be customized. If at all possible, mention any special requirements from the notice, or say something nice about the college or department; don't let them think this is just a form letter you're sending everywhere.

In theory, this is great advice. In practice, I could find nothing to say. I slaved over the cover letter template for over a week, from the time I learned one of my letter writers had gotten ahead of me until I couldn't stand it anymore. I struggled with the opening paragraph, which should summarize my qualifications and convince the reader that I will graduate in May. I sweated over the second paragraph, which was devoted to convincing faculty at liberal arts colleges that I knew what I was applying for. I condensed my teaching philosophy and teaching biography into one paragraph each, trying to convince committees to hire me without sounding fake or overdone. Then the same thing for my research philosophy (mentoring undergrads) and research statement. It was all the writing I did for a week.

I exhausted myself with the main points; I couldn't bring myself to customize. There wasn't anything less that didn't sound incredibly fake. What could I say about my ability to contribute to a college's "strategic plan"? The truth was that I'll do what I can if I'm hired, and I have nothing more to offer than that. Is it necessary to justify myself as a teacher of an unfamiliar subfield when they are so very tentative about what the course requirements may be? I'll teach what I'm asked to teach, and I'll do a good job of it, even if I'm learning what I'll be teaching only a few days ahead of the students.

In the end, I wound up with three template cover letters. One for a teaching fellowship, which will be adapted for any visiting professor positions I might apply for. Two are for the assistant professor positions, each with a slightly different focus on my research to cover the two main subfields I might apply for. Perhaps in the upcoming weeks, when the stress of drafting the first cover letter begins to fade, I will be able to come up with promising statements about how I am the best possible candidate for the job. At the moment, what they get is all I can do: This is why I am applying for this type of job, and why I think I'm qualified, and that will have to be enough.

One Enthusiastic Student

I have not received the official hiring paperwork for my adjunct professor job, or heard much from the department chair, or finalized the syllabus, but at least one of my students is excited about the course. Just as I was realizing that the course would start in three weeks, and perhaps I should get back to work on my preparations, I received an email, and a chance to make someone's day.

Someone who was not required to was interested in taking my seminar. She was a non-traditional student, not enrolled in the department but in a related real-world business field, thought this seminar would be an extra piece of professional development. How could I possibly pass up the chance to have a student who volunteered for the class?

Of course, this request also highlighted all the things I do not know about my new job. I do not know how to check the enrollment, to find out how many students I already have. I do not know how large the room for the class is, and how many students it can fit; in fact, I don't know whether we have a classroom assigned at all. I certainly don't know the procedures for providing official instructor approval for a student to enroll. I don't even know which of the two department staff members who have emailed me should be asked about these things.

The enrollment request spurs answers to some of these questions. I have 5 students enrolled, of 7 who expressed interest in my course; my non-traditional volunteer will make 6 or 8, helping to fill a classroom designed for 11. The staff will produce a form for special enrollment. And presumably, someone somewhere is making sure I am officially hired, and will tell me if I need to acquire a faculty ID card. Otherwise, I might just show up the first day of my class with some syllabi, and just get on with teaching.

Mistaken For An Undergrad

The curse of the graduate student is the word "student"; most people I meet seem to lump us in with undergraduates, as not having real jobs, or incomes, or being adults at all. If I were a few years older, I would be pleased to be mistaken for a teenager; as it is, I'm usually amused at my ability to blend in.

On Tuesday, the second day of classes, I cut across the dorm lawns on my way to the administrative buildings. I blended in perfectly, just another person wearing jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, carrying a backpack. I doubt anyone thought I was a freshman - I overheard two upperclassmen carrying on the college tradition of being surprised at how young and/or tiny the freshmen looked - but I could certainly pass as a senior. My appearance hasn't changed much in the past four years; if anything, I probably look more like a college student than I used to, thanks to my recent rediscovery of denim.

That same afternoon, I was mistaken for either a high school senior or a college senior, I'm not sure which. I took three manilla envelopes to the post office, each containing the hopes and dreams of a job application. The postal service employee, noting the college addresses on each, asked if I was applying to school. I don't expect USPS personnel to recognize the subtle clues of packages addressed to "search committee", but I am going to assume that he was aware of graduate school, and assumed I was applying instead of trying to get out.

At some point in the next year, I shall have to decide what I should do with my wardrobe if/when I get a job. The faculty dress code is indistinguishable from the graduate students'; our department chair once caused quite a stir by showing up in a suit instead of his usual khaki shorts and socks-with-sandals ensemble. Faculty seem to rely on their extra experience to set them apart from their students, and I won't gain that much gravitas in the next year. I will either have to modify my wardrobe considerably, or decide that I don't care about blurring the faculty-student lines.

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.

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.

Dorothy Syndrome

Somewhere on the Top 10 Signs It's Time to Graduate there must be: You return to school from a trip to Kansas and spend days dreaming you could go back.

I never really understood Dorothy's insistence on getting back to Kansas. Oz was cool; she got to explore, meet talking animals, animated scarecrows and tin statues, and experience magic. Sure, often that magic was started by the wicked witch and aimed against her, but that should just add to the adventure. I blamed this on the late-19th-century opinion of the good girl and a female's place in the world.

Now I find myself drawn to Kansas for the same reason she was, or a very similar one: my sister, brother-in-law, and brand-new nephew. And grad school is no Oz to distract me. There is no magic or sense of adventure, just a list of chores to be completed before the new semester starts, the continuing drudgery of Dissertation Experiment 3, and a great deal of will required to show up to work every day. It's hard even to get excited by the prospect of applying for jobs, because the jobs seem scarce and it's just more work to cram into a busy semester.

I'm still not certain I would ditch Oz in favor of my family, but I'd certainly ditch grad school for them. Which provides a great deal of motivation to get through just...one...more...year.

Giving Thanks For My Advisor

I am sitting in the office past 6pm on a Friday night, getting eyestrain from staring at my computer screen and goosebumps from the extreme AC. But I am sitting here conducting lit searches and extreme data analysis because I feel like doing it now, not because my advisor requested an end-of-business day meeting on a day when the university is closed (and grad students technically get the day off) so she could request work be done in preparation for another meeting first thing Monday morning. None of the faculty here are really insane, but one or two can pass for it easily.

No-Sweat FCQs

I have only had 3 semesters of FCQs, but the experiences of reading that first set and reading the most recent set seem light-years apart.

With my first FCQs, I avoided opening the envelopes for months, opened it to mediocre scores and one very negative comment, and required a considerable amount of moral support and encouragement to teach again. I still have that negative comment memorized word for word.

With my most recent FCQs, I couldn't bring myself to be worried. I had a moment, toward the end of the semester, thinking that if the FCQs were worse than the last semester, after the training I've had and the work I've put in, I would be incredibly depressed. I haven't thought about it since, and when I learned that FCQs had been returned, I went out of my way to pick them up. I took a careless glance at the scores immediately, in the minute before a meeting.

The scores did not disappoint. It was extremely gratifying to see a row of 5-point-somethings on a 6-point scale. TA's interest and knowledge: 5.9. Instructor overall: 5.7. Use median instead of mean, and both were 6.0.

My teaching portfolio now shows a lovely increase in FCQs, a learning curve that seems (to me) perfectly reasonable in showing that I have improved my teaching skills as part of my graduate training. With any luck, prospective employers will be impressed. And if all else fails, at least I can look forward to teaching the class again in the Spring.

Two Down, Two To Go?

In six hours, with 21 emails sent between 4 people in 2 countries/time-zones, and one last half-hour trying to figure out how to edit a TIFF on a Mac (eventually accomplished in 30 seconds in Paint, one last reason to love Windows), and the usual obsessing over journal formatting requirements, my second manuscript has been submitted.

Representing Experiment 2 of my dissertation, and one of those findings that convinced my advisor/committee that the research was worthwhile, it has been sent to a major journal (impact factor > 4) due to my advisor's philosophy of "aim high". Not quite as high as a lab-mate, who is submitting to Science, but high enough that I have no expectations.

The submission comes with perfect timing: Yesterday I finished collecting data for Experiment 3, and with the submission of Experiment 2 I can turn to all-new data analysis. Of course, I have just 2 weeks or less before learning whether the journal will even review our manuscript (they decline to review 60% of submissions), so I might not have much time to devote to the new data before the manuscript is back in my lap in need of a new journal and any relevant revisions. Still, it's reason enough to go out for dinner on a Friday night, even if I will be going on vacation on Monday.

A New Job, and Funding Complications

My advisor has a knack for turning a small triumph into a small headache. It is no doubt a knack shared by advisors everywhere, resulting from the different interests of grad students and faculty.

The triumph: I was offered the adjunct professor position at a nearby university, teaching an introductory graduate seminar. It's my first real job, outside of grad school, and I will be a "professor", for two months at least. Receiving the news was a much-needed motivational boost for my upcoming job search.

The headache: My advisor's reaction was, first "hooray!" (the text of her email responding to the news) and then, within hours, "so, how much do I have to pay you next semester?". It's hard not to interpret this as "how little can I get away with paying you next semester", and that the small salary that comes with the position is to make life easier for her grant, not for me. Unfortunately, I'm having a little trouble convincing her that my tuition waiver is linked to my employment here, not at a university in another city, and the potential loss of the tuition waive to "equalize" my pay with other grad students is setting off a mild panic.

I would like enjoy the thrill and challenge of designing my first real course, and anticipating going to a nearby university and teaching a new group of students. For now, though, thinking about the course is tinged with worry about administrative headaches that should never have existed. Just another reason to be taking off on a week-long vacation to visit family next week.

An In-Person Interview

Time to brush off those long-forgotten interview skills, last used some four (four!) years ago during the grad school application process. Friday afternoon I have an in-person interview at the University of Major City, my final chance to convince someone that I can teach a graduate proseminar while ABD.

I am more excited than nervous. It really helps that there's no pressure: I don't need the job, it would just be a very cool opportunity. And, since I am ABD, I can always shrug off rejection on the grounds that I just don't have that final qualification - although I'm not entirely sure how an extra six months of working on my dissertation is supposed to improve my teaching. So it's really just an excuse to practice my interview skills, and take breaks from research in the next few days to brainstorm ideas for a seminar in my field. What topics should be covered? How should different theoretical perspectives be covered? (My advisor taught the course 12 years ago, and it was entirely theoretically oriented. I don't think I can do that - and finishing the dissertation certainly wouldn't help. But how close can I get?) What topic would I choose for a final paper?

The problem with the interview is that it's going to jolt me out of my careful focus on my dissertation and start me thinking about after the dissertation. I can't even begin looking for jobs yet - they aren't being posted, everyone's still trying to fill the last-minute positions for this fall - and I'm going to start daydreaming about when I have a real job. It might help me get through the next few weeks of intense data collection; it might not.

Journal Club

As part of our ongoing efforts to train our undergraduate senior thesis students (read: make the graduate student mentor's life a little bit easier), the lab is reviving journal club. Theoretically, for the past few years all grad students have had the opportunity to read papers somewhat related to our work and share them with the lab, but I think it's happened perhaps twice in four years.

Now, grads are expected to "model" the journal club presentations, so the undergrads can take over later in the summer, as part of their much-needed practice in reading and critiquing published research. Time to emerge from the mind-numbed cave that is extensive dissertation/manuscript preparation, and attempt to convey enthusiasm for other people's research while clearly and concisely summarizes an entire paper - in 5 minutes. And I've been volunteered to go first.

It doesn't help that the topics aren't optional; we're helping my advisor prepare for her sabbatical by reading papers authored by the professor with whom she'll be working next year. Perhaps if my advisor promised she'd fly us each out to California for an in-person meeting at some point during the next year, I could work up more enthusiasm...

Let the Job Search Begin...

I just applied for my first faculty position. Not one for Life After Graduate School; existing faculty would probably revolt if they had to sit on search committees for positions opening in 15 months. This position is adjunct faculty, teaching one course at nearby University of Major City, on the topic of my field exactly.

This is an excellent example of networking working for you. My advisor used to be on the faculty at that university, before I entered grad school, and the chair contacted her to see if she could recommend anyone. And as luck would have it, she had this ABD student busily laying the groundwork for a teaching-focused career. This morning I spoke to the chair on the phone, learning about the position and providing some brief explanations of my teaching credentials and ideas for the course. The call ended with the invitation to submit a formal application online, and plans to talk again sometime next week.

I have no expectations for how this will turn out. One the one hand, I have the insider recommendation and a respectable CV; on the other hand, ABD is the minimum requirement for graduate-level, and the completed PhD is always preferred. Even if it doesn't pan out, though, it's given me experience in other things that matter. I've continued to improve my phone interview skills, I've sweated over writing my first cover letter (which will be the template for all future applications), and I have that all-important sense of doing something. Getting the job would almost be just a bonus at this point.

Dissertation in Progress

I am working on my dissertation. Not even two full days of working on it (two days of copy-and-pasting old papers into dissertation chapters) can take away that thrill of finally being close to being finished. My dissertation committee approved my proposal with what I will happily call "minor" changes - taken care of by spending five hours programming on Sunday, and running a few extra analyses in the past two days. For the rest of the summer, it's just a matter of collecting data and reading the background literature.

I'm going to hate that reading, sooner rather than later, just as I did for my comps. But as long as I stay focused on what it will get me - the first chapter of my dissertation - I should be able to survive it.

There Is No "A" in Effort

The one thing I dislike about teaching is dealing with the students who think their grades are lower than they deserve. And it's always a matter of "deserve". So far I've only had one student who came out with a full sense of entitlement, "I don't get D's", but I've had every reason to want to track down whomever coined the phrase "A for effort" and give them a stern talking-to.

I made the mistake of returning final papers on the last day of class, not at the final exam. I wanted to remove a bit of uncertainty from their lives, and let them determine just how much studying they would need to do to get the grade they wanted. Unfortunately, this also gave them time to complain to me about their grades. One student emailed me, explaining that "I do not believe the grade I got in lab reflects how much effort I put into the labs". Another student asked to meet with me because she had some questions about grading, spent 15 minutes listening to me explain her grade, and then asked "But what about all the effort I put into this?". It's all I can do not to bang my head on my desk.

I can see where students' expected relationship between efforts and grades comes from. I don't even entirely blame some cultural movement that's deluding students into believe that working hard is all that matters. Generally speaking, when you put more effort into something, you get a better product, so effort and grades are usually correlated. However. Better does not necessarily mean A-quality. It doesn't matter if a student put 10 hours into a paper; if that paper doesn't meet the standards I laid out for an A, then it doesn't get an A. If it doesn't meet the basic requirements I put into the assignment, it doesn't even get a C.

Dealing with students in these situations is challenging. It requires a great deal of self-control. I do not respond to emails by saying that the grade doesn't reflect your effort because you turned in your final paper late and got hit with that late penalty, that I've already made two exceptions for you and won't make a third, and that I don't care whether you can get an A in the class. I do respond to questions about effort with "I don't care how much effort you put into it", just because the question frustrates me. I carefully explain that grades are based on the assignment that is turned in, and start explaining, again, how that grade was determined.

This has to be the best argument against assigning papers. Even when you think the reading and the grading are fun, the subjective nature of grading invites students to convince you to change the grade.

The Dissertation Proposal Is In

There could be no more perfect timing than the posting of this PhD comic: "That's the test of a true Ph.D...To take 5 years of marginally related work and pretend you knew what you were doing the whole time". I read it just as I was sitting down to finally finish my dissertation proposal. This was definitely an exercise in pretending I meant to look at this theory all along, when what really happened was that I had randomly attached myself to some studies that produced interesting results while all my own research failed. There's nothing like trying to turn a completely unexpected result into a justified prediction.

The dissertation proposal process also fits in well with another PhD comic - take it out; put it in; take it out again. The proposal I turned in bears a striking similarity to the first draft I sent to my advisor - "striking" because at some point in the revisions process she had me substantially alter the last two experiments, and then had me change them back to what they used to be. The proposal is certainly better for her input and my rewriting, but I could have done without adding and then scrapping some experiment manipulations. It certainly doesn't bode well for my proposal meeting next week, when the rest of the committee will weigh in on how my proposed experiments could be "improved". At some level, I just want to tell them that I have a better idea than they do about what we're doing and what will work, and to let me do it. I don't think that would go over very well.

Acceptable and Unacceptable Excuses

Acceptable reason for emailing an hour before a paper is due and asking for an extension: My roommate OD'd last night, I was the one who found him and called the paramedics, he almost died, he only regained consciousness an hour ago, I have police paperwork to verify. I could have done without some of the graphic details, but I don't expect someone who's just been through an experience like that to have a fully functioning courtesy filter.

Unacceptable reason for asking for an extension to an extension: I have another paper due on the extension deadline and I don't want to have to ask for an extension on that paper too. This is crossing the line between an understandable request due to circumstances beyond your control to the undergradese "please rearrange your life to suit mine".

I'm sorely tempted to institute a "turn in what you've got on the deadline or turn in nothing at all" policy when I actually have control of the class you teach. If I'm going to feel like the bad guy (for not being completely flexible), I might as well be one.