As I previously stated, we are currently living the largest social and professional experiment of our time in which many activities have moved to digital, virtual long distance connections. Quite interestingly over that past 5 weeks my usage of videoconferencing software has been on average 14h/week (range 8h to 19h). Even is the most busy videoconferencing week, I have found that the interaction with colleagues and students not fully satisfying.
Continue readingA rare post in French on a conference I gave last year on the status of author taken by students, mainly in the context of sciences and engineering (my field) but pointers given are quite general.
Le titre de cet article est celui d’une présentation que j’ai donnée l’an dernier dans le cadre de la Semaine sur la conduite responsable en recherche 2019 organisée par l’Université Laval.
Cette présentation vient d’être mis en ligne et est disponible ici: https://youtu.be/7MEplFlwW30!
[This post was originally published over 6 years ago. It is still extremely relevant!]
Recently saw a comment by a student about not being advised before hand that doing a PhD had many difficulties and challenges. However, my first reaction reading that text was to start laughing. Of course, all that was said was true. But the first thing that came to my mind was the famous warning when you ask for a sundae with nuts at a McDonald : you received (at least in North America) the nuts in a small, sealed separate bag (think allergies); this bag has a warning that reads (seriously): may contain nuts!
Doh!
GTD methodology call of frequent review of projects and associated task lists. In fact, the whole system crumbles if this critical operation is not performed regularly; you need to trust that it contains everything in order to make the right decision at the right time with regard to which task(s) to take on at any given moment and not miss anything. However to enable you to make these daily decisions that move you toward a larger goal, the latter needs to be established up front and also revised on a regular basis. Enter the yearly review! Continue reading
Science has a culture that is inherently cautious and that is normally not a bad thing. You could even say conservative, because of the peer review process and because the scientific method prizes uncertainty and penalises anyone who goes out on any sort of a limb that is not held in place by abundant and well-documented evidence.
– Al Gore
One important aspect of scientific research is dissemination of the results through peer-reviewed publications. In a previous post, I discussed the choice of venue and the relative (un)importance of the journal impact factor. In this post, I address what happen in-between that first submission and the actual publication.
The cemeteries are filled with people who thought the world couldn’t get along without them
— Multiple sources, original author unclear
As you start the new year, please take a moment to remind yourself that whatever you do and how good you are at it, your employer (and society as a whole) will continue to function with or without you. This means that you should never be ashamed or feel anxious about taking “off” time, and by that I mean all of the time allowed by your employer every year. Not only will you get more productive overall, your friends and family will thank you for it. I certainly expect all of my students and postdocs to take time off.
Ruminating... 