Zooming along

Thought I would post a quick update. For the last several weeks, I feel like my life has been flying by, like I'm trapped in an indy car going around the track at 200mph. Can't wait for the semester to end to take a quick pit stop and refuel.

Someone killed the Scientific Method

While judging a science fair recently, the fair organizer announced that the scientific method is passe and that in a few years, it will not even be a category for judging projects. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard this. I thought that they were joking, but none of the other judges in the room laughed or even looked bewildered. So when was this decision made and what is going to replace it? I tried to Google this and this is the most relevant article that I found:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/rogue-scientist-has-own-scientific-method,1976/

I also found a few stories how modeling and simulation were being added to the scientific method to optimize experimental design, but nothing about school districts dropping the scientific method from their science class curriculum. I'm not sure how to search for this properly as I don't know what is replacing the principal principle of scientific inquiry. Education professionals, please enlighten me so that I can modernize my research endeavors. I really really hope that this is just going to be a name change since "the scientific method" supposedly sounds boring and does not inspire kids to become scientists.

Doodle and Monkey

Doodle Polls and Survey Monkey are quickly becoming my most hated websites. What started out as good ideas are now being abused by faculty and staff in trying to find meeting times and input on various topics. Sending me a Doodle Poll with 40 day/time slots is ridiculous, especially if it takes you over a week to actually pick a date. There is no way I'm going to block off 40 slots for 1 potential meeting. Do you really expect me to cross reference my schedule against 40 potential meeting times spread over a whole month?!And if you wait two weeks before chosing a winner, odds are my time is already dedicated to another cause and your poll FAILED. Then there are all the people who already for whatever reason don't bother replying to these things. There should be an option for that in the poll "don't bother me or I don't care or I'm not going no matter what." If you insist on using these sites, I propose to impose limits on these things, say no more than 10 time slots and 3 days to identify the winner, if that.

working hard / hardly working

Ok. How much do faculty really work? This is me. Most weekends, I'm lucky if I invest one quarter to one half of one day usually. During the week, I usually do 9am to 6pm and then 2-3 hours in the evenings twice a week. When I have a proposal due, I'll spend 3-4 days working 16-18 hours a day. Last year I did 9 proposals as lead/sole PI. I took three weeks of vacation total. That's a lot of hours for almost any job in the world, outside of say doctors, nurses, military, lawyers starting out, and maybe some consultants. The difference, and maybe it's just me, but I think not, I almost never stop thinking about work. At the movies, while watching TV, on the train, I'm thinking about work and all the stuff I have to do and how it never goes away. There's no slow season, there's no hanging up my coat.

And compared to all these other blogs I'm reading, I feel like I'm not spending nearly as much or enough time on this job as all the other TT faculty out there. Talk about Catholic guilt. Why is it that I'm competing against every other professor in the world? And will do it all alone until I retire. In a company, you have co-workers, colleagues, at a startup, you might start alone, but you build and add people. I don't know about medical doctors, do they feel like they are competing against every other doctor out there? There's not really a team for faculty. I try to get my trainees on board, but their hearts aren't in it. They see how much I work and can't wait to graduate and leave academia as far behind as possible. So help me out, are all you TT folks out there really working the kind of hours that you blog?  Can I at least not feel guilty for taking a Saturday off?

Welcome to the 2012 Edition

I missed the boat on creating a year in review blog, but to summarize, all-in-all 2011 was a good year professionally. Good things: one federal and one internal grant funded, group is growing, lab dynamic seems ok, results starting to slowly trickle in, putting together drafts for two papers. Took a real vacation during the recent break. Didn't check my email for a whole week, didn't bring my laptop with me. It was great.

Funny thing though, I feel very guilty telling my colleagues about it and I get the feeling that they are a bit jealous. This self imposed craziness and constant Science is a bit rediculous. Academia is a business and a job these days more than ever and we are not being paid enough to work like slaves. Notice, the administration isn't working nearly as much and yet they get paid significantly more. Us scientists need to calm the fuck down. The world can wait one extra day for the next big scientific breakthrough. I'm taking my vacation and if you don't grant me tenure for that, then you all can go screw yourselves.

Bad things: lost one of my first graduate students, another one didn't work out. What stings the most though are the teacher evaluations I got last semester. My scores dropped significantly and I got several mean comments. This is after I implemented the suggestions from the previous semester to improve the course. I hope this isn't a trend, but I also understand the criticism. Most of the comments had to do with students saying that they could have taught themselves the material and that they want to get more out of the lectures. With the rising cost of education, students are starting to expect more and more from classes. I think even faculty at elite research universities are going to start hearing it, if they aren't already.

2012 is looking busy. I'm teaching a new course this semester so I have to invest a bunch of time into that. I'm a bit jealous of the new hires that were able to negotiate a semester off from teaching. I wonder if I should have stonewalled during negotiations and said that it would be a deal breaker. Got some new ideas for grant proposals, which means the creative juices are flowing. Now the cricky part is getting the preliminary data to support the ideas. Thought about making an animal sacrifice as the reviewer panel for my NIH grant met today.

Isolated

What's wrong with you people (fellow faculty in my college)?! I tried to be nice and organize a social gathering, which went nowhere. Engineers are soooooooooo lame. I'm a dink who moved away from the region where I grew up. I know it's only supposed to be write grants/paper, eat, sleep and repeat, but common already. It's not healthy to drink alone.

Looking around the academic blogosphere, I see us new faculty repeating this sentiment constantly. Here is one example, among many:
http://academic-jungle.blogspot.com/2011/05/home-is-where-job-is.html

Then, I came across this study.
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic436591.files/COACHE_Study_NewChallengesNewPriorities_20100304.pdf
It made me feel a whole lot better about my situation. Most of the gen X faculty out there are feeling incredibly isolated. It's not just the few of us who have turned to the internet for human interactions. It seems to be a growing trend. So I'm technically gen Y, but I think we are even more isolated because people don't think we're old enough to be faculty yet.

I'm contemplating organizing a TT faculty group in my town. We have a few schools in the area which would increase the pool of potential candidates/friends. Ideally, this would be a MeetUp at a bar where we could drink and commiserate. The problem with this humungous internet and all of this information is that it's now almost impossible to get a message out to people. Also, faculty with kids would probably want to meet at a different time and place.

Reviewing Journals and Grants

Inside my little head, there are many benefits to reviewing journals and grants.

For new faculty, getting grants to review should be an obvious win.  Journals are a bit less awesome, but I enjoy seeing what caliber of work people are submitting to various journals. Also, some journals show the status of your reviewed papers, so I can see if the other reviewers/editors agreed with my assessment. I'm also a bit maniacal and enjoy the power that's bestowed upon me when reviewing.

But what about fringe benefits?

Does any Tenure and Promotion committee care about what journals I review or how many I do in a year? If I'm reviewing top field level journals on a regular basis, is that part of the magic equation?

Do the editors (usually esteemed tenured faculty) remember their reviewers? I ask this because I'm curious if, when the time comes, I can list them as potential letter writers? Will they be familiar with my research or remember that I wrote some great reviews for them?

Finally, and only tangentially related, are editors at these mega publishing firms in collusion? I always seem to get papers to review in waves and always at times when I think I can relax or dedicate some extra time to research.