I just finished writing a grant proposal which, while I spent more time on it than I wanted, I had purposely left not much time for it. I do tend to spend as much time as I give myself on things, which is why I like teaching in the morning and not preparing for lecture [...]
July 18, 2011
Responsibility for versus responsibility to
I received some advice from an established biochemist via a friend in regards to the stress related to advising graduate students. See, of the new tasks in the past year, graduate advising has been the most stressful for me. I feel this weight of a person’s career in my hands. What if I pick the [...]
December 30, 2010
Looking a gift horse in the mouth
When I was a grad student, I was in a professor’s office when an undergrad stopped by to give the professor an art card as a thank you for writing a recommendation letter. The professor kindly turned down the gesture. At the time, I thought that, as the offering was little more than a greeting [...]
November 7, 2010
Writing reference letters
I was just sitting down to write the first1 reference letter that I have ever written and realized that I have never read a reference letter and have little idea of what should go into one. This particular letter is for a graduate student applying for a fellowship. Short post, but any suggestions? Maybe I [...]
October 8, 2009
How to find a postdoc
While I hardly think I should be doling out advice … In algorithms, there have been a lot of postdoc positions advertising on the two main email lists, TheoryNT and dmanet. In my experience, many of the positions are in Europe. I’ve found that a lot of postdoc’s get their position by word of mouth. [...]