Which humans grow up wanting to be professors? Usually not the conservatives. Which humans hope to head for a career in nursing? Usually not the boys. According to their paper, “Why Are Professors Liberal?”, Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse say nursing is a “gender typed” career, while being a professor is more “politically typed.”

From the NY Times:

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.

A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences professor, the fields where the imbalance is greatest: tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular — and liberal. Even though that may be an outdated stereotype, it influences younger people’s ideas about what they want to be when they grow up.

“…nerdy, long-winded, secular…” Wait! That exactly describes my grandfathers! They were both total science nerd professors, but whatever. They both were liberal, and both saw themselves heading toward careers as tweed-wearing research profs. Coincidence? I think not.

Gross and Fosse’s theory is 100% right according to my family. But it makes sense in the real world as well. Not that my family doesn’t have a foothold in reality…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Big projects, like term papers or dissertations or what have you, really freak people out. Sometimes I try to give other people advice about getting s**t done. They never appreciate hearing my exquisitely condensed single line of wisdom, so sharp it sings out like a band of angels with knives: Sit down and get to work (dumbass).

If they’re unappreciative a**holes about it, I shrug and walk away. Their big dumb project is their big dumb problem, not mine. But if they’re all quietly sad and hopeless and ask for some expansion on my awesome advice, I will relent and add one shred more: Set a timer for an hour or thirty minutes or whatever you think you can handle without losing your s**t. Sit down and work on the project until the timer goes off. Take a short break, and repeat.

Little chunks that you can see the end of never seem insurmountable, and it’s actually fairly painless to move a mountain from here to way over there if you do it one bucket at a time.

Peg Boyle Single wrote a piece in Inside Higher Ed about how to change your procrastinating ways so’s you can write your dissertation already. It’s helpful advice (and she’s much kinder in her delivery than I am).

Further Reading:

Write or Die V2.0
Getting Past the Overwhelming Wall
Monumental Tasks
A Writing Routine

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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The notion most of us have when thinking about the University (read that with a deep and important voice, please) is of a well-architectured limbo-land full of higher thought, in-depth learning, and forward motion steeped nicely in tradition. The University isn’t (or didn’t used to be) as susceptible to the rules of government and society; they’ve managed to create their own little spheres.

These days, when you really stop to ponder the reality of the University bubble, that place of higher thinking seems a lot more watered down in its autonomy. Money, politics and red tape have pulled the rest of the world into the fabric of the University, while the University is forced, more and more it seems, to rely on the non-University world in order to survive.

No less than eight members of my family, between 1932 and the present, have spent their careers at Universities. I’m not an idiot; I know that even in 1932 the University was already pretty susceptible to red tape and politics. But the University was still thought of, from without and within, as a place where academic freedom was considered sacred.

It appears, especially through the eyes of those on the inside, as though the last vestiges of higher learning and new thinking are being chipped away at an increasingly rapid rate, all in the name of popular research and big-name publishing. That all comes down to the ongoing faculty wrestling-match to figure out who will land the biggest chunk of grant money.

You can’t survive without money, and you can’t continue your research (or your job) without funding. Grant money is usually awarded to those trying to answer the newest, biggest, hottest question of the year. It’s difficult to land decent financial support for researching the esoteric topics.

When a dispute regarding academic freedom comes up, it’s usually about the rights of instructors to speak freely (within reason; there’s never any need to go overboard, for crying out loud) about politics and religion and all the Big Bads no one’s supposed to bring up in classroom discussions. Academic freedom is also supposed to include the rights of students and faculty to think, wonder, ask questions, and to perform research in order to find some answers. If money and funding are driving the machine, it seems obvious that the academic freedom to do research is being severely shaped by outside interests.

President Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago gave a speech recently at Columbia University’s conference entitled “What is Academic Freedom For?” He spoke about academic freedom at institutions of higher learning, what that means and why it’s important to protect and maintain that tradition in the modern-day University.

The greatest contributions universities can make to society over the long run are the ideas and discoveries of faculty and students that emanate from the resulting intellectual ferment and the work of alumni across the scope of human activity―alumni whose capacity for invention has been dramatically enhanced through their education in this environment. Moreover, that universities are almost unique in making this type of contribution only highlights its importance to society.

If this is the purpose of universities, the purpose of academic freedom is precisely to preserve this openness of inquiry and freedom of thought. In other words, academic freedom is designed to protect and preserve for the long run the unique capacity of universities to contribute to society. More…

Further Reading:

Academic Freedom in the 21st Century College and University
Academic Freedom
AAUP: Academic Freedom
What is Academic Freedom For?
Pres. Zimmer’s Address Delivered at Columbia Univ.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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I love it when highly educated, intelligent, and knowledgeable scientists find something new that’s so damn cool, the only thing they can come up with to say is, “It’s a big weird looking freaky thing.” Ichthyologist Doug Long of the California Academy of Sciences came up with that one in an interview with Wired Science.

He’s right. I mean, look at that thing. It’s fascinating, but it’s a tad bizarre. I don’t care how many degrees that guy has, even I would be too giddy to remember my super science-y vocabulary words if someone had just discovered some crazy new organism that I was going to get to play with.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

If you’re planning to apply to grad school someday, please heed Female Science Professor’s words of wisdom. She knows of what she speaks, and her descriptions of two different–and considerately unnamed–graduate-program hopefuls is painful in its education. Student 1 seems capable of dealing with the realities of and the hoop-jumping required for graduate studies. Student 2, not so much.

Seriously, learn as much as you can about the application process prior to actually applying. Don’t waste your professors’ time, especially the ones who might someday write you a letter of recommendation. They are busier than you are and will be pissed if you suck up several perfectly good hours that they will never get back.

From FSP’s post, What to Expect When You’re Clueless:

Student 1 has been talking to graduate students about their research and their general experiences as grad students and has been reading papers in the major journals. Student 1 seeks out professors for scientific and other academic discussions and has been proactive about doing research experiences (for credit) and science-related jobs (for pay). By talking to people and being generally aware, Student 1 knows what steps to take in applying to grad programs. Student 1 probably needs some advice, but overall is pretty savvy about the process.

Student 2 has had a similar number of research experiences and science jobs, but tends to focus on the immediate task at hand. Student 2 does best when told very specifically what to do and doesn’t seem to be able to handle a lot of information at once. If general advice is given to Student 2 in advance of a specific task, it needs to be given again when directly relevant. Imagine that Student 2 (S2) has the following conversation with a Science Professor (SP) who advised one of Student 2’s research projects. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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If you’ve ever read the About Page on this here blog, you’ll know that somewhere on my extensively planned path to the land of the Perfectly PhD-ed Career, I was derailed (mostly voluntarily) by my own personal efforts to ensure the continuation of the species (Mommyness replaced my dream of Tenured Professorness).

I’ve been a mommy for less time than I spent thinking my future held a stunningly windowed office in an ivory tower. Which is why, although I’m stupidly happy in my kid-laced life (the animal instincts make it biologically impossible not to like your kids), I still have barfy feelings when I think about sitting for the orals I never actually had to take.

If you spend enough time thinking that the years of school will all culminate in your standing before the brainy version of a firing squad, it will be difficult to convince yourself that it’s okay to just let that fear go. As I had been imagining this for myself since I was in about the fifth grade, and didn’t derail until I was about 26, you can see why I’d have a hard time leaving the nausea behind.

If you’ve managed to stick with your goals of being educated to some point nearing ridiculousness (which I fully support, by the way) and you’re nearing the orals portion of your PhD, then I would suggest reading An Orals Survival Kit. It’s up on Tomorrow’s Professor blog, and was written by three UC Berkeley PhD candidates (which means they’ve recently passed their orals and know of what they speak).

It is like standing in front of a firing squad. Your executioners are four professors who are experts in their fields. You writhe before them as they take turns posing questions almost beyond your grasp. The threat hangs constantly over your head: Fail to satisfy them, and your graduate career will end.

That’s how many graduate students imagine their oral exam. But the reality doesn’t have to be that bad.

While it’s true that a Ph.D. oral exam can be the most terrifying hurdle in graduate school, it can also be a positive and rewarding experience. Truly. For many students, the stress associated with preparing for orals is largely because they will experience the exam format for the first, and last, time. Too often, no one explains what to expect or how to prepare. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Do smarty-pants professor types feel they need a bigger challenge? Was defending their dissertation not enough? All of those years of undergraduate and graduate work, living somewhere near the poverty line, working and striving for those extra letters after their names? Why do obviously intelligent humans do this to themselves? Because they want to spend their working days in a place of higher learning, with ivy-covered walls and trees that change color in the fall, with a tenured position, teaching hundreds of fresh, shiny little faces, each one eager to learn all that the prof has to teach.

These days, actually landing a tenured position at a college or a university is right up there with the Holy Trinity of Nearly Impossible Occurrences: winning the lottery; playing in the NBA; and being struck by lightning. And do you know what makes landing a sweet teaching gig even harder? Being married to another PhD-havin’ brainiac who would also love to land a tenured position. What are the chances both halves of a PhD couple will actually end up making a living in academia?

The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University has noticed that women don’t move as quickly or as easily through the gauntlet as their male counterparts do. A major part of this can be attributed to gender issues. But there seems to be another glitch in the Tenured Woman system: a high number of female academics are partnered with other academics, sometimes in their field. Here are the problems that situation can bring about, according to the Clayman Institute:

“Both married and domestic partners in dual-career relationships suffer decreased job mobility and the benefits in terms of opportunities, experience, salary, and working conditions that mobility can bring. This is especially true for women in the sciences, who are more often partnered with other academics. While only 7% of the members of the American Physical Society are women, for example, an astonishing 44% of them are married to other physicists. An additional 25% are married to some other type of scientist. A remarkable 80% of women mathematicians and 33% of women chemists are married to men in their own fields. Such partnerships are at cost to their mobility and advancement given the rarity of dual offers.”

Starting in November 2006 the folks at Stanford’s Clayman Institute began conducting a nationwide survey of 30,000 faculty. The point? A very good one:

“The Institute’s ‘Dual-Career Academic Couples’ study will culminate in policy recommendations aimed at helping universities recruit and retain greater numbers of women in leading faculty and administrative positions. Restructuring university practices will help transform the way universities do business and grow academic cultures where women, too, can flourish.”

I love it when research institutes use their powers for good, not evil. I found some interesting bits about dual-career issues, women in academia, gender issues, and what some folks are doing to try to increase the female population in the upper echelons of academia, especially in the math and science fields.

These three links add up to the motherlode of links on dual academic career couples and women in science. You could spend weeks trying to find the info these lists have.

Further Reading:

Stanford List
Women in Biology List
Dual Science Career Couples List

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Ignoring words of wisdom from someone who has been in the same trenches you’re in now is idiotic at best. Anyone who either is currently, or who is hopeful of someday being, in a postdoc situation, should read the two posts Female Science Professor has up about postdocs and the mentoring they should receive (but which she herself did not):

When I was a postdoc, I was just happy to get through a day without being groped (by an emeritus professor), excluded from using the research facilities I needed (by technical staff), yelled at (by office staff), unnerved (by a large male grad student who frequently expressed the opinion that ‘girls like to be hit’), insulted (by one of a wide range of people), or the target of a scary lab prank (by one particular technician). The concept of ‘postdoc mentoring’ was not even a gleam in anyone’s eye. I did my work and got out of there as soon as I had the opportunity. More…

I would ask the obvious “Why would anyone put themselves through that particular circle of hell?” question, but her professional life seems to have gone in the direction she wanted, so it all worked out in the end.

First of all, she’s a female in the physical sciences, which isn’t the easiest place for a girl to be. My favorite physics prof (who is not FSP) told me she was the only female in her department while getting her degree in the 1970s and she had absolutely nothing good to say about the experience except that it made her such a cranky bad-ass that she didn’t put up with any sh*t ever from any student. Second of all, she has a full professorship at a research university.

All of which is awesome for her. There may even be some sort of holy grail involvement with a career moment like that. Or maybe it just means she’ll never get a decent parking spot again, she’ll never win the lottery, and she will never get to play for the NBA. On the up side, she’ll also never be struck by lightning, so there’s that.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Reading this article in the Wall Street Journal—while being informed fully of the situation —will make you want to beat your head against a wall. The job market has pretty well reached mythical status for recent college graduates; the “job market” was a place other generations did some minimal step-following in order to slip their educated way into a spot seemingly reserved for them. “Them” being the twenty-somethings who had followed procedure: graduated with decent grades in high school, taken all required standardized tests, gotten into colleges and universities, graduated with one or more degrees, etc.

I can’t imagine how pissed off the current generation (are we still on Y? When do we get to Z?) must be regarding their financial futures. They’ve been jumping through academic hoops since middle school in order to secure their spot in Careerland. And now, things don’t seem to be progressing according to plan. If’n I were a Gen-Yer (I’m Gen-X) I would be so done with adults and jobs and school and rules. There are going to be a lot of twenty-somethings living off the grid, far away on tropical islands, telling society to perform expletive-y things on itself.

Here’s the teensy smidge of silver lining…at the end of the article, there are a few lines that give recent grads another option (besides smashing their heads repeatedly against the Job Market Wall:

Others are opting to ride out the slump doing public service. At AmeriCorps, a nationwide community-service network, applications more than tripled to about 48,500 between November 2008 and March compared to the same time period a year earlier. Teach for America received 35,000 applications this year — 42% more than last year. About 70% of those were recent college graduates. Among the most common reasons people cited for applying, according to Teach for America, were poor job conditions and President Barack Obama’s call to public service.

Another alternative to unemployment or a low-paying job: Stay in school.

Graduate applications for 2007-2008 were up 8% nationwide compared to the year before, according to the most recent numbers from the Council of Graduate Schools. Schools such as Northwestern University and Harvard are already tracking double-digit increases this year.

College grads who went to graduate school instead of the job market during the early ’80s recession didn’t suffer the same wage losses, says Ms. Kahn, the Yale economist.

I love school, so I see no downside to sticking one’s head in the proverbial sand (grad school) and waiting the economic slumpiness out. There will be more student loan debts, but maybe there’s a way to keep the course load manageable enough to also work at the lame job you’re ridiculously overqualified for but it’s the only job you could find after months of searching. And, really, isn’t being in school the perfect excuse for having a crappy job and a cash-flow problem? I’m not kidding, I think I’ve found the perfect hiding place to wait out the Recession Boogeyman—a nice, long PhD with a crappy job on the side. It’s perfect.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Sometimes it’s nice to read something happy about a family of smarties. The Chicago Tribune has this up about a mom and her six kids, all of whom attended Northern Illinois University. The kids all went on to graduate school, and have used their brainy powers for good. Their shared alma mater felt it was necessary to recognize the siblings’ achievements:

On Thursday, Northern Illinois University presented the entire Sereno family with its 2009 Outstanding College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Alumni Award.

…Northern Illinois alumni officials checked across the country but could find no record of another family that produced six siblings with doctorates — a feat all the more impressive given that each became a research leader in his or her field.



“This is an incredible accomplishment, and it needs to be recognized in its totality,” said Jack Tierney, board president of the Northern Illinois Alumni Association. “Each of the Serenos has made extraordinary contributions to science, research and education. Together they demonstrate the value and potential of a liberal arts education.”

Posted by Alexa Harrington