That's crazy. Here at Hogwarts we have magic fobs that let you into anywhere you like at any hour, including the library. If I want to wander around in the library at 3am, as long as I bring my own flashlight, I'm welcome to do so. It is rad.
Students do not have this power, of course.
Educators are so lazy that they try to get into their offices over break!
He posted from his office! Where he is currently HARD AT WORK!
I was going to say, they're trying to make professors work less?
We of course have 24 hour access to our building. If I wanted to come up to my lab at 4AM on a Tuesday I could certainly do so. And the half-dozen people who were there working would be like "oh, hey."
Surely this rule doesn't apply to the lab sciences, right?
6: That's a good question. I will ask.
9-5 (8-7?) businesses and bureaucracies, at least in Britain, often shut down entirely on high days and holy days to save money on heating/aircon/security. In such contexts it makes some kind of sense. I imagine what's happened to Heebie's friend is that some off-campus official hasn't had the memo that universities are not 9-5 businesses or bureaucracies. I don't find this particularly surprising.
Sometimes some of our doors are locked on Sundays, but just as often there is something going on that will require some doors to be open. I've always been able to get into my office. Then again, because of my staid lifestyle, I've never tried to get in between midnight and 6AM.
My guess is that this is a rule about a particular building. That is, in an attempt to save money buildings which are not "in use" during break are shut down completely. Whether a building is "in use" would be decided by the building manager (or equivalent staff person in charge of the building) based on what happens in that building.
Oh they actually do shut down the HVAC in our building on holidays and over spring break and such. Doesn't stop people from coming in, though.
Building HVAC shutdown was my first thought, too, though I only recall dealing with that for the winter break. Several classes I took over the years arranged their schedules so that large/important projects were due just after Spring Break, so Spring Break as an undergrad meant "major work time".
I have to say I used to think of being a lab scientist as kind of a dream job -- you get to study interesting stuff on the very cutting edge, pleasant university life, respect of society plus SCIENCE. But it honestly sounds more like being a junior associate with worse hours, worse pay, and worse job prospects, and it's hard to believe you can sustain interest in something that you're routinely working that hard at (why is this much work necessary? No clue).
1: At California Ag School, law students have keys to the law school building which includes the library. Or did.
On the other hand, it sounds sort of civilized. I once heard that the Cavendish lab used to get shut down for 2 weeks, forcing people to take a vacation. My BF's company does the same thing between Christmas and New Year's. That may be, because it's a research facility (animal lab excluded, of course) and they know that enough people will take time off that it would be dangerous to have the other people there mixing chemicals.
It sounds like it may be building specific. I may be partially mollified.
I still stand by the last paragraph, even if it's unconnected to the first three.
The library is closed! I forgot that things shut down here for César Chávez day.
The intensity of lab sciences varies a bit by subfield. My impression is that chemists really are like junior associates, but the biologists I knew had a more reasonable schedule.
I have 24-hour access to my non-university office building. This is uncommon, right? I'm extremely glad of it. Since I basically live in Maine, it's nice to have a downtown pied-a-terre. I often stop here to charge the phone, use the gentlemen's lounge, or kill time between one thing and another. I less-than-three my office. Oh, office, let's make out!
My college dorm three years out of four had a door that accessed the steam tunnels (which run beneath most of the campus). During one winter break, I knew a guy who didn't have anywhere to go over break, so he used the steam-tunnel access to get into the otherwise-locked dorm. I believe he was eventually caught by a cop who saw him going down the manhole.
The naieldoB used to shut down from 7pm. Even the sockets went dead. If you had any services that had to run overnight they ran on special 24hr sockets which had non-standard plugs, so you couldn't just plug any old shit into them. Not sure of the current state of play as they are refurbishing that building [where the stacks used to be]. The building I'm currently in shuts at 6:30.
However, as per AWB at Hogwarts, at my former Oxford college, you could go into the college library whenever you liked. Students as well as staff had fobs that would let them in in the middle of the night.
Republicans claim that government is intrusive and excessively bureaucratic in order to justify want they actually want: to dismantle government from the inside out. And then on those occasions when they do govern, they pass policies which are so intrusive and excessively bureaucratic that the policies themselves perpetuate the idea that government should be dismantled from the inside. Fuck them.
Well, the intrusive, excessively bureaucratic policy in question is being inflicted on government employees themselves, although college professors aren't the kind of government employee that most (non-student) people complain about, so it's not quite the same as intrusive regulations on the public. And on the federal level, some really restrictive bureaucrats-suffering-from-bureaucracy policies have come from Democratic presidents (Executive Orders 12866 and 13563, for example).
Obviously, that's not relevant to your specific case. Sorry about boneheaded policies at your office, Heebie. And I would agree that Republicans have vested interest in screwing up government overall, like in 16. I'm just saying that I don't think working conditions for government employees specifically is a partisan issue. Liberal vs. conservative and/or left vs. right, maybe, but not partisan so much.
At first I thought "justification for shutting off air conditioning", but surely Texan administrators have sufficient chutzpah to do that without locking people out.
19: I always angled for 24/7 access during my stints in the financial industry. Mostly got it, too. Very convenient for all kinds of things.
although college professors aren't the kind of government employee that most (non-student) people complain about
Except for, you know, all the conservatives who claim we only work 15 hours a week, indoctrinate their children with liberal garbage, and research gobbledygook.
13 why is this much work necessary? No clue
Because at some point academia decided to value quantity of publications more than anything else.
17 I forgot that things shut down here for César Chávez day.
I had to try to explain the importance of César Chávez to a bunch of disgruntled European physicists once because of that.
I have 24-hour access to my office. It's quite nice, although I rarely have reason to use it.
18: That's interesting. I'm not familiar with as many scientists, but that seems slightly backwards, especially if the research involves mice or guinea pigs and they need to go in. Academic biologists always seemed to be going in to look at their gels or cultures on weekends.
My BF's grad school chemistry supervisor said that he wanted people to come in seven days a week, but he also felt that it was important to schedule in hangover recovery time as part of the schedule. The supervisor is famous for his drinking game.
Having 24 hour access to university facilities is great in a densely populated urban environment, because if you're out and about and suddenly have to take a dump, you have all those extra places to do the deed.
I'm trying to decide if ffeJ means you can go in and come back out or go out and come back in.
Because at some point academia decided to value quantity of publications more than anything else.
Discuss:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/02/university-of-sydney-sackings-trigger-academic-backlash.html
I was going to say that about bio grad students. I don't know about total hours worked, but the ones I've known were always saying things like, "I can meet you for dinner, but I have to back at the lab by 11:30 because my cells will be done."
29.2 plays completely to stereotype. Chemists are expected to be in the lab except during the times when they are expected to be drinking themselves silly.
Biologists have to come in every day to check on things, and that cuts into the ability to travel. But my feeling was that there's less pressure to be in the lab for long hours.
I would like to note in my defense that the stereotype of junior associates is that they work crazy hours, not that they can meet you for dinner but have to check back in at work for an hour because their briefs are going to be hatching then.
Fuck them.
"I grabbed my friend's arm and whispered, "My favorite Republican just walked in the door." She looked at me dumbfounded: "You have a favorite Republican?""
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Jammies doesn't know who Encyclopedia Brown is. Who the fuck am I married to?
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Who the fuck am I married to?
If only you knew someone who could help you solve this mystery!
35 is extremely much not my experience. I mean, yes, cultures need checking and routine maintenance, and that's not too onerous. But once you get to the molecular bio stage of an experiment, you're stuck. There are some acceptable stopping points, where your sample is in an appropriate state to be chucked in the freezer overnight, but until you reach those points you just have to keep going or else scrap everything. Timecourses are also complete bastards: I always seem to wind up needing to run 50 minutes of sample collection every hour for 24 hours. I think my personal record, from my last bout of fieldwork, was two 36-hour shifts separated by four hours' sleep. Never again. Until I have to.
Computational biology has a hell of a lot to recommend it in this department. X-ray crystallography is also not half bad. Otherwise, you're pretty much stuck.
Sifu, are the people in your building doing anything in fume hoods? Because enh, temperature control, whatever, but if no HVAC means no air-handling in the hoods and people keep working anyway, you really don't want to be in the building.
41.last: nope. In this building we only experiment on people and computers. Well, and (non-resident, pet) dogs. I think that's it, though. The building is too old and shitty to be used for anything that requires real modern biochem facilities.
Also I think I was inexact; if I'm remembering the emails from the building manager correctly he talks about putting the air handlers into maintenance mode as opposed to shutting them off entirely.
X-ray crystallography
And there's neat associated math!
I'm willing to admit I may just be wrong here, but I would like to point out that what 41 says is that biologists have to be in the lab during the times that they objectively have to be there (which may be a lot), which to my mind is somewhat different from putting in long hours for the sake of putting in long hours.
Jammies doesn't know who Encyclopedia Brown is. Who the fuck am I married to?
Bugs Meany.
45: Or the Great Brain perhaps?
So do people have a favorite/most-fuckable republican?
My favorite Republican is Abraham Lincoln.
Heebie, I think I agree with you 100%, but I'm confused. What is the connection between the university's building access policy and the legislature? Is there some proof that the legislature dictated this policy? I get that it's a public university, but surely that fact alone does not mean that they would necessarily issue policies on building access.
I personally am so addicted to my 24-hour building access that I would really, really miss it if I had to give it up. Nevertheless, I have many times been on the side of not giving junior/temporary people keys for security reasons.
(Not that junior/temporary people are untrustworthy, but that IME they are less apt to understand WHY it's such a giant problem to leave the door unlocked for "just a few minutes" while they go to the restroom.)
None of which has to do with professors in their own offices. Geeze Louise, that's ridiculous.
Abe Lincoln favorite, Heather Locklear most fuckable.
Living people only, how are you going to write a salon article about taking Abe Lincoln home?
42: oh good. Carry on.
43: it's true! Plus you get to explain reciprocal space at cocktail parties!
44: what I mean is that there's a lot of pressure for biologists to work long hours, but the experiments themselves are the proximal source of (most of) that pressure. It's not necessarily important that you're seen to be there at all hours, but it is important that you have new results to present at lab meeting, and if you haven't been there at all hours, you probably won't. This is less true for more medical research, where the Cult of Long Hours thrives.
As noted above, I have solved the problem described in 51 many times, in my mind.
Also one could pick Sarah Michelle Gellar, but I'm more old school.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is a Republican?
13: It sure does.
They ramp down the HVAC in my 20K population office building over Thanksgiving, Christmas time, and New Years. It gets cold in there.
I am pretty sure the universities here all shut entirely from Christmas Eve to the 6th of January. Partly to save money, partly to make sure the staff actually fuck off and get some fresh air for once.
(And they will also have reduced cleaning services over summer, which is cause the cleaners all go on holiday then.)
I'm going to agree with the micromanaging Republicans here. It's a big service to the academic community to force professors, particularly untenured ones, to take a vacation. It probably won't work because they'll just work from home, but it's a noble effort.
It's a big service to the academic community to force professors, particularly untenured ones, to take a vacation.
And yet when the time for a tenure decision comes, they will be compared to people who didn't take any vacations.
Yes, chemistry grad students and postdocs (especially at the elite schools) are more like junior associates without the pay. With the implosion of pharma R&D, this is even awesomer!
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67 Minute blogginghead tv with Jonathan Haidt
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13
... (why is this much work necessary? No clue).
Because important research problems are generally hard.
56. Weekends too. That's why Monday mornings in the summer are warm. There is even some ramp down overnight during the week. HVAC gets quieter around 2000.
I worked Christmas week. HVAC was OK.
63.1 All true as far I've noticed.
63.2 I did the same one year and it was frigid.
26
Because at some point academia decided to value quantity of publications more than anything else.
This isn't really true, solving an important hard problem will outweigh a bunch of minor results. But you don't get any credit for failures so most people prefer not to invest too much time in long shot efforts on big problems. Not that that would involve less effort anyway.
Because important research problems are generally hard.
So are the unimportant ones, as it turns out, for those who tackle them. (Spoken as a less able researcher who nonetheless made some incremental progress).
65: You more or less subscribe to the Landau theory of academics (their importance/contributions are on a log-scale rather than linear)?
32
Doing cutting edge research is hard and you have a secure job it is tempting to stop.
Some people with low publication rates may be working hard on difficult problems but unfortunately they are hard to distinguish from people who have stopped doing serious work.
20: My college dorm three years out of four had a door that accessed the steam tunnels (which run beneath most of the campus). During one winter break, I knew a guy who didn't have anywhere to go over break, so he used the steam-tunnel access to get into the otherwise-locked dorm.
Smart man. Ahem. I lived in a university-owned but free-standing house during most of college -- 3 floors with 12 of us in our individual rooms. Students were supposed to go away during the summer, but, well, not everyone did. I mean, they didn't take away our house keys, there were no persons in a supervisory capacity residing in the house during the school year or otherwise, and it was in a residential neighborhood of similar 3-story wood framed houses, two blocks away from the nearest actual dorm, with hedges and a front porch and a kitchen and so on, so it just wasn't very difficult, and in fact seemed quite natural, to stay at 'our' house for a few weeks or a month during the summer if need be.
Shh.
67
65: You more or less subscribe to the Landau theory of academics (their importance/contributions are on a log-scale rather than linear)?
I think a small fraction of academics do most of the important work. Not sure if this is the top 20% account for 80% or the top 10% for 90% or even the top 1% for 99% but something like that.
Think of how hard it is to set a new record in something like running a mile. You have to do better than everyone else who has ever run a timed mile. Solving an important problem is similar you have to do better than everyone else who has worked on the problem.
I'm kind of sympathetic to your point, James, but a lot of important problems are solved after a number of people contribute solid and important but not decisive steps toward understanding them better. The trouble that I see is that solid and careful work isn't rewarded as much as churning out vast quantities of shoddier work; people who make hiring and tenure decisions are, on average, too lazy to actually read papers and assess how solid they are. The rare person who decisively solves a huge problem is always rewarded, but the incentives are all wrong for the people who aren't quite that good.
I feel like I was always destined to be in the middle of the pack, and thus undifferentiated by quality rather than quantity. So I didn't try to stay in academia when I started to complete my phd. So, while I recognize that there's definitely something to that theory, James, I'm also super sympathetic to a POV like essaer's. Not to say he's in there in the meaty hump with me.
To be clear, his travel load alone suggests he's well ahead of where I ever was.
One thing that's slightly confusing is that there's a certain amount of luck in terms of what pans out and what doesn't. So having only a small number of people doing the most important work is not exactly the same thing as saying that there's a small number who are way better than everyone else. That said, I do think in math it is true that the real movers and shakers are much much better than the median researcher.
I do want to point out that rewarding vast quantities of shoddy work is not the problem in math, and you might want to blame your field for that. (In math the problem is churning out vast quantities of boring work.)
Shoddy or boring. I'm lumping those together. I mean, there's at least one European country whose output is almost all in the form of extremely elaborate and correct calculations that shed no light on anything and that no one will ever use. But damn, can they calculate.
The best person in my field (and if I construe "my field" somewhat narrowly, it's clearly one person) is way, way, way better than everyone else, to an extent that's almost demoralizing.
Of course it's easy to identify the best person in your field if you construe your field narrowly enough that there's only one person in it.
It makes sense if you interpret that sentence the way I intended it to make sense.
Of course it's easy to identify the best person in your field if you construe your field narrowly enough that there's only one person in it.
And indeed, if you construe it that way it's apparent who that person is.
71
... The trouble that I see is that solid and careful work isn't rewarded as much as churning out vast quantities of shoddier work; people who make hiring and tenure decisions are, on average, too lazy to actually read papers and assess how solid they are. ...
This is just unrealistic. One reason that research is hard is the amount of material you have to learn to reach the research frontier. This encourages specialization as otherwise you will spend too much time just getting up to speed. And it means that reading thoroughly and personally assessing how good a paper is (that isn't exactly in your field) requires too much effort for too little reward to expect in most cases.
I was a terrible fielder in Little League. Sometimes there would be five of us out there and I'd be relegated to Furthest-Upper-Right-Fieldistan.
80: I don't agree. Hiring decisions are, to a large extent, made at the group level, where people are in the same subfield enough that they should be able to assess other people's competence. Assuming they're competent themselves.
As for the other thing I meant construing my field narrowly enough that it doesn't include, say, Cyborg and Mitten. (My lame Googleproofing makes me want this to be some kind of cartoon.)
82.1 presumably doesn't apply in math, where my impression is that people are much more specialized.
I didn't mean to derail the thread. This isn't very interesting anyway.
Yeah but Ned Mitten can *really* draw a nice looking torus on a blackboard.
I actually rather enjoyed that google-proofing.
I'm kind of surprised that none of the Google hits for "naughty cyborg" are relevant.
Ned Mitten
I'm imagining a string-theorist who looks and talks like a cross between Ned Flanders and Mitt Romney.
82
80: I don't agree. Hiring decisions are, to a large extent, made at the group level, where people are in the same subfield enough that they should be able to assess other people's competence. Assuming they're competent themselves.
How many hiring decisions per year, how many serious candidates per position, how many papers per candidate, how many hours per paper? And what fraction of the decision makers are still doing research?
Oh my. This is one hell of a post. 'tis lengthy, but never mind that. (via Balloon Juice)
You read that in six minutes? That surprises me for some reason.
I trailed off after he got to his point. But the first 2/3 were good.
That's OK. What do y'all need universities for anyway? You can just drive around in your big trucks and shoot at each other.