Moral: do not homeschool/unschool your kid.
Another moral: man am I good at not bothering to try in the first place.
Is that supposed to be reassuring, along the lines of looking at the rejection letters of famous authors?
That list of grants he didn't get is pathetic. Just about anyone dependent on NIH funding can top that several times over.
That's the idea of the first one.
The second one is telling us the harsh truth that most of us will fail and fail again until eventually we die.
He's 7 for 12 in getting research grants and thinks pointing this out will reassure other researchers?
Next year, so he can put that he failed to get it down for 2016.
THE ACADEMY THOUGHT WE NEEDED TO LEARN ABOUT FAILURE, BUT I SHOWED THEM!
This is all part of [probably shrewd and prudent but immensely annoying] people, in whatsoever fields, trying to catch up to and assimilate the latest business/technology shibboleths, right? Cf. T-shirts and lululemon bags with slogans like "Fall eight times, get up nine"? "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"*
* Throw lemon meringue pies at Hell's Angels. I'm just brainstorming here.
I don't have the butt for lululemon. Can I put that on my CV?
Just keep it off the copy machine.
It is interesting when people talk about failure. That guy maybe not so much; but he never really asked for the cv of failure to be a big deal.
"What would you do if you weren't afraid?"
Quit buying organic groceries, IASIHMHBHAI.
15: If I weren't afraid, I'd go shop lifting too.
1 is the winner. F***ing credentials, how do they work?
1, 18: Another experience that underlines that point is Samantha Field's "Stay at Home Daughters are Raised to be Imprisoned." Well worth reading, along with the rest of her blog, which makes the case quite eloquently that yes, she is quite qualified to go to seminary in spite of the credential issue.
There are ways to get your kids credentials while home-schooling. Sucks for that person that their parent didn't do it, but I don't think you can condemn it from that alone. (This message brought to you by the fact that I suddenly seem to know a lot of home-schooling parents.)
On topic because of universities and making public things people don't usually bother to mention.
Via Twitter: Dog bites kibble.
The peak failure CV gave me a reaction like 1. Also...like, someone at some point should have told you getting a PhD in English from a non-top tier school is a massive waste of time, money, and opportunity cost. I mean, getting any PhD from anywhere might be a massive waste of time & opportunity cost, but it holds extra true for a place where your advisors won't even write letters of rec for jobs/funding (!!).
Also, this "I was embarrassed to ask for a waiver," I have a hard time processing my reaction to this. My immediate reaction is an eye roll, but I also know that the psychological barriers of shame for poor people are an observed obstacle to providing help, even if there are available and easily accessible resources.*
*I say this as someone whose received thousands of dollars in means tested aid, including tons of need-based financial aid + summer funding, and is currently on medicaid.
Um, and also can't grammar. Who's received...
Also, the more I think about the LORs, it's insane. Even if you, tenured faculty member, think you are simply propping up a giant pyramid schemed PhD program, why would you not write a LOR? My only other thought is that they all thought she was terrible and didn't want to vouch for her work, and subtle attempts to communicate that went over her head.
Also, I don't get the two foreign languages thing. It's bog standard for any competitive program in the humanities, and if you want to go into the humanities, it's at minimum a hoop you have to jump through and probably a helpful skill. It's also something that you actually can plan ahead for by studying in college, or if you're really motivated you can do it on your own with resources (it sucks but if you're good with languages you can learn one well enough to pass a translation exam with textbooks & online resources).
I know I sound like a cranky conservative, which makes me uncomfortable. Universities are ruthlessly destroying TT academic positions for contingent labor who are ruthlessly exploited, and this process needs to be fought against at the structural level. Adjuncts also need to unionize and fight back. At the same time, people choosing PhDs usually have other options, and at best it's a fool's game. If at every step you're not in the very top (getting into the top programs with funding, getting the right grants, getting published in the right journals, etc.) then you should probably reconsider your choice.
25.1: Maybe they were trying to get her to stop apply at lower ranked institutions where they sometimes place graduates?
I agree with 26, going anywhere other than a top 20 program is a fool's errand. Also, faculty will usually write letters for almost anything--the fact that no one will recc her is a red flag. I too have applied to those journals, and they're pretty professional. One or two readers might have given unprofessional responses, but they all would not have. She might have been rejected from all these journals, but I would suspect the rejection was merited 80% of the time
I agree with 26, going anywhere other than a top 20 program is a fool's errand.
I think a lot of the problem here is that professors at non-top-20 places are likely to dance around this fact. Or at least that's what was going on at the, uh, top-200 place I did undergrad at. Escaping getting sucked into the graduate school there was probably the best decision of my life.
Isn't there supposedly a two tier market, with people from lower ranked programs sometimes having a chance at jobs at similar institutions where grads from higher ranked programs may be seen as out of place or flight risks?
That used to be true. I'm not sure how true it is anymore with the rise of adjunct labor. That's going to depend on the discipline though.
Seriously though the aggressive rise of adjunct professoring is a really big thing and it's not a good really big thing in the long run. (In the short term it's great for universities, I mean, but...)
Also the bit described in 23.2 made me wince a little because I recognized this so immediately that it didn't stand out at all. I absolutely would have had huge trouble asking for this kind of thing in any circumstances. (I got it as an undergrad because my college refused to separate it out from anything else, and as far as graduate school went you were funded or not and it didn't matter.) I'm on medicaid right now* and I almost certainly wouldn't be*** if it wasn't for Obamacare and Minnesota literally refusing, on a structural level, to let you have anything else below a certain income level.
*And it's amazing and I'm going to miss it. Co-pays are for suckers!**
**I don't have any and it's fucking unnerving. Seriously, I have trouble with this.
***I'd just be without any savings at all and/or dead.
This seems appropriate. Petty shit this reviewer is asking me to do in the first three pages of a 20 page paper:
1. Change "these items do not apply" to "none of these items apply"
2. Change "they are now being directed" to "they are being directed"
3. Change "we need a way to compare if students have improved..." to "we need a way to determine if students have improved"
4. Change "students produce poor attempts often because" to "students often produce poor attempts because"
5. Ask for a citation for a Charles Dickens quote, in a STEM paper.
"Of the items that apply, none of these are included"
More seriously, I've never seen anything like that in any article that I've been involved with.
I've seen, in a vanishingly small number of journals that still employ them, copy editors trying to turn sludge into something passable as literate, but never a reviewer.
Not that those changes look like improvements.
It's making me livid to tab back and forth between the pdf that the reviewer marked up, the LaTeX pdf, the code, and the response letter for such incredibly petty shit. Oh, you want me to say 'among students' instead of 'between students'? Maybe you should shove it up your ass?
The one that made me go most insane was when they recommended we change "instructor feedback to the student" to "instructor feedback to the students." I HATE THEM.
Also the one where they wanted us to re-order the sentences in a paragraph in order to make it worse.
More seriously, I've never seen anything like that in any article that I've been involved with.
I never have either! I don't understand what's going on! I have other shit I need to be spending my time doing!
Also the reviewer's name is totally visible on the document they marked up. Seems like a nice enough person.
Maybe I'll start trying shit like this. Bring down Elsevier from the inside.
You can say no.
"We thank the reviewer for their thoughtful comment on the ordering of the paragraph starting at line 105, but have decided it would be best if they fucked themselves."
Please replace "their" with "her or his".
We did some passive-aggressive remarks. Especially with the literary quote.
Also it is BOTH REVIEWERS who are being such weird little shitheads. And their comments on the first pass were much more content-oriented and reasonable.
If they're at Wisconsin, maybe Scott Walker started requiring faculty to be shitheads.
I have had reviewers try to copy-edit my papers, sometimes obviously non-native English speakers trying to "correct" it to their version of English. Usually it seems to happen when they don't have any substantive criticism but feel like they are expected to do something.
I'm editing a book now and need to stop myself from copy-editing, the publisher has professionals for that. Although in some cases there's a fine line between bad grammar and WTF are you trying to say in this 80 word sentence.
Having received it once, that between -> among correction is now something I can't unsee no matter how I try. I wouldn't hand down those changes for someone else to make, though; only if I were directly responsible for typing up a clean copy.
I would struggle mightily with finding the line between "substantive" edits and "copy" edits, more or less because of 48.last. Also because my inclination, when faced with anything reasonably thoughtful, is to tinker at the edges, not to challenge premises.
That's really not how reviewing is supposed to work. Also, the writing is supposed to suck.
I wonder what would happen if you insisted on inserting a "not" in between "This research was" and "approved by the IRB at all involved institutions."
Ok, so, I joined this departmental intramural inner tube water polo team due to peer pressure. It turns out all the other teams are made up of undergrad jocks, so our team of out-of-shape 30-something year olds is kind of outmatched. I don't have much upper body strength and hate ball sports, and it occasionally gives me flash backs middle school gym, except our team doesn't really give a fuck, and it's decent exercise and. Anyways, I am BA thesis advisor, and I had to fail a student out of my BA seminar this fall. So of course, my worst nightmare situation, he's a member of the swim team and I had to play against him tonight. He didn't actually play, so instead he got to sit on the side of the pool watching me flail around in an inner tube in a bikini, attempting to block 180 lb 20 YO swim team dudes.
#gradschoolhumiliation #BAthesisadvisornightmares
If you joined the rowing team, would you blame pier pressure?
What size bikini does an inner tube wear?
Sorry, that's probably considered copy-editing.
55
I thought the blog cut copy editors when they downsized. Also, you can't expect me to write well when I'm remembering a humiliating moment I just had.
If there's one thing Unfogged will never cut, it's copy editing.
You're probably confused because the official position title is "little bitch."
Without reading everything:
1 Homeschooling is incredibly evil;
2 As I've been writing the Tooze summary I keep wondering how far alternate-universe me is with his phd. Turns out, broke, without funding to study anything he cares about;
3 So, procrastination ftw! Thanks to ogged for the timely reminder!
47 gets it right. Telling the author to delete "the" in 60 places and add it in 60 other places is not the job of the reviewer for the journal, it's the job of the author's colleague who looks over the manuscript before it's submitted.
Seriously though the aggressive rise of adjunct professoring is a really big thing and it's not a good really big thing in the long run. (In the short term it's great for universities, I mean, but...)
I don't see how it's even a good thing for universities in the short run. Of course when things are "being run like a business" they have to do what businesses like to do and maximize employee turnover at all costs. But guess what! when your employees have no job security, they are spending as much time as possible looking for their next job. And since you can't force a professor to spend any time working except the time actually spent in the classroom and office hours, your professors who spend half their time driving from campus to campus and the other half preparing job applications are practically being forced to do a half-assed job.
But, in the short term, what is the consequence for the university of doing a half-assed job educating the students.
Speaking of failure, does anyone running an internet news site actually have a copy editing staff? Every fucking article I read these days has at least a couple of typographical errors. OBVIOUS typographical errors. Meanwhile, inexpert pseudo-pedants are always complaining about "grammar" (by which apparently we now mean "punctuation" and "spelling") in cat memes.
Also, poor Douglas Rushkoff must be spinning in his grave at the proliferation of so-called "memes" these days.
61: More punctuation errors in cat memes. Jesus, do I have to spell everything out?
Speaking of failure, does anyone running an internet news site actually have a copy editing staff?
Yglesias's stuff did get noticeably better when he moved to Slate, but they seemed to only care about the spelling of the names of people and companies.
I can't even imagine a world that's not about a lot of people sending back and forth picky nit-edits to written work.
Some sort-of-neighbors (within a mile radius or so of us), worried about traffic speed on their street, put up a bunch of those "Drive Like Your Kids Live Here" signs. This drove other neighbors crazy enough that they snuck out and corrected the signs (with paint?) to say "Drive AS IF Your Kids Live Here." My editor friend pointed out that indeed, that is still wrong, and they need to transform "live" to "lived."
Drive Like Your Kids Live Here And Practice Is In Three Minutes And Their Shoes Are Still Not On Do I Have To Start Counting
66 is like the most San Francisco thing ever.
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I have a bunch of Spanish voice recordings. Whats my best option for getting them auto-translated into something I can read?
Shit quality is fine, I just need to get the gist; I can't allow my colleagues to do the work to translate these on my behalf.
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I can't allow my colleagues to do the work to translate these on my behalf.
What are you, a spy?
No, just trying not to give gringos a bad name.
The gringos being your colleagues or yourself?
66 is like the most San Francisco thing ever.
While walking down the street in Rockridge I paused to erase the extraneous apostrophe from a possessive "it's" on a chalked sign outside a shop, and a woman who passed as I was doing so thanked me with apparent sincerity.
That would be me. I've had a week full of meetings where everyone else in the room is speaking Spanish, and being the guy other people have to translate for. I'm not thrilled about being that guy.
If you want I can give you the name of a service that does this for lawyers. Not cheap though.
Naturally, I ran after her and arranged a date for this Saturdaylooked about me befuddledly.
66: Correct modern form is "Drive like" and an animated gif representing the action.
Also, that's a Berkeley thing. SF is all about pedestrian danger.
Also, that's a Berkeley thing. SF is all about pedestrian danger.
I wondered about that, but I hear SF is unusually car-oriented for a major city.
If you want I can give you the name of a service that does this for lawyers. Not cheap though.
I can't afford lawyer money. I was thinking more along the lines of "dark secrets of Google translate power users."
Have you considered learning Spanish?
I'd think being car oriented goes hand in hand with not putting up signs about pedestrian safety. Although I think things have improved since around 2000 when SF may have ranked highest in the US in pedestrian fatalities.
Berkeley has a lot of side streets where barriers and speed bumps discourage people from trying to sneak around the main roads.* Maybe lurid's neighbors feel left out.
*I've seen visitors whine about them, which might be a sign that they work. They're not meant to benefit people too impatient for the lights on Shattuck or MLK.
I realize it may be a little late for that, but it might still be easier than using Google translate on voice recordings.
And the fact that there is an expensive service for lawyers doing this strongly suggests that there isn't an easy, cheap alternative.
You might be able to get grad students for cheap.
68: Google translate can take audio as input.
You just need to user one of those programs that reroutes audio, so that your output is being channeled directly into the input stream that Google translate is reading from. I did this once and it sort of worked.
Google translate can take audio as input.
From a microphone, it seems, but not a recording. Maybe I'll go look at what Bing translate can do....
Don't do it and just put it on your CV of failures.
Microsoft Translate for Business Free Trial sounds good...
Is there a Spanish speech to text program you could use to generate text to send to a translation program?
Google translate can take audio as input.
Okay, but from a theoretical perspective this is a really difficult problem, much more difficult than translating text-to-text. I would be highly skeptical of the results.
89 might offer a better solution if such a program exists.
I think these neighbors (this story is secondhand, told by the editor) were impatiently waiting for speed bumps to be approved.
X.TRAPNEL! how are you??!
Honestly I would be really surprised if someone's figured out a way to automate speech-to-text accurately. RT's service in 74 is expensive because they have to rely on human translators.
Google translates "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" as "no hay inserción".
Sphinx is supposed to do a good job, I've heard.
That link took me to hear all the languages.
Speech recognition will vary significantly due to the speed and accuracy level of the acoustic model used, so support for non-English acoustic models is very much on a best-effort basis moving forward.
That said, this sort of thing is probably Spike's best option, so here's hoping it works well enough.
Speaking of pedestrian-unfriendly, I am for the first time in my life in Las Vegas. Good news: The mountains are beautiful.
Bad news: The streets are impossible to cross; they do not even have crosswalks.* I have literally never seen a road in a major American city that has no provision whatsoever for a human being to cross it in a normal way.** Not even in Dallas.
*I imagine this is really only the casino part of Las Vegas; I can't imagine it's actually like this in the rest of the city, but I haven't seen that yet.
**They have giant bridges with escalators leading up to them, which I suppose is supposed to make it safer than crossing the street. It adds 3x to the time and makes it nearly impossible to figure out how you can get somewhere that is 1/2 a block away but on the wrong side of the street.
98: Huh. Are you on the Strip? I remember there being lots and lots of people walking down the street, and crossing not being a major problem. It's been a while, though.
nearly impossible to figure out how you can get somewhere that is 1/2 a block away but on the wrong side of the street
Easy! Drive.
I've definitely seen bridges over streets in Anchorage, though, with regular stairs rather than escalators. I don't think I've ever used one.
I already know the context so I can probably get by with crap quality translation.
You know, I am reminded that I've actually spent time fucking around with Sphinx before, but in a different context. I was trying to get it to transcribe English, but thick, West Indian accents were out of the question. Still, maybe worth a shot.
Alaska has bridges that go somewhere?
Assuming you consider other locations within Alaska "somewhere," which wasn't always clear with the whole "Bridge to Nowhere" thing.
Speaking of failure, I'm about to attend some godawful HR training for the horrible annual appraisal bullshit. I never even accepted the objectives I was given last winter out of a combination of studied contempt for the process, panic, and willful stupidity on my part that is the very recipe for failure.
Speaking of failure, I'm about to attend some godawful HR training for the horrible annual appraisal bullshit. I never even accepted the objectives I was given last winter out of a combination of studied contempt for the process, panic, and willful stupidity on my part that is the very recipe for failure.
Anecdotally, the output from Sphinx can be pretty cryptic.
I have a feeling this training was an output of Sphinx.
If it is, that "recipe for failure" line will become grimly ironic.
It's called the Perf/orm/ance Ma/anag/ement Sy/stem and then uses the acronym.
Dude giving the training has barely intelligible English.
Bet his first instruction was "Please turn off cellphones."
(The apparent lack of sympathy is really HR appraisal training)
Hilarious. We've apparently gone from where 25% of employees in a division can exceed expectations (and this merit the highest level pay increase) to no more than 10%. This comes from on high where the really know how to motivate their workers.
This is such degrading bullshit.
What really matters is what you expect of yourself, Barry.
I have an appraisal tomorrow, but they're pretty reasonable here.
You'd think they'd be able to create a performance appraisal process that doesn't fill one with rage.
Petroleum products are ready to hand.
125 is bs though. Even in call-centre hell the appraisals were reasonable on their own terms, even though the business as a whole was utter shit.
I'm boggling at the 25% to 10% thing. That is so demotivating alone in addition to all the rest of the BS.
Publishing the curve you grade on is a pretty elemental failure.
Obviously the library industry needs an injection if more business-oriented management talent.
As part of the Galactic Empire we come under a larger institution that does this to us.
As part of the Galactic Empire we come under a larger institution that does this to us.
CHOAM audits are the worst.
I just got shot down for a grant that I thought nearly guaranteed to succeed. The reviews were brutal, too. Everyone agreed that the instrument I proposed to develop would be useful and could be made to work with the resources available, but they all somehow managed to damn it with faint praise. Fortunately I'm not dependent on that grant for my salary, but I'm still annoyed and disappointed. It would have been a hell of an instrument, and fun to develop.
If it's that instrument with the glass bowls, Ben Franklin already invented it.
More seriously, if it is like this field, you might just need to send it in again after some small revision. The reviewers might have something they like just as well that has already been submitted before and they know it can't come back again so they mark you down because they figure you can wait for the new round without damage. Especially if they know you have other funding and the other person does not.
Telling the author to delete "the" in 60 places and add it in 60 other places is not the job of the reviewer for the journal, it's the job of the author's colleague who looks over the manuscript before it's submitted.
But all of these (that I'm complaining about) are not violations of any strict grammar rule. They're slight improvements to the musicality of the prose, at best.
136: I'll update, revise, and resubmit at the next call for proposals, but that's not for a while.
We've apparently gone from where 25% of employees in a division can exceed expectations (and this merit the highest level pay increase) to no more than 10%.
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
That was on the sign at a suspicious-looking massage parlor.
Sucks, togolosh. What's your field, if I may ask?
142: Plasma physics. I do diagnostics for a small fusion experiment.
My maintenance guy can put on his CV failure to fix my A.C.. At least I'm going away for the weekend tomorrow morning.
If academic grants don't work, you can probably find a super villain who needs somebody in that area.
143 is awesome. The introduction of a bashful love interest on Star Trek.
65 The best worst thing about solo practice is not having someone correct typos.
Oh, it's just me, myself and I.
Solo write until I die.
143 could only be made more awesome if it can diagnose what's the matter with my AC unit.
I'm sure you can access the Jefferies tube yourself.
149: If we're having a contest, my guess is that the condenser is frozen.
150 I left my tricorder at work.
Have you tried percussive maintenance?
Also, planned power-interruption maintenance?
[i.e. bashing it, then turning it off and and on again]
151 can that happen when it's 100 degrees out?
153: I fixed my Kindle that way. I was very surprised it worked.
And that's why you'll never have a fusion experiment of your own, Barry. No discipline.
And that's why you'll never have a fusion experiment of your own, Barry. No discipline.
154 I would need a ladder to get up in the drop ceiling in the kitchen to reach it.
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I came home spitting mad, and am now happy again. Reprobates are the best.
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I came home spitting mad, and am now happy again. Reprobates are the best.
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I came home spitting mad...
Please introduce yourself at the next HR employee appraisal training.
164: Will you be ok with the appraisal itself, bullshit aside?
If you turned it off and left it, presumably the ice would melt off and the AC unit would become functional again?
To the OP, all the lawyers should list all the cases they've lost (including cases settled disappointingly after losing a ruling).
My mom used to tease my dad about how he didn't get all his clients off the way Perry Mason did. My dad used to respond that if all his clients were innocent, he'd have as good of a record as Perry.
Obviously the library industry needs an injection if more business-oriented management talent.
Thanks to robber baroning, the public library by my office is just a beautiful space. I do sometimes go there just to read even if I'm carrying in what I will be reading.
162 is definitely true. I've benefited from that often, and will probably need to in the near future.
Thanks to social democracy and the Qin dynasty, I'm surrounded by great public libraries full of books I can't even attempt to read.
Why do you hate fast casual reading options, Moby? Did someone not offer to refill your Kindle?
Sometimes I just like to read while sitting near expensive woodwork and old stone construction.
If the condenser froze it's probably because the filter is clogged so there's poor airflow so it ices up.
Like me, Barry chose the Mindless Violence elective over the AC Repair elective in getting his MLS. Right now he may be regretting that, but in the long run mindless violence is always the right choice.
This election is turning us all into bob.
We've always all been bob, it's just the veils of illusion are falling.
165 I hope so. I'm pretty good at much of my job, and even outstanding in a few areas (I scored a few major coups for my section). But I totally suck at this kind of bureaucratic bullshit. And I find it enraging.
175 makes sense. When the maintenance guy got here yesterday and pulled the filters they were completely clogged. They hadn't been changed since sometime before I arrived here about a year ago, also, sandstorms.
I turned the unit off and the maintenance guy is coming in a half hour (only 3 hours after I called when I got home).
That seems to have done the trick, though the guy is coming back to refill it with coolant.
On this final exam, one of the questions is phrased, "Which of the following do not satisfy....? Justify your answers."
The student crossed out "do" and wrote "does". Then their answer is "A, B, and C all don't make sense, but since I have to pick one, I guess I'll go with B?"
Was she right? Mostly about the options not making sense, but also her guess.
183: I tried A, I tried B, tried C, but I can't get no....
I think that story may have enough educational value to be told to future students.
I have a brother and sister who were home schooled. One got a master's and is a bureaucrat in DC, one got an associate's and is an analytical chemist. My sister married a man who was "home schooled" -- his parents kept him home to drive a tractor and gave him zero instruction. That's not good.
Home school parents often don't have career goals for their kids, so only if you end up wanting to be a top PhD will you feel any lack.
At Hawaii's cinco de mayo recital, one of the performances is Gloria Estefan's conga.
188: Even Texans can't distinguish between Mexico and Cuba?
Hawaiis group recited some poetry and danced to La Bamba.
183: Am I correct in inferring that the answer to the question is "A, B and C?"
Yep. They were correct, just confused.
This thread was pretty fun, thanks.
194: as so many others have commented, just wait until June 19th.
Getting a gift-wrapped shirt and tie in the mail with no name signed to the card. So awkward.
179: Are you good enough at the actual work to feed a remora who just does the politicking? And are you good enough at the politicking not to get pithed by the remora?
I'm not an ichthyologist, but do remoras pith other fish?