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Text of the page (random words):
survive and thrive in grad school advice on creativity and scholarship formerly getting things done in academia survive and thrive in grad school advice on creativity and scholarship formerly getting things done in academia home reading lists well how did i get here a new manifesto march 11 2013 every once in a while its good to take a step back look to the horizon and figure out the principles that got you where you are call it a mission statement or what have you when i put together my first webpage in the mid 90 s i wrote a manifesto which is now updated you ll have to check it out to see what went before accompanied by the above photo of me collecting army ants but here is v 2 0 written 17 years later after 17 years it is time to update the manifesto much has changed the beard is now grey the coon hunter s special hooked up to the motorcycle battery has been replaced by a penz with 10 leds and i seriously doubt i could achieve let alone maintain the above posture mind you the old manifesto below is still valid it just needs a little updating if it seems a bit more operational and little less aspirational re read number 1 2 6 are a roadmap toward achieving it 1 change the world why else are we here the world could use some help right now 2 always be finishing something wonderful advice courtesy of dan janzen it is always easier to begin a project than it is to wrestle it from 95 complete to over the finish line 3 quality style content style makes content go down easy content makes it satisfy 4 teaching writing a corollary to 3 writing is not dumping your thought processes onto the page good writing as david foster wallace says is considerate it is empathetic know your audience and write for them 5 become the authority on something the joy and the responsibility of scholarship is in becoming the go to person on something that the world cares about or should care about see 1 6 work is play academia is hard science is hard but where else can you discover something truly new we are the lucky ones we exist in a civilization that values discovery keep the long view and cherish those moments of transcendence 1 comment uncategorized permalink posted by pheidole qotd charlie leduff on the two rules of good journalism february 13 2013 1 get it right 2 don t be boring leave a comment uncategorized tagged writing permalink posted by pheidole the curse of but have you considered february 13 2013 why is academic writing so hard to read and so painful to craft peter elbow nails it no the chaos that bedevils the speech of so many academics takes the form of frequent interruptions in the flow of speech interruptions that come from imperious intrusions into our minds of other thoughts before one sentence is finished we break in with well but that isn t quite it it s really a matter of academics often can t finish one sentence or thought before launching into a related one elections tend to favor those who you know what s interesting here is the way in which political parties just still if you consider how political parties tend to function and so on alternatively we drift into sentence interruptus a phrase is left dangling while we silently muse and we never return to finish it when we academics were in graduate school we were trained to write badly no one put it this way of course because every time we wrote x our teacher always commented but have you considered y don t you see that y completely contradicts what you write here have you considered is the favorite knee jerk response of academics to any idea as a result we learn as students to clog up our writing with added clauses and phrases to keep them from being attacked in a sense a scary sense our syntactic goal is create sentences that take a form something like this x and yet on the other hand y yet nevertheless x in certain respects while at the same time y in other respects and we make the prose lumpier still by inserting references to all the published scholars those who said x those who argued for y those who said x is valid in this sense those who said y is valid in this other sense we breed such a suspicion of anything smacking of generalization that we contort our writing to hedge dissemble and cya this is one reason why i find theoreticians to often be the best writers at least in my field of ecology two small steps toward remediation 1 treat every appearance of the words could should may with deep suspicion 2 when citing focus on the first paper that dealt with the issue the best such example and a recent good paper in the journal you happen to be sending your manuscript to ht andrew sullivan 1 comment uncategorized tagged writing permalink posted by pheidole new word inundata february 12 2013 inundata v i inundata you inundata she inundata d 1 to present and overwhelm with information that fails to address any hypothesis of course darwin was well aware of the phenomenon 1 comment uncategorized permalink posted by pheidole qotd martin vasky on time february 12 2013 i see time as sailors see wind or photographers see light as something to use manage and shape not as something to be a victim of or to see go by link leave a comment uncategorized permalink posted by pheidole happy friday on deconstructing a conspiracy theory january 25 2013 rationality with a slight tinge of snark a lovely snack when served with a frosty beverage leave a comment uncategorized tagged science teaching permalink posted by pheidole one key to writing well editing january 21 2013 emily temple at flavorwire has a nice bloggy style compilation of quotes on an unappreciated part of writing the fine art of editing all are great two are special pithy but true throw up into your typewriter every morning clean up every noon raymond chandler and i love this one the best advice i can give on this is once it s done to put it away until you can read it with new eyes finish the short story print it out then put it in a drawer and write other things when you re ready pick it up and read it as if you ve never read it before if there are things you aren t satisfied with as a reader go in and fix them as a writer that s revision neil gaiman we so desperately want to get a completed manuscript off our desk that we forget that it needs to incubate a bit when we return our ideas have matured and those sentences we loved or tolerated before look atrocious ok i ve procrastinated enough time to start editing that manuscript leave a comment uncategorized tagged writing permalink posted by pheidole creativity s recipe january 21 2013 oliver burkman has a lovely short essay on the best practices for fostering innovation it just rings true to me the crux the key to a solution lies in how you state the problem you need to strip it of context and colour more technically mccaffrey argues you need to reduce it to a specific form verb noun phrase prepositional phrases what the ski firm really needed to do was to reduce vibrations over 1 800 hertz from there it s an easier leap from one domain to another similar vibrations it turns out play havoc with violins causing sound distortion violin designers address this by using a metal grid the ski designers finding the analogy adapted it problem solved so the recipe for doing something creative is as simple as creativity 1 state the problem in its most basic explicit terms 2 stare at that statement and looking for analogies to problems in other fields apply the solution logic in those other fields to your problem rinse repeat note that 1 and 2 call on different skill sets the first is that of the logician who also knows her system well enough to grok its essential parts it s really essential parts barbara mcclintock captured this in the dictum know your organism the second is that of the broadly read intensely curious generalist focus on one to the exclusion of the other and you risk becoming the 1 drudge who only publishes in specialty journals where you are a star of your niche group or 2 the flighty person with a thousand ideas but no publications it s hard often frustrating work trying to balance the intense understanding of one system while keeping up with issues of science and nature but when you discover that the template of one field of inquiry overlays your problem in an eerily satisfying way you can almost feel ole leonardo looking over your shoulder and smiling leave a comment creativity uncategorized permalink posted by pheidole good writing is considerate january 13 2013 utilize a noxious puff word since it does nothing that good old use doesn t do its extra letters and syllables don t make a writer seem smarter rather using utilize makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she ll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated the same is true for the noun utilization for vehicle as used for car for residence as used for house for presently at present at this time and at the present time as used for now and so on what s worth remembering about puff words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads formal writing does not mean gratuitously fancy writing it means clean clear maximally considerate writing from both flesh and not essays by david foster wallace leave a comment uncategorized tagged writing permalink posted by pheidole your academic elevator speech august 20 2012 as a new grad student or an older grad student in a new venue like a national meeting you need to meet people science after all is a social enterprise in which you exchange ideas review other peoples work collaborate on experiments and work together on often tedious but necessary committees getting to know the folks in your field and getting them to know you is an under appreciated part of the process a second under appreciated part of the sci biz is the importance of the first impression it is a truism that first impressions matter that the first experience with another person sticks in your brain and colors your opinion and expectations research by bertran gawronski at u western ontario suggests that subsequent impressions that conflict with the first one tend to be explained away as one off phenomena exceptions to what that person is really like good or bad so if a basic part of science is building networks of colleagues and first impressions matter it is key to be prepared for the inevitable encounter with folks you want to get to know as silly as it sounds it is important to craft memorize and practice your academic elevator speech named for the amount of time you have between recognizing someone who is a captive audience and the time before the elevator doors open again here s what you should look for in an elevator speech read the rest of this entry 7 comments uncategorized permalink posted by pheidole previous entries dr mike kaspari is director of the graduate program in ecology and evolutionary biology at the university of oklahoma when he is not teaching he studies the evolutionary ecology of ants and the brown food web this blog is dedicated to exploring the strategies and tactics of the academic life search top posts a new manifesto qotd charlie leduff on the two rules of good journalism the curse of but have you considered new word inundata qotd martin vasky on time happy friday on deconstructing a conspiracy theory one key to writing well editing creativity s recipe good writing is considerate your academic elevator speech recent posts a new manifesto qotd charlie leduff on the two rules of good journalism the curse of but have you considered new word inundata qotd martin vasky on time june 2026 m t w t f s s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 mar categories ants beauty biodiversity brown food webs collaborations creativity design evolutionary biology fieldwork grad school grants gtd hardware information life management presentations procrastination reading research scaling science software teaching time management tropical forests uncategorized visual explanations writing blogroll 43 folders 43 folders wiki copyblogger drawing the motmot lifehacker presentation zen creativity drawing the motmot design drawing the motmot presentation zen grad school eeb at ou ray huey s less cynical guide to grad school steven stearn s guide to grad school life management 43 folders 43 folders wiki lifehacker ray huey s less cynical guide to grad school steven stearn s guide to grad school presentations presentation zen time management 43 folders 43 folders wiki lifehacker writing copyblogger archives march 2013 february 2013 january 2013 august 2012 december 2011 november 2011 october 2011 september 2011 august 2011 may 2009 september 2008 august 2008 july 2008 june 2008 may 2008 march 2008 february 2008 january 2008 december 2007 november 2007 october 2007 september 2007 august 2007 may 2007 march 2007 february 2007 january 2007 december 2006 pages reading lists 267 no title 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