Monthly Archive: September 2016

Advice for new postdocs

In case you missed it, last week was National Postdoc Appreciation Week. I almost missed it, but Harvard conveniently put up a huge banner and offered us a bit of free food (Super yummy Mexican food this year!) Good food = appreciation? Sure, why not. September seems to be a common time for new postdocs …

Continue reading »

Permanent link to this article: http://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/09/28/advice-for-new-postdocs/

Avoid using the words “student” and “school” outside of academia

Many, if not most, ecology PhD graduates will go on to jobs outside of academia. One particular area needing improvement in most (all?) graduate departments is on teaching trainees how to market themselves outside of academia. CVs are non-starters outside of academia and resumes are very different beasts. In crafting a resume, you need to …

Continue reading »

Permanent link to this article: http://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/09/21/avoid-using-the-words-student-and-school-outside-of-academia/

The thing that pushed me to post a preprint

I have mixed feelings about preprints. On one hand, I like the fact that they allow for the exchange of ideas on pace with the rate that science happens. On the other hand, in ecology, the concept is preprints is all muddled. In the fields where preprints originated and are now standard practice (physics, math, …

Continue reading »

Permanent link to this article: http://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/09/14/the-thing-that-pushed-me-to-post-a-preprint/

The Modern Grad Student Paradox

I was sitting in the audience during the discussion of the Hacking Ecology 2.0 Ignite session at ESA this year and Josie Simonis, who was on the panel, said something that really resonated with the grad students in the audience and on Twitter. They said that graduate students face a real paradox: grad students need to …

Continue reading »

Permanent link to this article: http://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/09/07/the-modern-grad-student-paradox/