RBOC Grading Jail Edition

• So I had two very interesting lunches this week with colleagues that I'll get around to blogging.. hmm over the weekend maybe. I want to process what I think happened at each one.

• My 3rd year review apparently went well. I won't know this for sure until next week either.

• I made an announcement today about professionalism in email because I had two different students flip out in email at me in the last week over VERY MINOR grade issues (along the lines of I don't even know why this was assigned anyway, but the grading was totally unfair and I absolutely can't imagine what you or the TA was thinking etc. etc.), two emails from random addresses with no name, and one that used IM abbreviations so much I couldn't figure out what they meant without googling the abbreviations. So get this, one of the students realized I was refering to her and apologized! Wow!

• I am in grading jail. I gave an exam last wed and promised students to return the exams in labs Thurs & Fri. I have graded 62 of 80 papers. I have to finish by 1:30 tomorrow. I can, but I don't want to.
  

• I can't tell you some of the funniest things from the exams without revealing field. But students are really funny when they don't know the answer and brain dump onto the page. Oh, I can tell one... We illicited things from subjects in our experiment....

• My grade distribution is currently 9 A, 20 B, 9 C, 14 D, 12 F. I expect most of the next 20 will end up in the B/D range from skimming short answer responses. Clearly the test was way freaking hard. Usually the distribution is more like 20 A, 20 B, 15C, misc D/F. If I curve so that the highest student get a perfect score, the distribution is: 19 A, 13 B, 14 C, 8 D, 5 F. Do I curve? For what it's worth the D students really didn't get it, but clearly many of them were almost C students and many of the B students were almost A students.
  

• I provide lots of small participation type grades on which students typically get perfect scores (a for effort and all that). Does that change your answer to curving?
  

Being Programmatic II

So I described my change in my own research direction following my doctoral program here... And I also got involved in student projects that, while ultimately productive and good for my publication rate (and interesting), also dilute my programmatic focus. So, with the grant I submitted unscored, I'm now in a position to really seriously evaluate whether this is a direction I want to continue in now. If the grant had been scored high or funded I would have continued this path because, well, the grant was funded...

so what are my options now?

1) The simple and obvious one is wait for feedback on the grant. Revise and Resubmit. No serious change in focus. Keep plugging away at the role of tagging in knowledge organization both in libraries and elsewhere since that is where my interest lies and what I think is most interesting (particularly the connections between libraries and elsewhere).
Pros: I want to be doing this work. I've already gotten feedback once and am getting feedback again on it. I have pilot data and stimuli created and ready to go for the proposed projects. I just need the funds to carry things out on the proper scale to find results. I should have a submitted publication on tagging within libraries by the time I resubmit the grant. And hopefully solid pilot data on tagging in other contexts as pilot data with a large N.
Cons: It got a very low score the first time and wasn't talked about this time. So either the reviewers think the work has a fatal flaw, or they don't like the theoretical framing, or they think it is overambitious. Not being scored is a big clue that it's time to rethink.

2) Narrow down and only focus on tagging in libraries. I'll have to think hard about how to improve my stimuli and frame my questions here so that it is effective. And it means giving up a piece of the theoretical stuff. It still allows me to set up for later projects with this grant and it still means continuing down this changed direction stuff. I don't know if it's sufficiently different that it restarts the clock on number of submissions I have available. If I narrow so considerably, but get rejected AND it uses up my last submission I'm not sure what I'll do. I think in many ways this depends on what the reviews say - which part they thought was particularly weak and which were most salvageable.
Pros: I will soon have a publication in this area. I have pilot data for a spin off. There are really an infinite number of spin offs available to me. I think it's a theoretically plausible direction. I can make a stronger case for applied relevance. I think it will require an extremely large number of participants to be interesting though and so I'm a bit worried about it as a topic by itself.
Cons: I miss the whole connection with non-library areas. This is the most difficult part of the grant, but it's a longstanding interest. I did a paper on this as part of my comps in my phd program and then let the topic go on the advice of my dissertation direction. It narrows the possible future directions pretty dramatically. Lower risk and lower impact. I'm not sure if I can do this quickly enough to have publications out in sufficient number within this topic so that I am programmatic enough for tenure.

3) Return to my original dewey decimal studies. I'll look more programmatic with just a year or two off doing something else. There is plenty to be studied systematically here. I can keep doing variations on the theme, and I can see a clear line of research to be done here.
Pros: I have a clear track record here. There is an applied need for a more full understanding of how this system of classification works with different library patrons. And the group of patrons I specialize in are particularly understudied. I could put together a grant that would be competitive fairly easily I think.
Cons: I'd be starting the grant from scratch. I don't think I'd get funded on the first try but possibly. Really I'm resisting this because I don't really think this is a plausible direction for organization in the future. And I don't know how to ground the work with my population of patrons within the new framework to make it look like I'm not switching gears.

Being Programmatic

So I got some pretty bad news about my grant submission last week. The grant was unscored. That means the reviewers deem it to be in the bottom 50% of the grants that they read. It doesn't get talked about. I just get critiques from the reviewers. But since the reviewers view the grant as unfundable, the critiques may be very short and not fully developed and thus hard to respond to. I get one more shot with this idea for this funding agency. So I have to think carefully about going back in with this submission in order to maximize my chances.

As I talk and think about this I think some history is relevant. I did my dissertation with Big Name Gracious Scholar. It was a fantastic experience. He studies the details of the Dewey Decimal system and dabbles in other approaches to card cataloging. But it's safe to say that most of his research is grounded in traditional approaches to card cataloging. My dissertation focused on similar issues but at a slightly more global level - say organization within the whole library rather than organization within a subject area.

Then I took this job. I industriously published my dissertation data and 1 reanalysis of that data. I started a followup study which took about 18 mos in data collection and the analysis/write up is just finishing up. It has the potential for 2 more re-analyses of the extant data (1-2 publications depending...). In the first semester I did a round of readings with 3 students on nontraditional approaches to cataloging. I'm not talking about selecting just a different flavor of organization, but radically different approaches to the whole problem of knowledge organization and retreival. Say instead of an externally imposed organizational system like the Dewey Decimal system, instead a self-organizing system like tagging and ranking of items by users. Presumably over time and with a large number of users you still end up with subject based groups of books and other items. Ultimately you still have a well organized library, but how you come up with the groupings is radically different. And I learned alot.

Out of that, I started three tangential student projects - one on font styles and readability and one contrasting the Dewey Decimal system (external organization) with user tagging as an organizational method(self-organization) and one examining how people come to learn whatever system is in place grounded in the self-organization approach. The compare and contrast project turned into a dissertation I'm co-advising that is moving very slowly (and not likely to be published before I come up for tenure). The font styles one is under review now and the training study is in the final stages of data collection.

In addition I was exposed extensively in a variety of contexts to self-organizing approaches to solving a related problem - say font selection in publishing or coming up with meaningful book titles. And I started thinking about nontraditional approaches to card cataloging. Most of this exposure wasn't directly through things that apply to card cataloguing though. But some people say that the problem of meaningful book names really isn't that different than the problem of organizing books into meaningful retrievable units. And if that's true than my intellectual community isn't as isolated as it feels right now.

But here's the problem. Technically I'm the card catalog person on faculty. And I currently have 2 publications and 1 under review on the dewey decimal system. But I also have 1 publication on the interface between fonts and the classification in the dewey decimal system. And 1 publication on fonts under review. And potentially 1 publication soon on learning to use tags for both book titles and books. And eventually 1-2 publications contrasting these two approaches. And a grant in, that has just be soundly rejected, looking at tagging both in card cataloging and in other knowledge systems not found in libraries - say in the phone system or something very unrelated.

I'm a bit afraid that I look unprogrammatic right now. I think I can right that by tenure time, but I think I'll have to pick an area and get focused soon....

And this has turned into a terribly long post, so I'll write more about what I think my options might be tomorrow.

Freaking Out

So I was under the impression that my major grant was not going to be reviewed until mid-end March. I was just clicking around on Major National Funding Agency's website and discovered that it is actually going to be reviewed tomorrow. At 1pm ET.

The grant is a revision. Of the original review panel exactly 1 person remains on the roster. And he has to recuse himself due to conflict. Good? or Bad?

And my 3rd year review is next week. Do I call the grant officer and see if I can get my scores early? So that they are in for my review? Or is that not done? (It would be a real coup if I have a fundable score on a grant this size by year 3. But it would certainly cast a pall on things if it gets ANOTHER low score). Do I ask, but only tell if it's positive?

I'm very good at faking coolness about these sorts of abstract decisions that are out of my hands. I'm even good at actually feeling cool about it when it is 3-6 months away and I don't know who is on the review panel. So not cool now. Feeling total stomach butterflies.

How much do we give up?

The conversation about how difficult it can be to be in academia is making the rounds.

What Now talks about the identity she has as a tenured professor and how she isn't ready to give that up. From there I ended up at Squadratomagico and Highly Magnified, Thoroughly Educated (who actually began the conversation) talking about how being a professor actually can cause you to lose various identities because the work becomes all consuming. So I started thinking about what have I given up to be where I am.

I'm a single woman. Have I given up romantic relationships to be here? Perhaps... But I am not sure they were healthy relationships to start with. Certainly, my desire to date someone who shares my faith and my own quirks interfere at least as much as my job does.

I live far (1500+miles) from my family and see them only a few times a year. Have I given up ties to my family to be here? Yes, I think so - I would certainly visit my new nephew more often if I could drive rather than fly. But maybe not because I can fly fairly inexpensively. And in some ways my career allows me more flexibility to be with family - I was there when my grand mother died and when my aunt was in a coma precisely BECAUSE I work an academic job and could take significant time off as long as it didn't interfere with teaching duties.

What about hobbies? outside interests? I think that I have those. If I worked in a less demanding job I might have more. But I also would probably like my job less.

And then I found this post by propter doc that echoes my own sense more closely I think.

Ranier Marie Rilke writes:

I know your profession is hard and full of contradiction of yourself....I can only ask you to consider whether all professions are not like that, full of demands, full of enmity against the individual, saturated as it were with the hatred of those who have found themselves mute and sullen in a humdrum duty. The situation in which you now have to live is no more heavily laden with conventions, prejudices,and mistakes than all the other situations, and if there are some that feign a greater freedom, still there is none that is itself broad and spacious and in contact with the big things of which real living consists. Only the individual who is solitary is like a thing placed under profound laws and when he goes out into the morning that is just beginning or looks out into the evenings that is full of happening and if feels what is going on there then all status* drops from him as from a dead man though he stands in the midst of sheer life.

I don't see that the trade-offs I'm making are unbearable. And I'm not sure that they would be any different if I worked at any other job that I loved (because any job that I loved would challenge me and that challenge would play out in ways that mean less free time and more job focus). Being a medical doctor or a pastor or a translator or a foreign aid worker are all jobs I would consider seriously or have considered in the past. They all make specific demands and place requirements of one sort another on a person that can be inconvenient. In the meantime, I know these inconveniences. Distance. Mentally consuming. Status driven*. And I think I like the devil I know better than the devil I don't know.

*Maybe the thing I fear the most is becoming hungry for the status academia confers. But that's another post.

What makes a good dissertation advisor?

I saw this question here and I think it was sparked by the problems Anastasia is having*.

Now, I've got my own experience as a student and the observations of the students who surrounded me at the time to inform my idea of what it means to be a good dissertation director. And since I've been a new asst. professor, I've been in a co-advisor situation with 1 student (which has made me swear off co-advising) and a mentor to two more students whose primary advisor is the same advisor as student 1. Oh, and 1 masters student who abandoned his/her thesis. But I haven't yet supervised a dissertation myself all alone. For the last two years I've been looking for a student to take on, but we haven't had a qualified applicant interested in my subject area. So with that caveat, the question rests on my mind - what makes a good dissertation advisor. And how do I be that person?

The best summary I've seen of different traits is located here. For those not able to go beyond the fire wall it is an article by Nature on Mentoring based on interviews with Mentors. Someone on another blog referred to it in the comments and I read it and I think it is fantastic. Beyond those things that the describe (fostering a professional and scientific community, understanding a continuum of hands on and hands off ness... etc), I think fit with a mentor is important. Someone may be a fantastic mentor to you and a crummy mentor to someone else. And vice versa. So what makes for a good fit?

Similar (but not identical) interests - This seems obvious, but it's much easier to work closely and collaborate with someone on research if the questions they are pursuing are INTERESTING to you. Not necessarily exactly what you do. In fact if they only overlap partially with you, I think it might be easier to establish independence, have a clear distinction between dissertation and previous/collaborative projects, and so forth. If there is no overlap though, it means that it will be hard for the advisor to be up to speed on key points and methods, there will be no way for the advisor to see missing seminal articles or major ideas in the lit review. And it means that the advisor might or might not be as interested in getting things out the door to publication. Working on a close project is more likely to make you a priority and get attention from a busy and distracted advisor.

Resources - Do they have funding? Can they help you find funding? Do they have the time to read and attend to your work? Do they have the emotional resources to be rational about critiques? Can they help you attend conferences? Do they have social captial to introduce you around?

Working style - If they are punctual and you are last minute or you are detail oriented and they are big picture or you are disorganized and they are a neat freak, you will have a harder time. Do they prefer to have so many projects going that they can't keep up? Or do they have myopic focus on a single project to the exclusion of all other ideas and perspectives? Do they prioritize fairness? harmony? safety? rule-following? Do their priorities match or at least complement yours? Your advisor will not be your twin. People with different styles can muddle along. But radically different priorities and styles in the workplace will lead to a much more difficult time all around.

Communication style - I made this be a separate one because I think that clear expectations and communication about what to expect is important. I, for instance, tend to be very direct and blunt in my comments. I can be extremely critical. I'm also effusive in my praise. If you need a warm nurturing person to be your advisor you might do better with someone else. On the other hand, if I had an advisor who sugar coated things; who was less than direct, that person would totally lose my trust. Communication in terms of deadlines, writing critiquing, and verbal organization in meetings can all be important. How do they foster your ideas as you work with them? How do they respond when they see that a mistake has been made? For me this included prompt, precise, clear feedback. Decisiveness. Freedom to work independently until I needed assistance and then as much help as I asked for.

Concern for the whole person - Do they have a life outside of work? Do they understand and respect your own non-doctoral program commitments? Do they demonstrate that they have compassion for family circumstances and personal crises in addition to professional deadlines and development? Training can be all consuming. Both a model for and permission to have a life is good.

Professionalism - I'm not sure if this is distinct from communication style but I think recognizing that this is a professional environment with professional expectations is key. It encompasses a variety of things for me. There will be boundaries between me as a faculty and you as a student. Respect. Show up for meetings. Work hard. No yelling at people. No harrassment. Concern for the whole person doesn't mean I'm going to be your counselor or best friend.

In your best interests - It's best to be working with someone who you believe is looking out for your best interests at all times. There may be times when your best interest isn't clear or when your best interest is wrapped up in things that are also your advisor's best interest (e.g. getting a grant that will fund both you and your advisor), but if you don't have this trust, it will be a long hard slog. One thing I truly valued about my advisor was that whatever recommendation he made for me (from jobs to projects, to writing advice) he was always trying to help me be the best scientist I could be in all ways. Even if he was wrong, the fact that I could trust his motives was a tremendous boost to dealing with the situation. For me this also included an understanding that this person would hold me to high expectations. For others it might mean they will work to get you through as quickly as possible to accommodate a child being born or a spouse moving on or assist with flexible timing of deadlines to allow for a combination of work and school or need to travel to care for family needs.
I should be quick to point out here that many people don't deserve such trust for many reasons. I am not advocating blind trust. But entering into a relationship where you know trust is lacking seems crazy to me. Some are truly selfish and self-centered and willing to throw the student under the bus to save themselves; some are unaware, clueless about others and not interested in their students' welfare; some are not in a place at the moment - for whatever
personal or professional reason - to place the student first in priority.

*This is emphatically not a comment on Anastasia's situation - more my own reflection on my own situation.

Over Stimulated? Over scheduled!

This week I met with 2 job candidates (who were both fantastic), went to 1 prospectus defense (also wonderful), had 2 conference calls (both very productive), advised two students about jobs and conference papers, taught twice (and was snowed out once), observed my TA teach once (she's awesome), went to a business meeting for an interdisciplinary group on campus (amazingly on topic for this group), ran lab meeting, attended 1 faculty meeting, spent Tuesday night on the phone with various people gushing about election results, attended our departmental colloquium (guest speaker, yeah!), helped see 1 subject (3 more canceled due to snow), met with an RA to design stimuli for a new project. And a few more things, I'm sure. The key point is I spent no time alone or in my office from 8-5 most days this week excepting office hours.

This is an unusually scheduled week for me. And on top of being heavily scheduled, it was very people oriented. Everything went really well. Everyone seemed mostly on the ball. But I came out of it feeling just a slight bit done with talking to people. Usually I get together with people tonight and I ended up declining. I have no special plans for this weekend (until church on Sun morning and small group Sun night). I'm tempted to attend a different church on Sunday just so that I can really not talk to anyone until Sun night (I won't for a variety of reasons, but it's tempting!).


Next week I am promising myself that Tuesday midday and Thursday all day are remaining free for ME time. (ME time = research writing projects, data analysis, and non-other-people-meetings).

I really am an introvert.

Overwhelmed

Here's what my weekend was like:
Saturday
7:30 wake up
9-10 prep for RA training
10-1 RA training
1-1:30 chat with doc student/clean up
1:30 beautiful day so come home and walk my dog for an hour. Take pictures that I can't seem to post on Blogger for who knows why
3:00 shower, smidge of house work
4:00 pick up dinner, go back to work to finalize syllabus & lecture
8:30 come home, laundry, futz on computer, pack bag for tomorrow
11:00ish bed

3:30 am - my dog is barking (at ???)

Sunday
6:30 get up & dress
7:30 meet church person
8:30 church
9:45 kayak lessons til 12:30
1:00 shower/eat/email/nap til 3:00
3:00-4:00 dress/laundry/dog walking
4:00-6:00 pick up dinner, go back to work & code data for phone conf. tomorrow
6:00-7:00 still at work/prep for bible study
7:00-9:45 bible study
10:00 home (laundry, blogging)

One thing I know about myself is that I need a day of rest in order to go into the week feeling good. Even though some of the stuff this weekend was all about me (kayaking), I feel like I was a bit over scheduled. I certainly could have been more efficient about some things (not napping as long, bed earlier on Sat.) But I do know myself well enough to know that sleep is critical to my mental functioning. And I feel as if I put in nearly a day and a half's worth of work this weekend. Ordinarily working this hard on the weekend would compute to taking a half day off next week just to catch up on life & to make my dog feel loved. But here's what is still left to do (tomorrow):

Read student's attempts at responding to reviews (meeting with student at 2:30)
Code 2 more kids' data (before conference call at 11)
Within that, I Lecture in Class 1 (written, just need to do it) at 10
Lecture in Class 2 (written, but need to review/prepare) at 3:30
Have office hours from 1:30-2:30.
Wash last week's dishes
Fold (now clean) laundry
Grocery shop
Walk my dog

The rest of the week looks similar - wrap up house details, first round of job candidates, starting a new task with new RAs, supervising doctoral student's new RAs while he is off interviewing. I usually gaurd my time well, but this is a bit overwhelming.

The definition of an introvert

So a friend and I were talking about the Myers-Briggs Personality scales. I'm skeptical of my own performance on all test things like this because I know to much about test design. Nonetheless I consistently score IN+two other letters (either TJ or FJ or TP - never FP) depending on my mood while taking the test. Does that mean I'm really INTJ? Anyway....I was complaining about how what I want to do and what I've learned to do are different and so I didn't know how to answer the questions... This friend said that he think of the Introvert/Extrovert distinction as a measure of where you get your energy. If you come away from large group events energized and revved up you are an E. If you come away exhausted and get your energy from one on one or individual activities you are an I.

Well, if there was any doubt, I know at the end of a teaching day that I am an Introvert. I am exhausted. It's not the mental exercise involved in prep. It's not that there were problems. It's that I am worn out by the performance aspect of it. I think this makes me a mediocre teacher because I don't really enjoy the part about standing in front of 100 students and talking. It's not stage fright exactly. Well, maybe sort of. I wish I knew how to overcome it though and really get into the acting part. I wish I liked talking at a room full of people.

Anyway, the semester is truly under way. And I'm exhausted on Day 2.

Pride/Insecurity III

This is the third post out of a series. The first and second can be found here.
So I'm up for third year review this year. Which means putting together all of my materials so that others can judge whether I am on track or not. I think this is a pass/fail event with a low bar (as opposed to tenure which is a pass/fail event with a high bar). Even so, the fact that this is tied to contract renewal and review of my record outside of my dept. makes me more nervous than usual about these reviews (we're reviewed annually as untenured professors).

Although I'm pretty sanguine about the review process in terms of journal articles and grants*, I really hate being judged and evaluated at this level. Like Bright Star, I think that my insecurities surrounding this process perhaps push me too far into self-focus mode. One piece of a conversation I had with another junior faculty member is a discomfort with the truthfulness of the feedback we get. It's one thing to get positive or negative feedback that then you can use to improve for next year. It's another thing though when you go through this process and seriously question whether people are telling you the truth about the areas you need to work on.

Another asst. professor thinks she's receiving consistently positive feedback. But this doesn't always match what I hear in the department scuttlebutt. So this serves to make me question my own feedback. Did they REALLY tell me where I need to work on? Or are they keeping things from me? It doesn't seem in the department's best interest to spring something on me three year hence, but at the same time, it's awkward to criticize someone you work with on a regular basis.

The review process feels like a decision about whether I am successful as a professor. In truth, I am willing to work so hard for this job and no harder. If they don't like what I'm doing then I'll go find something else to do or at least go do what I'm doing here somewhere else. If I'm not successful here under these circumstances, I'll find a way to be successful elsewhere. Is that reliance on my own self? Is that pride? Is that self-centeredness?

* I feel like I clearly pass the low bar of contract renewal. I'm not as confident about the higher bar of tenure, but I guess that's why I have 2.5 more years to get there.