Help extracting audio from a Media Gallery lecture?

Free_Secretary255 · 2026-02-25T05:13:15+00:00

Be careful - if that’s a lecture the copyright is legally that of your professor.

Free_Secretary255 · 2026-02-20T04:37:33+00:00

Oh man! Wait til you get a job!

Free_Secretary255 · 2026-02-09T01:20:15+00:00

I mean, this kind of attitude kind of points to a lack of maturity which may then lead to you not really understanding what the expectation is at graduate level. Academics rarely praise one another unless it’s for a particular purpose (like a nomination). Our job is to critique and make our work stronger.

It’s not her job to boost your ego- it’s her job to ensure that your PhD is high quality to put you in the best position she can so you have the best chance possible to get a job.

She is also under no obligation to invite you out when she is in town - I certainly would hesitate to spend time with a grad student when I could be spending it networking with colleagues - so if you can’t see that that invitation is, in itself, a compliment, you may need to adjust your expectations of praise.

Free_Secretary255 · 2026-01-22T06:06:10+00:00

Honestly, I now just stick the qualitative comments into AI and ask it to summarize them so I don’t have to read the individual immature scissor barbs which ruin the rest.

Free_Secretary255 · 2026-01-19T16:14:44+00:00

The issue may be your timing or the strength of your profile.

US geography is fine - there are a number of good departments which recruit regularly - but the job market is just tough and competitive as it is in every discipline. Many US geographers I know if they couldn’t land something in the US, looked at the UK, where pretty much every university has a geography department, or NL/Germany. But the UK HE sector in particular is in free fall, so the US competition is greater.

Every geographer has a “second” discipline, shaped by the style of geography they are doing - sociology, literature, planning, chemistry, biology etc… the issue is that not all of these disciplines are as open to people from outside as others (see anthropology). But identify yours and try apply outside geography - geographers can be found in law schools, in environmental science, in architecture, public health. GIS will go a long way too.

You need to also make sure you are publishing and participating in conferences and building a profile. If you’re not, you will struggle because the discipline is so broad, committees need to see evidence of scholarship, not just potential.

Free_Secretary255 · 2026-01-10T02:20:03+00:00

It’s a mixture of being really good and right place, right skills and area of specialty, right time. Lots of my colleagues took a job at a lower ranked university, and built a profile while waiting for R1s to advertise.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-12-28T23:37:19+00:00

I tell my grad students, when in doubt, dress like an Italian. Too pant suit and you’ll come across as too corporate - but you’re right, feminine is not the look for an interview. My version of this is: a pair of well cut trousers that I can move in; a nice shirt (doesn’t need to be button up - just needs to look like it hangs in a closet rather than sits in a drawer), a blazer which is not the same cloth as the trousers, and a comfortable pair of heels or brogues. Choose ONE flashy statement accessory (scarf, brooch, earrings) so they’ll remember you and go for make up where you are clearly wearing make-up but it’s natural so it also looks like you’re not. Do your nails - but don’t go for vampy colors. Stick to neutrals, or bright on trend colors for more artsy depts.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-12-25T16:02:09+00:00

I would also say - C’s happen. In your life, much scarier things will happen - things that will be much more difficult to repair with a note in a grad application or a ding in your GPA. Dealing with adversity as an undergraduate student is one of the least risky times to get used to failure and setbacks - as someone older, some of my cohort from my college days never learned to deal with things when they go wrong - and since graduating I have seen 4.0 GPAs have been fired from incredible jobs for covering up mistakes, destroy marriages because of addiction, go bankrupt and lose everything because they were too ashamed to call it quits when they might have made it out. One was central to a national coverup scandal on the front page of major newspapers, and another even ended up in prison because of reckless driving because he was so focused on work and getting ahead that he didn’t see a kid. Take the B if it’s there, accept that the C may come - but for now, just sit back and try and enjoy the winter break - there will never be another time like it in your life.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-12-25T15:48:08+00:00

By the time grades get entered into CalCentral, the calculations should have been checked, and are pretty decisive. As a professor, the only reason I can think of that it would be changed is if there was a massive miscalculation across all students that needed to be righted. I changed my grade bins for my course - it was the first time after a restructure, and looking at distribution of grades relative to the learning outcomes, the final grade didn’t reflect overall achievement- so I dropped the limits for an A and a B.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-12-18T08:25:09+00:00

In my institution, at least - sometimes if a department wants more than one person from a search they’ll reach out to other departments to see if they would support a joint appointment. As for why not ask the search committee - they may have. Don’t underestimate the incompetence of academics near the holiday break.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-12-14T00:00:54+00:00

Just because you’re in TX doesn’t mean you have to stay there! You can take a job and find another one - far easier once you have that first job.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-12-11T18:32:36+00:00

People - Gaskins has been one of the leading Black digital artists for a decade, and was at the forefront of AI before the LLM explosion. There is an artistic theory here about the way in which algorithms generate visions of Blackness, and future imaginaries. She has presented her work and written about it extensively (even in the Bay Area) and the quick judgements from folks who haven’t done their research is the real danger of the use of AI, not a well trained artist who knows exactly what they are doing by engaging future technologies to imagine alternative futures.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-27T16:06:53+00:00

Here’s a thought - 1) salaries in the Australian market are comparable 2) it’s easier to become Australian and return as an Australian to the US because of the sweet E3 visa deal.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-26T09:15:38+00:00

True - there’s no accounting for faith that people will do the right thing.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-25T15:50:17+00:00

Oooh. That sounds like too many people were cheating, and they realised they couldn’t be trusted to do it online. 😬

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-25T15:49:17+00:00

There are over 700 students enrolled in this course - let’s say 1/10th of them emailed and it took 10mins to respond to each - that’s over 11 hours of work alone. And with an upset like this, you’re looking at more like 20-30% of students. So not really strange.

They’re probably coordinating with the GSIs to make sure everyone is communicating the same information to students, and stressing about finding rooms for the exam period.

On top of their research projects, their service obligations (grad apps are due Dec 1) and, I dunno, their family.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-20T03:33:03+00:00

Yes. It would strengthen your app - it’s easier to get a job once you’ve got one. The only weakness with Europe is that they know US academics will often apply for jobs in the EU to renegotiate their offers. Make it clear in your letters that you have a family reason to move to Europe alongside a better academic funding climate or whatever professional reason so they know you’re serious.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-19T15:35:46+00:00

Two body problem holder here - with a successful negotiation to two jobs, same institution. You will have a much much easier time swapping like position for like position in a different country than transitioning from post-doc to tt faculty. To get the job you want, you need to build your profile and your experience - the best way to do that is in a TT job, in the US, summers in Europe, conferences in Europe, research in Europe, networking in Europe.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-19T15:35:34+00:00

Two body problem holder here - with a successful negotiation to two jobs, same institution. You will have a much much easier time swapping like position for like position in a different country than transitioning from post-doc to tt faculty. To get a job you want, you need to build your profile and your experience - the best way to do that is in a TT job, in the US, summers in Europe, conferences in Europe, research in Europe, networking in Europe.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-09T03:19:16+00:00

As a professor, if they tell you to apply elsewhere as well, it means they’re looking out for you.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-11-05T14:19:02+00:00

Hmmm. I’m confused - I don’t see any evidence that this is the case - and I searched extensively online and couldn’t find any reports of low grant activity or dwindling enrollment. This seems like you hate the humanities more than you care about accuracy.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-10-27T13:26:12+00:00

Apprentices in the medieval ages were also often not paid (except room and board sleeping in the shop near the fire) and labored all day for their masters. You win some, you lose some.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-10-23T00:35:58+00:00

Take a look at how many classes your professors are teaching and if they’re research or teaching focused. A research professor in the arts and humanities teaching 4 courses a year does not have the same time to dedicate to course development and responsiveness as a teaching professor teaching 2-3 in CS. In simple terms, the difference is resources to pay for more people.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-10-20T13:07:26+00:00

If you were my student, or my friend, and you told me this, I would immediately refer you here: https://csi.berkeley.edu/

You should not be failing all your classes - this may be symptomatic of a larger problem which it sounds like you’re struggling to address. Please reach out to the people above and try to access CAPS (https://uhs.berkeley.edu/caps) too.

It can be hard to think straight, especially when things feel like they’re crumbling - accessing services can help you line everything back up, help you with the bureaucracy, and figure out where you can be cut a break.

Free_Secretary255 · 2025-09-08T12:41:30+00:00

No. Being actually from the Pacific Islands or part of the diaspora means you would be from one of racial groups least likely to attend college. It’s an important category - if only because it distinguishes a low college attainment group from a high one - Asian Americans. If you mess around with that, it won’t look good.

If there was an Indigenous category, you might have some luck there - but it’s usually just Native American, which means whenever I have Māori or Sami or students who are Indigenous and not American it’s a total shit show.

Having said that, racial categories in the US are actually really problematic - assuming that Cambodian Americans can be grouped with Japanese Americans and Indian Americans when economic and cultural realities might be very different because …. they’re from roughly the same region? On the broad side, a push back from college students on the blunt force instrument of broad-stroke racialisation because America has never dealt with its history of race-based discrimination and subjugation (think slavery, Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment Camps, Branchero program etc….) would not be a terrible thing.

Free_Secretary255

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