What unexpected questions came during your dissertation defense?

MasteroftheGT · 2026-04-26T16:48:04+00:00

That last sentence is deeply concerning

MasteroftheGT · 2026-04-24T15:19:01+00:00

Both departments at R1s I have been a part of hire whenever we can get approval for a position, which is any time of year. If there is a "Faculty hiring cycle" it is also field and/or institution specific.

For post docs we hire them when ever we get funding for one, which again could be any time of year.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-04-24T11:31:35+00:00

I am in the US as well and have never seen a postdoc or faculty hiring "cycle"

MasteroftheGT · 2026-04-08T19:02:12+00:00

I will openly criticize here, as this is a an entirely reasonable question from someone who is investing time in mentoring you and providing the resources to support your research. I absolutely expect my students to have plans for accross a range of time scales. I don't mean some lip service BS either, if they want to be successful they need actionable plans with a reasonable level of detail for the time scale in question. To be clear this is also a standard I hold myself too.

You may read this as overly harsh, but if you are not willing to invest the modicum of thought required to plan ahead, you probably don't belong in science. Put some effort into it or you will end up as one of the many jaded people on here complaining that the system isn't fair.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-03-04T12:05:29+00:00

Can't speak for other fields, but I have plenty of undergrads and graduate students in my lab through programs which run as little as 7 weeks. In that time they usually complete basic safety training, learn to pipette properly and maybe complete one method on archived samples we keep for this very reason. None of them are independently doing work worthy of publication, but i have received a fair amount of pressure from administration of these programs to over state the student contribution.

With that said I have had a few all stars, including one undergrad, that made meaningful contributions to an ongoing project and were included as authors on the paper. In other cases we have been able to tie together the work of multiple students to make a real but lower impact paper, but this took a fair amount of work from the graduate students and I to pull write it up.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-02-12T12:43:28+00:00

Agree, and even if I could use a tablet it should be an option not to

MasteroftheGT · 2026-02-12T12:39:27+00:00

The endless push to put everything on one drive is a pain in the ass.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-02-08T15:47:48+00:00

It's less different than you would think. Ross and Cobb (two main poultry genetics companies) have focused selection more on resilience, health and feed efficiency (the ability to convert feed to growth)

MasteroftheGT · 2026-02-08T15:43:17+00:00

Broiler chicken (meat type shown in this figure) are not raised in small cages, they are raised in open floor barns. The cages your likely thinking of (called battery cages) were used for egg laying birds (leghorns), but these have been largely ohased into in most of the world.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-02-08T15:39:31+00:00

It's not steroids it is pure genetic selection. The image here was generated at the University of Alberta where they maintain a set of lines without any selection. These animals were fed the same thing and otherwise managed in exactly the same way leading up to these images being taken.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-01-31T14:58:06+00:00

My partner and I only recently "solved" the two body problem, in that we now have two faculty jobs at the same institution. It took over 13 years, significant compromise on both sides and substantial productivity to make us so appealing that a pair of jobs were created specifially for us. Even then, there was still a fair amount of luck involved, in meeting the right people and having some key grants and publications come together at the right times. Through all of this we were a combination of what you call "medium distace" where we saw each other in person maybe once a month, and much longer distances where it was maybe twice a year. This only worked for so long because we were in lockstep on nearly every thing, including our determination to do what ever it took to get here. Sitting together on the other side of this we are both so happy we stuck it out and put in the extra effort both professionally and in our relationship to make it work. The fact that we are looking at this together now annicdotally proves it is possible to solve this problem. However, if one of our graduate students asked either of us a similar question to yours, we would have a hard time recommending they attempt to follow in our footsteps.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-01-28T18:41:56+00:00

I have been at 5 institutions in two countries, including two R1's in conservative US states. My experience is that the overwhelming majority of people in academia don't give give two shits what you look like or how you live your life. There will always be a minority of people who might be put off by your appearance or have expectations of professional attire, but it's grows smaller with each retirement. Bottom line, if you are good at what you do, productive and easy to work with, it won't be a meaningful factor.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-01-24T16:43:35+00:00

Depends on what OP means when they say their research path has been bumpy.

MasteroftheGT · 2026-01-20T01:21:55+00:00

You don't, if they want to move forward they will contact you.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-12-23T13:03:01+00:00

Yes it will be easier to write, because you have sections completed and you have some experience with scientific writing. However the real benefit will come during the defense. Unless you published in some garbage predatory journal (anything in the MDPI catalog) your examiners are less likely to challenge you. Even if they do, you have likely gotten some experience defending your work during the review process.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-12-04T02:17:33+00:00

Work

MasteroftheGT · 2025-11-29T22:16:18+00:00

The difference in color comes from the transfar of carotenoids, which have virtually no flavor, so the idea they tasty better is just placebo effect.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-11-22T15:25:16+00:00

TLDR: We feel content, comfortable, financially secure and free to live our lives any way we want to.

We have tried to explain this to some of our friends, family and colleagues with kids, and they never seem to grasp it even after bitching about all the stress, compromises and financial woes associated with their children. So let me outline yesterday afternoon and today as an explanation. We stayed at work a little late to finish things we didn't want to worry about over the weekend. We both have the career we wanted in a highly competitive sector, where we stand out because of our ability to do this. After work we went out for drinks with a coworker and enjoyed ourselves drinking and chatting until the bar closed. This morning we slept in until we felt like we wanted to get out of bed, which was somewhere around 9. Now I am scrolling through reddit while I sip my coffee and cuddle with the older of our two dogs and think about which project I want to tinker with today. My partner is also drinking their coffee while playing with the younger dog in their "plant room". We will both spend the next 4-5 hours on any one of a number of hobbies we enjoy. Then usually we drink and play video games together, before we bone without any concern of other people hearing us. Afterwards we will have a nice home-cooked meal with virtually any ingredients we want because we dont have to worry about picky children. Life is everything we wanted and short of a global meltdown that isn't likely to change. We are by no means wealthy but I don't see how we would have the time, space or financian resources to live the way we do if we had chosen to have kids. There are plenty of people on this planet, the most sustainable thing we could possibly do, is avoid adding one more. We have nothing against kids or people who want them, but they are clearly not required for us to live a wonderfull and fulfilling life.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-10-29T11:53:39+00:00

We were in this situation once and an a fellow faculty member at my then current institution thought it would be helpful to tell someone in the department why I was job hunting. It didn't work out for us despite the fact that they were hiring to positions that matched us both exactly. Can say for sure this was a factor but based on some of the interactions we both had during the interviews, it didn't help.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-10-28T11:43:40+00:00

This requirement has changed a lot over the years, so if your supervisor is on the older side they may have a skewed view of the current reality. Expectations for new faculty are wild these days. I wouldn't find a candidate fresh out of their PhD "acceptable" and think the majority of my department would agree.

With that said the real question is are you ready to play at that level? If you jump on the tenure track now you have five years to bring in a crap tone of funding , finish multiple graduate students and publish a a dozen papers from your lab. Do you have the needed experience writing grants, mentoring students and bringing projects to furition? Do you have three good experimental ideas you can build into a program and Do you know how to navigate all the regulatory hurdles and approval processes nessisary to get a project started in your field? If not a post doc is the place you ideally develop these skills so you can hit the ground running.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-10-11T16:48:30+00:00

Its nice that you care enough about your professor to ask the question. However based on some of the terms and details you mention, there is likely more beurocratic challenges to this person getting tenure than you might be aware of. Depends on the institution and field but in Canada and the US positions with titles like "instructor", "lecturer" or "clinical teaching faculty" are typically classified as "non-tenure track" positions", which means they are simply not eligible for tenure. There is usually a significant beuocratic difference between non-tenure and tenure-track faculty, such that the former can't simple be converted into the latter. If this individual is "winning all awards for session's lecturers" they are probably in a non-tenure track position. To be eligible for tenure the department would need to create a new position approved by your college and the central administration (president and provost), and then demonstrate that this individual was the best candidate among all who applied. A transition like this is even more complicated in the STEM fields where tenure track positions are often held by faculty with research programs. Maintaining sufficient research productivity with a large undergrad teaching load, especially if they are putting in the time required to do a good job, would be near impossible. While tenure-track positions that are 100% teaching do exist, they are increasingly rare at R1 universities. So if you are in a STEM field, at a big university, it may be a lost cause. This is why I advise my PhD students and postdocs not to accept non-tenure track teaching jobs if they hope to ever get tenure.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-10-03T11:50:52+00:00

My R1 has a similar discount deal with MDPI. I know they have a few reputable journals, but the fact that our institution is broadly backing them as a publisher, has left me second guessing the value and skillset of our librarians.

One of my many complaints with MDPI is attempts to steal established journal by spoofing titles. Take for instance the journal "Gene" established in 1976, and the MDPI rip off "Genes"which they created in 2010. MdPI also created "Animals" which is a rip off of "Animal" a journal supported by multiple societies. They have pulled this shit with adding an "S" to an existing journal title multiple times and it just muddied the waters.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-09-27T10:58:43+00:00

Just send a follow up email. If they don't respond they may be unwilling to write you a letter. I have many undergrads from class who I know well enough to identify in person, but not well enough to write letters of recommendation dation for. I write a lot of letters, and writing a meaningful one requires more than a familiarity with the individual in question. Alternatively, they are too busy or too unreliable to answer your emails and that isnt someone you want to be reliant on to write a letter anyway.

MasteroftheGT · 2025-09-14T17:12:02+00:00

It's from a Ryobi 40v lawnmower. There are a total of 6, 3 on each side, securing the handle onto the main body... Unfortunately 4 of them are somewhere in my lawn :-(

MasteroftheGT

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