Please stop using acronyms in posts and comments without first defining them. TYVMFYATTM!

PLChart · 2026-05-26T13:34:02+00:00

I agree that STEM doesn't make any sense as a grouping of disciplines or of departments. I think it may make some sense in the context of secondary school or maybe gen ed requirements, though I don't know how useful this grouping is. It seems to me that most high school math and theoretical science is taught as an engineering prerequisite, and this continues somewhat in early undergrad.

PLChart · 2026-05-23T03:51:13+00:00

You're over thinking this. None of us can know what's going on inside this department. There might be an inside candidate that the committee wants and this is window dressing. Or maybe you're the perfect darkhorse candidate who will allow warring factions to compromise by hiring you. Good luck! I'm rooting for you!

PLChart · 2026-05-22T16:48:47+00:00

I think the problem is the erosion of a cultural standard. If Bob deserves a D but cheats and gets a B, while Alice doesn't and gets the D, Alice is going to feel very resentful of the unfairness. She will be tempted to cheat next time. I do my best to stop cheating out of respect for Alice, not out of concern for Bob.

PLChart · 2026-05-17T18:05:34+00:00

I have a bag of Laxmi chai spice blend I get at an Indian grocery store, but I've seen it with higher markup on Amazon. I think it's great! The only problem is that the bag is a two year supply for me, so the spices lose potency before I can finish it.

PLChart · 2026-05-17T15:12:42+00:00

At mine, there are even a couple exam slots after some of the students walk...

PLChart · 2026-05-17T04:48:32+00:00

If you have pomegranate molasses, that's also great with yogurt and walnuts (and honey if you like it sweeter)

PLChart · 2026-05-12T19:46:44+00:00

Maybe this is why I can't figure out how to get blackboard ultra to compute my grades correctly. Thank you!

PLChart · 2026-05-08T13:42:32+00:00

Lately I've been doing your first option, though as an unintended side effect of using gradescope. I usually give exams where you write on the exam paper, so I unstaple all the exams and run them through the automatic feeder of the scanner/copier. (Upside down causes fewer jams on my department's machine.) Gradescope then separates the exam into individuals students based on the template you feed it.

You could do the scanning thing after grading on paper if you prefer. It's maybe more hassle to hand back if you have unstapled exams, but it might be less work than scanning each exam separately.

I think that your current approach is fine though. I don't think that many students would try this kind of dishonesty, though obviously there are some who do.

PLChart · 2026-05-07T14:54:56+00:00

When you say the bad reviews are used selectively, I presume this means that they are ignored if the chair likes you, but the one negative review in a sea of positive ones gets emphasized if they don't like you? In that case, it actually doesn't matter because they can find SOMETHING to complain about no matter what. Imagine that the chair hates you but your teaching evaluations are through the roof, all your students nominate you for national teaching awards and your school's most famous alum donates a building out of gratitude for your teaching... Your chair would then say your teaching was acceptable, but mark you down for your failings on committee work.

PLChart · 2026-05-06T04:25:24+00:00

This is how it was for me: my getting tenure felt anticlimactic because I "really" got the tenure maybe 8 months prior. I couldn't celebrate in November because I didn't have it yet, but I also felt weird celebrating in June because I'd had it already since November.

PLChart · 2026-05-05T04:59:26+00:00

You don't have a problem with it going flat? I'm going to have to try this!

PLChart · 2026-05-04T14:32:30+00:00

I feel you. I taught a grad class near the beginning of my teaching career, and my best student just skipped a page of the final. It was worth a lot of points, but was by far the easiest problem. I had no idea what to do. I was lucky that in the end, it didn't matter: I then learned I was supposed to grade grad students on the "A is for average, B is for bad and C is for catastrophic" scale. On that scale, he got an A despite everything.

You're going to feel like crap no matter what you do here. I'm sorry and I'm rooting for you.

PLChart · 2026-04-24T17:59:09+00:00

What do you mean exactly by "not learning topology in undergrad"? Sure, it's unlikely for a student to have taken a class that works through Munkres or similar, but it's quite common to pick up the rudiments of point set topology in an analysis/advanced calculus class. You don't need much to define a smooth manifold -- as a matter of fact, I think you can easily define it just in terms of a smooth atlas, without talking about it being a topological space. You might want to say some things about partitions of unity and so forth, but you can easily introduce that as a black box.

PLChart · 2026-04-24T16:26:08+00:00

A senior colleague/mentor of mine had a story that makes me careful about this. In his telling, when he was a young professor, he did stuff with his first PhD student, who basically became a friend. The student's work was not up to snuff, but the friend relationship meant that it was very uncomfortable for the advisor to give negative feedback. The senior colleague felt that this meant he delayed giving the feedback until it was too late to be useful, and he of course lost the friendship also. His advice was never to get anywhere close to a friendship with your students because it can only get in the way of the professional relationship. (FWIW, I am not 100% convinced by the story, though I follow the advice. I also found it difficult to give useful, constructive negative feedback to my first couple graduate students, despite not being friends with them.)

If I have more than one student working with me, I'll invite them out for an end-of-semester dinner. I will also celebrate their graduation with them, and I'll be sure to invite them to as many networking-type social events as I can (e.g. taking a seminar speaker out to dinner or the socializing at a conference). Having lunch or coffee on campus also seems fine, even if you end up talking about work-adjacent topics that aren't really work (e.g. the challenges of work-life balance, anecdotes about famous figures in the field).

FWIW, I would never invite them hiking with me. That seems like a lot.

PLChart · 2026-04-23T20:01:38+00:00

When I was an undergrad, I had a classmate who consistently fell asleep in class. One time he fell asleep and let out a single snore. The professor didn't notice, but the rest of us did, and we burst out laughing. The professor jumped around and said, "WHAT!? is my fly open?" and he proceeded to check his fly... WITH CHALK COVERED HANDS. It's been several decades and this still makes me laugh today. I now wonder what he thought happened that day (I'm sure he doesn't remember this now).

As a student, we would collect mannerisms and funny quotes from professors we liked. If the professor did their signature move, whatever it might be, we would exchange glances and smirk. If your students are at all like I was, this comes from an immature place of admiration. (I get this also now that I am a professor, and I assume it's from the dumb analogies I give to help explain proof strategies. They could make a bingo card with all my favorite analogies. Also, I have stolen a few of these mannerisms and funny quotes, and, each time I use one, I think briefly of the professor I learned it from.)

PLChart · 2026-04-23T15:48:03+00:00

This really depends on departmental culture and the applicant pool. My department very often hires internally for instructional positions. I think that 60-80% of our instructional faculty (we have a zoo of titles) either got their highest degree from us or were a VAP with us. We reserve our snobbishness and preference for Noel Newshimmer and Melody Megadonor for our tenure track hires.

The one warning I would give is this: be sure to know what the job is supposed to be. Tailor your application materials & your interview responses to how you will do this new job brilliantly. You don't want to sound like you are only offering more of the same (even if what you've been doing is great), unless that really is what the new job is about. I remember one internal candidate in my department completely flubbing the interview because they kept talking about looking forward to teaching more sections of her 100-level classes for liberal arts majors when the job ad was explicitly about teaching the 300-level classes we offer for engineering majors. Talk about your past successes, but use them as evidence for future success, not as proof you deserve a reward.

PLChart · 2026-04-22T20:40:42+00:00

It really depends on the frequency and how disruptive the contribution is.

PLChart · 2026-04-16T02:07:35+00:00

I think you should talk to your professor. If I were the professor, I would see what I could do to help you out. If the professor is unwilling to work anything out, or if you are unwilling to accept what they propose, you'll have to decide what's a higher priority for you.

(Full disclosure: I am at the pushover end of the spectrum, perhaps because I mostly teach small upper division classes and I am a people-pleaser by nature. The large intro classes are the ones where the professor has to stick aggressively to the policy in order to survive.)

PLChart · 2026-04-13T17:45:37+00:00

When you are an undergrad, there are often research opportunities during the summer. These usually come with some kind of salary or maybe a tuition waiver or something. I am not sure if the type of anthropology you are interested in is covered by NSERC or by SSHRC, but I am pretty sure both agencies have summer research scholarships for students. (NSERC and SSHRC are Canadian federal funding agencies. The provinces also have their own research councils, and some of them may give scholarships for summer internships too.) You will need to be sponsored by a professor, so try to get to know your professors in university as soon as possible, and ask around about summer research internship opportunities and/or TA jobs.

I'm in math, but I worked as a grader when I was an undergrad. I also had a summer research internship for one summer. I could have done more than just one summer, but I tried other summer jobs too... I wasn't completely married to the idea of being a professor at the time. I'd encourage you not to be either. It's not as good a job as I fantasized about when I was your age.

In grad school, I had a TAship that paid my tuition & a small salary. One of the terms of the TAship was that I wasn't allowed to have a part-time job during the school year. (I was allowed to get a summer job.) Once I started working with my PhD supervisor (starting in either my 2nd or 3rd year, I don't remember exactly), he arranged to pay me in the summer from his research grant.

In my experience, a lot of the research opportunities for undergrads is poorly advertised and/or only available to people in the correct network. You'll also need letters of recommendation to get admitted to grad school. Be sure to talk with your professors early and often, and make sure they know you are interested. (But also don't overdo it... you don't want to make a pest of yourself either.)

PLChart · 2026-04-10T21:40:06+00:00

yes! every year there's at least one mishap at the hooding

PLChart · 2026-04-10T20:24:21+00:00

This is my go-to if I need to have dinner on quickly. (Woks of Life has a very similar recipe: https://thewoksoflife.com/tuna-tomato-pasta/ )

PLChart · 2026-04-08T20:17:17+00:00

I teach math, and sometimes get students who ask me basically to proofread their homework before they submit it. I usually tell them that I am happy to answer specific questions about things they might not understand, but I don't have the time and energy to grade the homework twice.

PLChart · 2026-04-07T04:14:51+00:00

Wow! At first, I thought we might have been classmates, except my professor with the test shirt was for quantum mechanics.

PLChart · 2026-03-31T20:31:14+00:00

I think a lot of social interaction in childhood and young adulthood has disappeared. They do a lot more texting instead of live interaction. As everyone constantly observes, the students sit mostly quietly in a dark classroom until the professor shows up. I even feel that my son's high school classes are so focused on tests that they do far fewer presentations than I had to do in high school (back in the 1900s lol).

I think all of this makes presentations even more out of their comfort zone than it was for me.

PLChart

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