Year Two Began Anew…
…and it’s kicking my ass, as you can probably tell from my lack of posting. Last October, I posted on how I was diving right into the deep end (see: What’s the difference between 18 and 27?) because my feeling was that academia is sink or swim and those that can cope will, and those that can’t cope won’t. I was most decidedly in the camp that thought they could cope and things would be easier once I got a grant or two under my belt. This led to a, shall we say, promiscuous year applying for any and all proposal solicitations that were remotely in my area (~10 NSF-length proposals, and ~10 smaller opportunities). I wanted to make sure I got some funding in the first year to get off to a good start. It turns out that when you get more than 1 or 2 grants under your belt,…
Timing
One of the things that I was totally oblivious to (and unprepared for) prior to starting this tenure track position was how critical timing is when dealing with proposals. I’m fortunate enough that I do have some money coming in from proposals, so that’s a good start. However, now that I have money coming in, I need students to work on projects. Unfortunately, my funded projects are on topics that where none of my current students are working. And the topics for my current students are sufficiently different that it would be unwise to switch them to a different project. Thus, I’m in a time crunch where money has been funded but there are no students around to support. This is one of several issues with timing that I’ve seen. I’m going to point a few issues below but feel free to comment below and add some more. Are there…
The Grey Zone
This week, as part of Theme Week, we’re discussing our roles as engineers and how it might change depending on the level/status of the company. Now, I’ve already started by breaking the rules about our little post figure because my ‘company’, SnowU is actually a research university which deals heavily with the research end of the spectrum. However, my area within the spectrum is slightly different because I like to think that my research is right on the border between fundamental research and launching startups, which I’ve dubbed The Grey Zone (and hence the grey arrow). The Grey Zone is that terrible-yet-extraordinarily-wonderful place where you get to work on research topics that feel like they might be commercial products someday. The Grey Zone is fantastic because… It’s an easy sell for under/graduate students because not all of them want to be professors. Some fully recognize that working on a practical…
TMI from your Advisor?
One of the things that I think an advisor should do is train their students technically (duh!) but also train them about the social-political-monetary issues of working in a competitive environment. I’m not talking about force my students to be Democrats or Republicans, but rather that they should understand that things are much more interlinked than they might believe. For my students that are pursuing academia, I hope that I’m giving them an accurate representation of what it takes to be in the same role that I’m in. For my students that will end up in industry, I hope this at least gives them some insights and clues for what to look for when they’re deciding on a company. I’ll give you a few examples of what I’m talking about. All of my students (4) are currently paid out of startup money, which I’m using to seed projects that I’m…
Why a Postdoc is basically needed in Academia
I’ve been totally swamped with proposal writing over the past few weeks, hence my erratic posting schedule. Also, right as I was going to sit down and work on a post, I found out that I was denied for another proposal, totally sapping any motivation to do anything useful. For those of you keeping score, I’m 0-5 in the my first 6 months with a bunch pending. That’s not what I would call a stellar start to my academic career. Needless to say, I’ve contemplating career choices and shoulda-woulda-couldas, but I think that’s only natural at points when things aren’t going the way you envisioned. It’s not all bad; I did get very good reviews from my Chair, which means in the Chair’s eyes I’m doing some things right even though I don’t feel like it is. One of the proposals that rejected was in a Young Investigator/Young Faculty category. For those of…
Needy Students: The Ultimate Motivator
This week’s theme at Engineer Blogs is motivation and, if you can’t tell from my late post, I’m motivated to work on other things right now. My discussion on this topic is highly linked to a previous Theme Week on Deadlines. In that post, I discussed how I toss in procrastination and deadlines, and mix it with pressure and a dash of biting-off-more-than-you-can-chew and come out in reasonable shape (when it’s all over). GMP had a comment that she worked in a similar fashion, so I was somewhat relieved to find out I wasn’t the only one. When it comes down to it, I think I’m most motivated by not wanting to let other people down. I’d like to think that I’m the person that comes through 10 times out of 10 (SHAFT!). That doesn’t mean I’m always successful (hence my recent proposal rejection) but in the context of coming through in the end, I’m…
ZOMG! I Haz Survived!
If you can’t tell from the title or the picture, the semester is over! I’ve made it through a 4-month whirlwind of activity, craziness, anxiety, and, not to toot my own horn, success. Going into this semester, I thought I had a good idea of what it took to be tenure track material (I mean, I got the job didn’t I?!?). That last month though, was a little rough at times. All in all, I think everything went about as well as it could go for my first semester teaching. I’ve read some of the comments from my class survey (I’ll discuss more in a later post) and many were of the flavor, “I was a little apprehensive about this class with a new prof and given that this was his first time teaching, it was a lot better than expected and things went well.” That’s encouraging for the future. While…
Academic Breakdown (No, Not that kind…)
Last week, I discussed my initial thoughts on submitting my first proposal. One of the comments I received was from Chris Gammell via twitter stating that most engineers never write proposals and certainly not large proposals. I was actually quite shocked for two reasons. The first reason was because I know there are some academic types that read this blog that probably see large proposals on a regular basis. The second reason was because my impression about industry is they have a lot more money to work with than academia and so large proposals should be fairly common. Since there was this misconception, I thought I would discuss and breakdown an academic position (in engineering) to show how each facet works together. The overall breakdown is shown in that nice little figure to your left. Roughly speaking, research topics should consume 50% of your time, teaching 30%, and service 20%. This…
Proposals: Initial Thoughts
So those of you who have followed me on twitter (@profgears) may have noticed my excitement over submitting my first proposal. What started as a smaller, single PI proposal actually got absorbed by a much larger proposal with multiple universities involved. I’m actually pretty glad for that because I was totally unprepared for how to write a proposal and communicate at levels much higher and certainly out of my comfort zone. And now, it’s hurry up and wait for a few months before the reviews get back. I hate this part, as does probably everyone, but it a necessary evil. So, I thought I would jot down some thoughts while it’s still fresh in my memory and I will hopefully look back on this with some nostalgia when I’m an old, feeble, tenured prof. Overall, it’s not so bad – One of the bad things about this proposal ended up being…