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Hahahahahaha!

Greeting cards for scientists | @myjetpack

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The Good Place has many outstanding academic jokes that are so much funnier upon rewatch after you know the twist at the end of Season 1.

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Lots of great advice here for grad students too!!!

i’ve been really productive the past few months, which is actually quite rare for me bc i’m a slave to procrastination i get burnt out v easily. this time was a little different, i managed to keep my productivity levels really high for a whole 2 months all the way until exams ended, studying every single day without fail, around 10 hours a day, when i used to only do an average of 3 or 4. so here’s what worked for me and what didn’t!

what works: schedule your day

what happens when ur a virgo studyblr? u plan. i would write out everything i needed to accomplish for the day, the night before, and be really specific about it. i would then plug in the timings, this works for me, but u can choose to put the time in first and plan what u want to do around the time. 

a structured time plan pressures me and i end up getting everything done, especially when i set an alarm on my phone for all the timings!

what does not: cramming a lot of hours into a day

12+ hour work days are ideal, especially when u watch all the ‘study with me: 14 hour work day!’ youtube videos, but they are just tedious and unreasonable. 

let’s face it, even if u do complete one or two long study days, ur just gonna get bored and tired and have no mood to continuing this for a week or more. slow and steady wins the race!

what works: tweaking the pomodoro technique

i hate the pomodoro method. at the 25 minute mark, i’m normally on a roll and super focused on the task; and the 5 minute breaks were too short for me to actually take a break. 

that’s why i tweaked it to 45-minute study sessions with 10-minute breaks, and after 3 study sessions, a 30-minute break. longer study sessions meant i get a break when i really start to get restless, and longer breaks gave me more time to recharge. i suggest tweaking this to match what works for you.

what does not work; doing too many / too little subjects a day

1. u don’t want to cram all the same topics and subjects into one day. ultimately, it’s a choice of spending 8 hours solely on a subject / topic and not touching it for the next few days / weeks, OR doing just 2 or 3 hours of one subject / topic each day over a few days / week

2. just thinking about doing only one subject for a whole day already tires me out. i have tried it, but normally i get so sick and tired of it that after a few hours, i can’t bring myself to focus on it any longer. on the contrary, if i keep switching between subjects, i get super confused because i have to remember too much of very different info. 

what works: leaving the last portion of your day ambiguous 

i like to start and end my days early. but in the process, i found a benefit of ending them early: i end up w a chunk of time at the end where there are two scenarios:

i’m super motivated and want to continue studying

i’m rly tired and cannot bring myself to continue bc i need a break !1!!

surprisingly, option 1 does happen a lot. and i think this is a rly good work-life balance. u don’t get burnt out easily, but from time to time, u get a bonus extra few hours of work done! 

what does not work: forgoing sleep

sleep is so important omg. 3 hours of studying while sleepy = 1 hour of studying when ur refreshed and ur brain’s working. a tired mind is a slow mind, and an awake mind is a fast mind!

do not worry about that rly hard chapter that u must understand and complete! ur mind continue to works even when ur sleeping, i assume bc it’s rewiring and sorting through new information. after waking up, i find myself being able to better remember and understand information that i struggled on the night before!

what works: finding out ur energy levels and use it to ur advantage

some people work best at 6am and can’t focus after 9pm, some people can’t focus before 11am and work best at midnight. take note of and chart ur energy levels throughout the day for about a week or so, are u particularly refreshed in the morning? do u feel urself always dozing off at 4? are u the most productive at night? 

work ur body clock out and work around it! every body functions differently! like in the last point, 3 hours of studying at ur worst energy levels = 1 hour of studying at ur peak energy level! forcing urself to work when ur body refuses to do so will only lead to procrastination. 

i sincerely hope these few tips can help u out w being productive! what are some of the things u do to get shit done? 

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Yes. The "unprocessed emotional traumas" sums up my mom. In her case, generational traumas, not all emotional. Your family doesn't survive genocide unscathed.

Take care of yourselves.

Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.

Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.

Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.

Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.

Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.

I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.

Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.

But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.

Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.

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data are

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Hold up. Bureaucracy is all about rules! Bureaucracy at its core is supposed to be stable and predictable. Max Weber writes all about this. The whole point of bureaucracy is to take the organization out of the hands of capricious people and their whims and vagaries. You have rules that are supposed to be followed no matter who is in the position. It was originally developed to protect against rulers appointing their feckless sons or nephews to important positions. Incidentally it is also supposed to keep personal and organizational property separate, so you can see why I am counting on bureaucracy to save us right now. Allowing a county clerk to follow his or her own personal preferences is something crappy, but it's not a true bureaucracy.

There’s no other commentary I can add, this is just perfect. There’s no logical or sane rebuttal.

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Marching is important, too.

march for science explained | Twitter: @DianaF1080 @jamesstrachan @pundispice @ZsofiaDemjen

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Ha ha, when you hear "affect is almost always a verb" here is your exception.

I don’t always get emotional. But when I do, I call it affect.

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If this is you, today is a new day!

When you take a 10 minute writing break and it accidentally lasts six months

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How much should I be writing??

This is a tough question because there are so many variables that impact the answer. Let’s be real, if you’re working a full-time job while finishing a dissertation, you aren’t going to be able to write as much as someone who is a full-time student (this is a whole other post!). If you’re teaching that semester, ESPECIALLY if you are teaching new prep, that is going to suck up a lot of time. You have a child and part-time childcare? Your time is going to be limited.

Writing consistently, every day, is the most important thing. I usually say “every week day” but even that varies depending on your schedule. Folks with full-time jobs almost always have to write on the weekends. 

However, what is a good goal? This is a moving target, because if you aren’t a regular writer, that should be your goal first. And just like running, you have to build up your stamina. If you’re coming from writing zero, or from a habit of not writing, not writing, not writing, but then binge-writing for the two days before a deadline, your goal should be 15 minutes a day. 

When you can do that reasonably easily, then you start increasing. Your target should be based on your schedule. I always aimed for 4 sessions of 45 minutes each, but I don’t think I ever got there. It was more normal for me to do 3 sessions of 45 minutes of writing.

What I will tell you is that there does seem to be a maximum limit for a sustainable writing habit, and that is 4 hours per day. That is not scientific, that is just what I’ve seen from working with clients. I have some tremendously productive folks that I work with, who just like the accountability and community that they get from being part of a coaching group, and I see them writing no more than 4 hours a day on a regular basis. That isn’t “all work” only writing - this doesn’t include emails, reading, data analysis, meetings, teaching. This is just writing. 

There are inevitably periods where people have to write more than 4 hours a day - like when you’re facing down a deadline. Even when you’re writing consistently and making good progress, you usually face a final push at the end and end up writing some long sessions. And what happens is that this is pretty exhausting to do for more than maybe a couple of weeks straight. Graduate students will do that final push, working for 6-12 hours/day on their dissertation, for a week or two (in one rare occasion it was a month), but it does take a toll. The toll is worth it, but when it’s done, usually people go off the grid for a little while to recover. I have seen clients do these long sessions to meet conference deadlines, and usually those are only a few days of long hours of writing, and then they will have to take a few days off. This is totally fine and expected - it just means that when you’re not writing 8 hours a day every single day, you don’t need to feel bad. Sustainability is crucial.

To write successfully day after day after day, you have to pace yourself. 

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I spent my spring break grading midterms! How about you?

Scrambling to catch up on piles of work over the next week, the grad student makes the most of what undergrads call “spring break.”

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Dying. So funny

Yes, I’ve heard of work-life balance. I gave a workshop on it last week and am co-editing a related special issue to which I’m contributing.

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french recipes: if you’re not making this in paris then what’s the point. fuck you

italian recipes: use the left leg meat of a pig from one of three farms in this specific area of tuscany, or from this day my grandmother will begin manifesting physically in your house

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I teach university, but had a student who unexpectedly lost her brother in the middle of the semester. My best advice is to have compassion. I told her that I just wanted to get her through the semester. I recorded all my lectures and posted them online for everyone, not just her.

Be flexible with deadlines. If they need an incomplete to finish work, give it to them. For team projects, talk to the team on the student's behalf. I currently have a student whose father is in hospice. I went through this same thing myself this summer. I am going to tell her team to try to front load her contributions, so if things get worse as the semester goes on, everyone feels like she's done her fair share.

Be human. Be compassionate. School is not their family. Cut them some slack. This is not the time to be a hardass. If you have any questions about the legitimacy of the excuse, talk to the student's undergraduate dean. I always encourage my students who are having personal trouble of any kind to talk to their undergraduate dean and have them advocate if necessary.

Have you ever had a student dealing with grief? I have a year 6 student who lost her mum Thursday and will be back at school Monday. I don't know what to expect. Any advice would be appreciated.

Oh, that poor kid. I’m so glad you’re caring and preparingfor this student!

I haven’t had anystudents with new, close family grief. However, I do know that kids mourn intheir own ways. Follow your instinct and your heart!

My advice, which should be taken with a whopping spoon ofsalt, is to try to maintain classroom normalcy. Their home life has justchanged drastically, so trying to keep a sense of continuity will be helpful. Ioften struggle with the homework situation—I think that, depending on the gradeand your curriculum, that extending deadlines can be helpful and take thestress off the student without compromising the rigor of the class andmaintaining those normal expectations you have of this student.

This student may exhibit behavior that is different fromwhat you’ve come to know of her. She may be despondent and detached, emotionalor even angry. After all, there is no ‘proper’ way to grieve. She may need someprivate time, and try to be understanding of that.  Let her know that you’re there for her, andthat you care. She may not want the extra attention, so I find a quiet,private, poignant moment to be the most effective.

But I think it is most important that this student can be adaughter who just lost her mother before she is expected to be a student—thatadvice is coming from me as a human rather than me as a teacher.

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This is me, cleaning off my desk. After a day.

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Remember that Elizabeth Warren was a professor before she became a senator. What the kids nowadays call bringing your receipts, we academics call good scholarship.

Is Elizabeth Warren a modern day Hamilton? What can you possibly say that is SIXTEEN PAGES? I’m assuming that’s typed too.

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On the importance of writing consistently

Writing consistently hides a multitude of sins. You would be surprised. In my opinion, the most important thing you can do in graduate school is to write every day for at least 15 minutes. This is not a new idea. There is a great book out there called Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes A Day, and this sounds totally laughable. And..... it is. You can’t write your dissertation if you really only spend 15 minutes a day working on it. But the magic is in the “a day” part - writing every day (every weekday, at least) makes it easier to write every day. That sounds cyclical, but what happens is that when you force yourself to sit down and write for 15 minutes, even if all you write is half a sentence, the next day will be easier. And the day after that will be easier. 

This doesn’t mean you won’t struggle. You will. But the magic is in those 15 minutes. Just like Kimmy Schmidt declares that she can do anything for 10 seconds, you can write for 15 minutes. You can. It doesn’t have to be good writing. It doesn’t have to be fast writing. Just write. Do it. 

After a while, push yourself a bit. Do 2 sessions of 15 minutes each. Then expand those 15 minute sessions to 20 minutes. Keep expanding. Then, on those hard days, those days where you can’t do it, fall back on your “at least 15 minutes” plan. 

So when you hit this point, of writing every weekday for at least 15 minutes, you will still have your ups and downs. Days where the words won’t come, where you spend 45 minutes staring at the page and manage to get 3 sentences out. The beauty of consistency is that you will also have days where you write 3 pages in those 45 minutes. If you’re writing every day, whether you have a good day or a bad day doesn’t matter. They will balance each other out, and over time you will have more good days and the bad days won’t matter as much. 

Do you think you’re lazy? Are you a big procrastinator? Writing for 15 minutes a day is something even the laziest procrastinator can do - I should know, because I used to think of myself as a lazy procrastinator. Just showing up every day and putting words on paper, no matter how bad, even if it’s just for 15 minutes, will, over time, conquer any real or perceived laziness and overcome procrastination. 

You can do this. I promise. Just give me 15 minutes a day to start.