#I fully understand if my advisor decides to drop my thesis

[damiemontclair]

I am doing way too much grovelling lately, but the worst part is, it is entirely my own fault for not getting to this stuff sooner and I only have myself (and my adhd I guess) to blame for the current situation....

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Product Manager

A lot of tech people I know say “the best skill a programmer can have is knowing how to look up the right answer on Stack Exchange” It’s one of those websites that people use every day, but perhaps without thinking about how it gets built. Megan Risdal is one of the people who make Stack Overflow happen, as a Product Manager leading Public Q&A. As Megan mentions below, there’s even a Linguistics Stack Exchange (you might just see some old answers from me there). Megan has not only forged a career for herself in tech, she helps demystify the industry for other linguists who might follow in her footsteps, on Twitter (@MeganRisdal) and her blog.

What did you study at university?

My undergraduate degree is in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire where my interests were in individual differences. I also did a minor in French and this is where I first learned about linguistics as a field of study. My combined interests in language and individual differences psychology led me to completing a senior thesis project on variation in attitudes towards linguistic diversity. Just last year this work was published with my then advisor, Dr. Erica Benson, as a chapter in Language Regard: Methods, Variation, and Change.

From here, I did a Master's degree in Sociolinguistics at North Carolina State University. Building on my statistics background from studying psychology, I dove deeper into quantitative methods, learning R along the way, while focusing on sociophonetics and laboratory phonology. For my capstone project, I measured articulatory (ultrasound tongue imaging), aerodynamic, (nasal/oral airflow), and acoustic variation in coarticulatory vowel nasalization strategies among Anglo-American and African American (Vernacular) English speakers.

Finally, I started a PhD at UCLA where I intended to continue studying laboratory phonology. I only ended up finishing one year which was spent on theoretical foundations, articulatory phonetics, and learnability before leaving with a second Master's degree in Linguistics. I ended up deciding to leave academia because I was disillusioned already with the prospect of the job market and the limited potential for my work to have impact beyond academia. I made my mind up when I applied for a job at Google and got an interview. I ultimately failed, but this was enough for me to feel confident my resume was "good enough" (completely incidentally I ended up later getting hired and working at Google for a couple of years prior to my current role).

What is your job?

For the past six months I've been working as a Product Manager at Stack Overflow where I lead the team working on public Q&A. If you're not familiar with Stack Overflow, it's a site where anyone who codes can come to find answers to their programming questions. We also have the Stack Exchange network which has similar Q&A sites for other topics like cooking and anime. There's even a Linguistics Stack Exchange site.

In my day-to-day, as a product manager, I work closely with our developers, designers, researchers, data scientists, community managers, marketing, and leadership. So, it's a lot of meetings and a lot of Google Docs. My job entails taking many, many inputs and synthesizing them into a strategy and product roadmap that the team executes on to make Stack Overflow a more useful, engaging place for all developers. On a given day, you could catch me writing a new feature specification for a developer, reviewing results of an experiment with our data scientists, or dropping in on user interviews. One of the things I love the most about my job is the variety. If a project is slipping or we just don't have the resources for something important, I'm the person who can step in and do what it takes to make sure the work of my collaborators adds up to something successful.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

My training in linguistics absolutely helps me.

First, and most importantly I believe, my background in sociolinguistics has taught me the significance of diversity among groups of people (like users of a product) in so many ways. For example, Stack Overflow sees many millions of users every month, but we know that not everyone is equally likely to participate on the site. There are huge, intimidating barriers to participation which disproportionately impact different groups of people depending on things like their background and experience coding. So every day I think about how changes to the product will affect different types of users. Me and my team are constantly striving to better understand the important ways our users vary in their backgrounds, motivations, and pain points and how we can better meet their needs. Especially in a globally diverse online community like ours where users interact and community with each other it's extremely important for me and my colleagues to think about always.

Second, and more concretely, the quantitative methods and experimental best practices I acquired while studying linguistics are highly applicable to my day-to-day job. We make use of a lot of different qualitative and quantitative research methods at Stack Overflow and having training in this area allows me to leverage these resources effectively in my product decision-making. Before I joined Stack Overflow, I had also spent some time as a data scientist, so my background in statistics and R was extremely relevant there. Without this training, I don't think I would be where I am today.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

Overall, I'm very happy with my trajectory. I'm extremely grateful to everyone who supported me at every stage and I would not be where I am today without all of these experience (yes including dropping out of a PhD!). That said, some thing that I wish I had encountered sooner are:

Seriously, build a public portfolio. Make your work visible. Curate an online presence. Having even a just a modest Twitter following and some publicly discoverable content with my name on it has helped me immeasurably in my career. Oh, and learn git.

Pay some attention to what's going on outside of your academic bubble. I fully intended to stay in academia when I started my PhD at UCLA. Had I thought somewhat ahead of time about the possibility that I would end up industry, I may have prioritized different classes or perhaps even chosen a different PhD program altogether. For example, if you have a choice between learning OCaml and Python, maybe see what non-academia has to say, too, as an input to your decision. Then again, hindsight is 2020. I would have seriously regretted not taking statistics/research methods under any circumstances, though.

Any other thoughts or comments?

I think every tech company should look to hire people trained in linguistics. There are so, so many ways in which a background in linguistics is relevant to so many careers in tech. From user research to data science to (apparently) product management, a background in linguistics adds a unique and valuable perspective. If you're not sure what you're qualified for, carefully tailor your experience, cast your net wide, and seek out advice!

More from Megan

Twitter @MeganRisdal

LinkedIn 

Personal blog

Recently:

Interview with a Communications Specialist

Interview with a Learning Scientist

Interview with a Lexicographer

Interview with a Journalist

Interview with a PR Consultant

Check out the Linguist Jobs Master List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews  

[morningfears]

black coffee [prologue]

Rating: PG-13

Summary: neither calum nor isabelle wanted to be a teacher's assistant. more work, less pay, and no power; not the grad school experience either were hoping to have. but they're roped into teaching intro to public speaking and are handed all the responsibilities that go along with it. students, grades, classes, faculty meetings; but at least they have each other, right?

Word Count: 2.2k

“No.”

Dr. Bennett blinks, momentarily surprised by Isabelle’s blunt refusal, before he tries to hide his smile as he leans back in his chair and places his full attention on the girl in front of him. He raises an eyebrow at her, amused by the seeming lack of grace in her answer, and waits as she shakes her head. He watches her fidget with her pen, watches her take a deep breath and attempt to gather her thoughts, before she lifts her head and meets his gaze.

“Sorry,” Isabelle adds, cheeks tinted pink with embarrassment at her outburst. “I just, I thought I made it clear when I came in that I didn’t want to teach,” she explains as she glances down at the bright green notebook on her lap. She stares at the cover, still unopened, before she lifts her head once more. “I haven’t fully decided if I want to get my Ph.D. and while I appreciate the offer, I like my current assistantship. I really enjoy planning and coordinating events, that’s more in line with what I want to do after graduation. I mean, I’m seriously considering going into nonprofit work instead of sticking with academia. It just seems like I’d be taking on a lot for something I’m not really sure of and I’m just wondering what I get out of teaching, you know?”

Dr. Bennett did know this, the entire department knows of their most recent cohort’s lack of a desire to teach, but they’d all been hoping that the first year in the program would change their minds. However, judging by the look of despair on Isabelle’s face and the panic in her words, that hadn’t been the case at all. She seems even more sure of her unwillingness to teach now than she had been at orientation in August but he’d drawn the short straw and had been tasked with getting her agreement so he sighs and leans forward to rest his elbows on his desk.

“There’s a lot that you can do with teaching experience,” Dr. Bennett informs her with a slight shrug. “You’re wanting to do nonprofit work, right?” When Isabelle nods, he copies the action and continues, “Having that experience can help you program educational experiences. It can help you create curriculum for whatever field you go into to help educate the people you serve. Even if academia isn’t where you see yourself remaining, the experience can be useful in your future and it looks good on a resume. Having someone with your previous internships, your current assistantship, and then a year of teaching experience would be a dream. You’d be overqualified for pretty much any position you wanted.”

“Plus, if you teach and you like it, you don’t have to stay in higher ed. You can teach high school with a masters degree,” Abbey, Dr. Bennett’s advisee and Isabelle’s best friend in her cohort, tosses out. “You get a teaching certificate and you can teach speech or debate, maybe even rhetoric if the school is nice enough to have a rhetoric course. That’s what I’m thinking about doing.”

Isabelle bites her lip to keep from rolling her eyes at Abbey’s suggestion. She loves Abbey, she really does, but their situations are vastly different. Abbey had come in funded through the department and hadn’t had much of a choice in whether or not she would be teaching. For her, it was either accept the teaching position or pay for her second year out of pocket. Isabelle, however, has options. 

The department didn’t want her when she came in. She’d begged them to consider her for at least a desk job but they’d apologized and instructed her to look elsewhere. They needed the funding for the Ph.D. students they had so she sent resume after resume to every open position she could find. She’d been offered several different assistantships around campus (one of which came without an interview because they liked her resume that much, they’d even emailed her earlier in the week to see if she’d made a decision about her second year yet), each of which was better suited to her future career goals than teaching so she wasn’t exactly bothered by the department’s focus on their Ph.D. students. Now, however, with so many of their Ph.D. students leaving and not enough faculty members to cover the intro courses, they’re getting desperate.

Her cohort (the students that came in with her in September) only had seven members, four masters students and three Ph.D. students. Each of the Ph.D. students has already agreed to teach classes the next semester (not like they had any choice if they wanted to be funded), one of the masters students has already agreed (Abbey also didn’t have much choice), another of the masters students wasn’t even considered because she raised so much hell about keeping her current assistantship (she’s funded through the department but her boss had even gone so far as to threaten to resign if they took her from him); that just leaves Isabelle and Calum, the only two not currently funded through the department.

She knows that Calum is currently across the hall getting the same offer from Dr. White and she knows that he’s attempting to do the same delicate dance that she is. He’s made it very clear that he’s not interested, either, and she understands why they’re trying so hard but she wishes they’d quit. She hates being put on the spot like this and she’s desperate for a way out of Dr. Bennett’s office. But she knows that she needs to stand her ground if she wants to avoid being put in front of a classroom full of bored freshmen so she wracks her brain for a way to respond.

“Do I still have to talk to Dr. Adams about this?” Isabelle finally asks as she notices Dr. Bennett and Abbey staring at her, waiting for her response. “To officially accept or decline?”

“Yes,” Dr. Bennett nods, “she’s still the interim department chair so she makes the official teaching decisions. She’s also your advisor so the classes we added to your schedule still need to be run by her. You also need to finalize your plan of study so I’d set up an appointment with her as soon as possible. She’ll be back in the office after spring break.”

Isabelle frowns at this before she releases a quiet sigh and nods. She doesn’t want to wait, she wants to get this over and done with, but she knows that this is the only way her declination will be accepted. “I’ll email her when I get home,” Isabelle promises as she grabs her backpack and stands from her chair. “Thank you for the help, Dr. Bennett. I’ll work on the abstract for my conference submission and email it to you when I finish.”

“No problem,” Dr. Bennett nods, a smile on his face. “I look forward to reading it. And I’m sorry that we haven’t been more proactive in talking to you about teaching but I’d appreciate it if you considered it. Even if you don’t go on to get your Ph.D. or stick with academia, I think you would make a fantastic teacher and that it would be beneficial for you.”

Isabelle doesn’t want to but she knows that she’s going to end up spending the next week and a half thinking about it. She knows that she’s going to agonize over this decision and annoy the living hell out of everyone in her life until her meeting with Dr. Adams. So, she nods. “I will,” she promises as she fishes her keys out of the pocket of her backpack, “I’ll see you in class, Dr. Bennett.”

Isabelle doesn’t look back as she exits Dr. Bennett’s office, doesn’t slow down until she’s left the second floor of the building, and only pauses on the first when she hears Calum call her name. She waits long enough for Calum to catch up with her and sighs when he falls into step beside her. The pair are quiet for a moment, each mulling over their respective meetings, before Calum glances over at her.

“Bennett tell you that you’re on the shortlist for teaching next year?” Calum asks as he opens the door for her.

“Yep,” she nods as she shoves her phone into her pocket. “Told me that I’d need to be in the teaching competency class and when I asked why, he looked confused and then embarrassed. It took him a minute to realize no one had seriously mentioned anything about it until that moment. It’s ironic to me that the communication department is the worst at communicating.”

“Why the fuck did we think getting our masters was a good idea?” he asks as he steps behind the building and pulls his cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans. “This whole process has been a fucking nightmare.”

Isabelle huffs an unamused laugh as she leans against the side of the building. “You’re telling me,” she sighs as she shakes her head when Calum offers her the pack. “I’m here because I had no fucking clue what I wanted to do with my life. Honestly, though, living with my mom while I figured it out seems like a better idea than this at this point. At least she tells me what she wants.”

Calum laughs at this before he shakes his head and frowns. “I still have no idea what I’m doing for classes next semester. Theory’s the only thing they’re offering that we haven’t taken,” he sighs before he takes a drag off his cigarette, “and it’s not even general theory, it’s rhetoric.”

“With Dr. Deets,” Isabelle reminds him, laughing when he grimaces. “Bennett told me I’m gonna have to go ahead and start my thesis hours, even though I don’t feel ready to. I’m taking a class out of department but I’m thinking about switching it to that qualitative methods course they’re offering in anthropology. I need it more than I need some fucking seminar that deals exclusively in busy work.”

“Let me know if you can take that one and I might join you,” Calum sighs as he kneels down to stub out his cigarette before he drops the butt in the garbage can. “I’m going qualitative for my thesis, too. Miles on your committee?”

“Yeah,” Isabelle nods, “I have the golden trio. Miles, Bennett, and Adams. How about you?”

“That’s looking like mine,” he nods as he runs his hand through his hair. “If I can ever getting a meeting with Adams to officially request her.”

“She’s supposed to be back in her office after spring break,” Isabelle informs him. “So, give it a month and maybe she’ll have a minute for you. D’you hear that she told Laura to fuck off, that she didn’t have time for her bullshit when she stopped to ask a question about her thesis?”

Calum frowns at this and shakes his head. “No,” he sighs, “but that doesn’t surprise me. Now that Watson’s leaving, do you think she’s gonna be the official chair?”

“Probably,” Isabelle sighs as she tugs her phone from her pocket. “I heard they haven’t had a lot of interest. Two interviews and neither were super impressive.”

“We’re fucked,” Calum groans and Isabelle nods. Calum watches as Isabelle checks her notifications and frowns when she holds the device up to him. He stares at the department group chat, the one that he never checks, and laughs at the message Abbey had just sent.

A picture of himself and Isabelle standing behind the building, deep in conversation, greets him along with the message, ’@Isabelle, @Calum; you guys plotting to burn down down the building down there?’

‘Thinking about it,’ Isabelle sends back quickly. ‘Save anything from the TA office that might be important to you.’

“I’m gonna go get some bubble tea and calm the fuck down,” Isabelle sighs as she locks her phone and shoves the device back into her pocket. “I might even run by the liquor store. Who knows, honestly?”

“Still not a coffee person?” Calum asks as he follows her toward the parking lot across from the building. “Not gonna go get a black coffee and drown your sorrows like some shitty drama?”

“I like to enjoy my caffeine, thanks,” Isabelle laughs. “Black coffee just seems like a punishment.”

“When they break us both down and get us to agree to teach, I’ll bring you a black coffee after your first class. You’ll need it.”

Isabelle grins at Calum’s promise and shakes her head. “I appreciate it, Cal,” she laughs. “But I don’t think I’ll be teaching. I want to keep my current assistantship. But if you end up teaching, I’ll bring you that black coffee.”

“You know, even if we don’t want to teach, I feel like we’ll both end up in front of a bunch of freshmen next semester.”

“I hate to say this,” Isabelle sighs, “but I feel like you’re right."

Author’s Note: Grad school is weird. It’s a different planet, tbh. Anyway, here’s the prologue for TA!Calum. Camp counselor!Calum is coming. I’m too stoked about both, sorry.

[archaestudykat]

I don't know if anyone has had a more idiotic, convoluted thesis project than me. So I have postponed my graduation for over a year now, each semester. I'm just an idiot or something, because every semester I legitimately felt I would pull my shit together and graduate within 3 months. When April rolled around, I still had 5 chapters to write and expected I would be done in May. Each of my thesis chapters are roughly 40 pages, and I even had to basically fully rewrite some of my early chapters which set me back months.

My original thesis topic would have had me travelling to Peru and working on a Nat Geo funded project, but then covid hit. I had to find another topic and chose to apply a new method to a data set that I'm analyzing post hoc.

My advisor had been struggling for awhile with some **really bad** stuff going on in his personal life. I won't share because its his business, but I legitimately wonder if he is cursed or something. He had a absolutely shit year. Understandably, he wasn't available for me for much of it. Like we have talked probably less than 15x since covid began. I'm basically on my own. Switching advisors wasn't really an option because I'm using his data set for my research and I'm in too deep.

Since January I've had this back injury and now I'm doing 2 hours of physical therapy 3x a week. I just pulled myself out of a BAD depressive slump. Writing has NOT been going well... but I'm actually back to making progress and trying to be disciplined in writing daily.

After discussing it with my boyfriend, I've decided to extend graduation again, but this time until December. I'm honestly not sure I even need all that time, realistically, but it'll be the same price as just going over the summer, and give me 2x the time to work. It just seems smart. Especially with half of my committee travelling abroad the next few months for field work.

My mother did not take it well (as usual) and said a lot of shitty things about me taking to long to finish my masters when it should have taken 2 years, how I'm stressing *her* out, my loans (which are 100% under my name btw). I'm mostly frustrated with her because she said I can't listen to my boyfriend's advice because he dropped out of our undergrad archaeology program. My boyfriend is amazingly supportive and genuinely just a wonderful person, so.... it pissed me off. I'm avoiding speaking to her for awhile.

I just wanted to rant but I guess if anyone reads this, I'd like them to take away from it that it doesn't matter how long school takes. It doesn't matter if you drop out. Doing something you are happy with is important. I might not be graduating when I thought I would, nothing may have gone as planned, but when I turn this thesis in its going to be the best one I can write. I'm going to be proud of it and have worked really hard to accomplish something, and thats all that matters.