This is a guest post by Mikhail Klassen, a PhD candidate at McMaster University. He writes about work and life within and beyond academia at The UnStudent Blog. When I speak to other graduate students, they tend to say that they love doing science, but that they are anxious about what they’ll do after graduation. [...]
An adviser’s role is to mold today’s grad students into tomorrow’s scholars. How can advisers best prepare their students for academic success? And how can grad students ensure they have a fruitful relationship with their advisers? An article at ProfHacker, 5 Tips for Being the Adviser Your Grad Student Needs, looks at five things you [...]
We talk a lot about how to get into grad school, how to get that first (and second, and third…) postdoc, how to nail the interview….but then what? Once you’ve achieved tenure, is there any more career advice to learn? Absolutely! Post-tenure can be quite a different world from everything that came before. That’s why [...]
This is a guest post by communication expert Lisa B. Marshall. Lisa writes The Public Speaker column at Quick and Dirty Tips where she provides tips on how to be engaging and memorable every time you speak. This article is also available as a podcast. Writing thank you notes has become a lost art form. [...]
For some light Friday reading, John Johnson has compiled a collection of posts on mental health issues, including resources on depression, imposter syndrome, and work-life balance. Click here to read more.
This post was inspired by a question from John Johnson. Have you ever wanted to plot a model spectrum at lower resolution? Or compare a model spectrum with an observed spectrum? Have you ever wanted to shift several observed spectra to a common redshift to stack them up? In all these cases, you would need to resample [...]
I have started the new rumor mill pages for 2013-2014 (yes it IS time for job-hunting season again) and I have relegated the 2012-2013 pages to the archives. All links to “Rumor Mill” will still work and point to the postdoc rumor mill page for the new year. Remember, we have a page for postdoc/term positions and [...]
Looking for a good, simple electronic notebook but not convinced that Evernote is right for you? If you’re a Mac user, have you taken a recent look at the updated Apple Notes? The MacObserver has a great article on how to get the most out of this revamped note-taking application: The Notes app has [...]
This is a guest post by Brian R. Kent, an astronomer at NRAO. Astronomy is a visually stunning science. From wide-field multi-wavelength images to high-resolution 3D simulations, astronomers produce many kinds of important visualizations. Astronomical visualizations have the potential for generating aesthetically appealing images and videos, as well as providing scientists with the ability to [...]
Astronomy Computing Today offers 10 Best Practices for Scientific Computing, itself a summary of a paper by Wilson et al.: Best Practices for Scientific Computing. Software is now considered by many as a scientific instrument, and it has assumed the same importance as “telescopes and test tubes”…[however it] is not yet developed, tested and validated with [...]