As an overall note for fellow nomadic academics I feel like reporting from a conference I recently attended. The hot potato topic was careers for young researchers. The first panel stressed the following points:
There are lots of grants out there for brilliant ideas, you just need to be aware of them.
The paradox: You need to demonstrate your ability to get grants for your research in order to get a tenured position in a university, BUT you need a position in a university to be eligible to apply for a grant (catch-22 situation… as a fellow researcher pointed out).
The advice: Be mobile! Spend the whole of your late twenties and thirties hopping from one country to the next wherever you find an available research job. A strategy that resembles seasonal agricultural workers, who follow the harvest map: oranges in Spain, strawberries in England, olives in Italy, grapes in France… and so on…
In the meantime we have to forget we are human. That we have families and social networks (more sophisticated name for friends and drinking buddies), partners and above all our favorite bakeries, coffee shops ect… From the outside our jobs look very glamorous (if someone has not looked at our paycheck that is), traveling around the world, researching stimulating ideas, meeting other brilliant (although often sort of autistic) people.
The tradeoff is that we never have one stable point of reference. We constantly need to build new social networks. Our best friends are normally in another country, if not spread around the globe and our family most of the times lives in a place without accessible universities. Our partner is having the same career path, which means (s)he is changing jobs and countries more often than a shirt, and we never (or rarely) are lucky enough to be on the same side of a river (or the Atlantic ocean come to that). Being on our productive age we need to focus on our career… but simultaneously being on the re-productive age too… we need to make some choices. The potential parents have about a thousand km or more between them, which does not constitute a healthy growing-up environment for any child.
So we are faced with a clear choice. Reject that post-doc position in the other side of the continent from your partner or freeze your eggs!
Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Thursday, 10 September 2009
The EU Health and Safety Regulations and the sheep
You go one lovely Sunday (or whatever other day your country tells you to), and you vote for them. Then they go to Brussels and discuss things. The newspapers do not write about them, because they are too technical, who wants to read them after all, we want to sell some copies anyway… The Brussels people ask doctors, lobbyists, all kinds or random people full of knowledge.
Then they make a bill. Then they vote for it. Then it passes.
And then I go to work, turn on my computer, and five minutes later a sheep appears on my screen. It tells me: Hey dude, you are working too much, time to do some hand exercises. I press cancel. Ten minutes later it appears again, this time proposing some neck stretches. In the meantime I have lost the idea I am working on. The poor idea is lost in the deep gaze of a stupid sheep. Black, for your information.
And so the story goes. Every ten minutes I get a set of stretches, if put together they would give me a full pilates course.
As if that was not enough, seven and a half hours later the sheep tells me: You worked enough, your time is up! Time to switch of your computer, the sheep wants you to fuck off!
Has anybody informed this damn sheep that I am an academic? We LIVE in front of the computer. We need an Ethernet cable to breath! This sheep works in an academic institution, someone at some point has to teach it some manners!
And so has the EU invaded my life. First in a good way (paying my salary and exempting me from taxes) and then… through the sheep.
Oh not again! Now it is time to stretch my legs.
Farewell!
Baaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..
Then they make a bill. Then they vote for it. Then it passes.
And then I go to work, turn on my computer, and five minutes later a sheep appears on my screen. It tells me: Hey dude, you are working too much, time to do some hand exercises. I press cancel. Ten minutes later it appears again, this time proposing some neck stretches. In the meantime I have lost the idea I am working on. The poor idea is lost in the deep gaze of a stupid sheep. Black, for your information.
And so the story goes. Every ten minutes I get a set of stretches, if put together they would give me a full pilates course.
As if that was not enough, seven and a half hours later the sheep tells me: You worked enough, your time is up! Time to switch of your computer, the sheep wants you to fuck off!
Has anybody informed this damn sheep that I am an academic? We LIVE in front of the computer. We need an Ethernet cable to breath! This sheep works in an academic institution, someone at some point has to teach it some manners!
And so has the EU invaded my life. First in a good way (paying my salary and exempting me from taxes) and then… through the sheep.
Oh not again! Now it is time to stretch my legs.
Farewell!
Baaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..
Sunday, 14 September 2008
EPOP-ing
The name hints towards light alcoholic drinks up to 5% and normally of a non-edible looking colour. If you chose that option your error term would hit the ceiling. (And if you did not understand this comment, give up reading this entry now.)
In a weekend full of numbers and various ways to operationalize concepts so abstract that could not be described with anything less a three volume edition of 200 different academic definitions. And yet, call me weird (cause of course this is what I am) I felt like a fish in its well known waters.
I mean think about it. An academic conference is the best type of holiday one can ever wish. It is in a new place, with all trivial matters left for skilled admin stuff, accommodation and food sorted, and endless amounts of coffee and good quality wine. The people there are more or less familiar to one another. But even if you end up in the wrong corner full of strangers at a coffee break there are endless options for conversation. This structured environment allows even those with the worse social skills to find common ground and engage into meaningful and fruitful conversation. It is a very inclusive event, bridging the gap among generations, genders and all kinds of other categorizations. There is only one thing that you can be discriminated against: Your inability to interpret statistics. And by statistics I do not mean percentages, means and standard deviations. I mean econometric models. If you cannot tell a story just by looking at numbers on the given table, then you are regarded with pity (Poor chap he needs work to do) or disrespect (What do you expect of qualitative analysis? Or - God forbid - theory??)
Each and every one of the delegates can come up with a theoretical model to explain even how many times tony Blair farts during an electoral campaign, and for sure at least a thousand different was to test this model. The Nomad is no different. She runs models for living. And not the models with breasts and long legs, but rather the ones with constant values and beta coefficients.
Socializing in such environment is very rewarding, you never get challenged in personal terms, the only criticism is on your numbers and the ability to make jokes is considered just as a positive extra. Any romance appearing in such conference has definitely a statistical connotation and inevitably a huge standard error. There is only so much stats one can take to his bedroom. Although my personal belief is that two theorists (aka philosophers in disguise) are truly a nightmarish combination, and the end of human breeding, come to that. I wonder though what is a better gene pool. A number cruncher or a theorist?
On my way back from the conference, I feel refreshed, motivated, completely ego-boosted and while the others around me in the train read their books, I explain their political behaviour running a brand new econometric model. If only they knew, ignorant lot…that while they are just being transferred from one place to the other a genius political scientist is using them as unwilling guinea pigs!
PS. The term genius used here has no empirical evidence. It is an opportunity for further research. (Someone switch off the EPOP mode on the Nomad please!)
In a weekend full of numbers and various ways to operationalize concepts so abstract that could not be described with anything less a three volume edition of 200 different academic definitions. And yet, call me weird (cause of course this is what I am) I felt like a fish in its well known waters.
I mean think about it. An academic conference is the best type of holiday one can ever wish. It is in a new place, with all trivial matters left for skilled admin stuff, accommodation and food sorted, and endless amounts of coffee and good quality wine. The people there are more or less familiar to one another. But even if you end up in the wrong corner full of strangers at a coffee break there are endless options for conversation. This structured environment allows even those with the worse social skills to find common ground and engage into meaningful and fruitful conversation. It is a very inclusive event, bridging the gap among generations, genders and all kinds of other categorizations. There is only one thing that you can be discriminated against: Your inability to interpret statistics. And by statistics I do not mean percentages, means and standard deviations. I mean econometric models. If you cannot tell a story just by looking at numbers on the given table, then you are regarded with pity (Poor chap he needs work to do) or disrespect (What do you expect of qualitative analysis? Or - God forbid - theory??)
Each and every one of the delegates can come up with a theoretical model to explain even how many times tony Blair farts during an electoral campaign, and for sure at least a thousand different was to test this model. The Nomad is no different. She runs models for living. And not the models with breasts and long legs, but rather the ones with constant values and beta coefficients.
Socializing in such environment is very rewarding, you never get challenged in personal terms, the only criticism is on your numbers and the ability to make jokes is considered just as a positive extra. Any romance appearing in such conference has definitely a statistical connotation and inevitably a huge standard error. There is only so much stats one can take to his bedroom. Although my personal belief is that two theorists (aka philosophers in disguise) are truly a nightmarish combination, and the end of human breeding, come to that. I wonder though what is a better gene pool. A number cruncher or a theorist?
On my way back from the conference, I feel refreshed, motivated, completely ego-boosted and while the others around me in the train read their books, I explain their political behaviour running a brand new econometric model. If only they knew, ignorant lot…that while they are just being transferred from one place to the other a genius political scientist is using them as unwilling guinea pigs!
PS. The term genius used here has no empirical evidence. It is an opportunity for further research. (Someone switch off the EPOP mode on the Nomad please!)
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Methodology and sex
Another painful meeting with my supervisor finished today after two hours of... pain in my back. That is what you get after going to the gym twice the day before in an effort to unload stress. So the result was more doubts about my theory, methodology, operationalisations, results, analysis... my intelectual abilities in a nutshell... But what the hell, that is part of being a PhD student, it is written in the contract.
So I got home, playing my part.. half in tears (because the only two passionate relationships of a Phd student I can think of are with the supervisor and the PhD Director!) but... this did not last long. Me being a little devil had pinned on the wall the following quote that just forced a strong laughter out of me... and reminded me that in the struggle for good methods I am not the only one who fails hundred times before I succeed. Maybe it is useful to the rest of the world too:
"Methodology is like sex. It is better demonstrated than discussed, though often better anticipated than experienced"
Wise man the guy who wrote it. Ed Leamer (1983) Let's take the con out of Econometrics, American Economic Review, 23, 1, 31-43.
So I got home, playing my part.. half in tears (because the only two passionate relationships of a Phd student I can think of are with the supervisor and the PhD Director!) but... this did not last long. Me being a little devil had pinned on the wall the following quote that just forced a strong laughter out of me... and reminded me that in the struggle for good methods I am not the only one who fails hundred times before I succeed. Maybe it is useful to the rest of the world too:
"Methodology is like sex. It is better demonstrated than discussed, though often better anticipated than experienced"
Wise man the guy who wrote it. Ed Leamer (1983) Let's take the con out of Econometrics, American Economic Review, 23, 1, 31-43.
Monday, 7 August 2006
PhD sayings
When you get your BA you know a little bit about everything, when you get your PhD you know a lot about nothing.
Or as I would put it you know a lot about the fact you know nothing.
The first saying came from my collegue, a PhD in Pysics. Second one by Socrates... but I adjusted it to fit the PhD reality. Just keeping in mind that I share the office with a PhD in physics, a PhD in criminology, a PhD-in-waiting in American politics and a PhD-in-waiting in Sociology, one can only hope that someone will know what he is doing in this office. (I can't say I am convinced...)
Day by day, working so hard on it, I feel I am losing knowledge instead of gaining more, let alone creating some as a PhD is suppose to do.
First draft almost done and yet... no new knowledge for the world. What a tragedy.
Or as I would put it you know a lot about the fact you know nothing.
The first saying came from my collegue, a PhD in Pysics. Second one by Socrates... but I adjusted it to fit the PhD reality. Just keeping in mind that I share the office with a PhD in physics, a PhD in criminology, a PhD-in-waiting in American politics and a PhD-in-waiting in Sociology, one can only hope that someone will know what he is doing in this office. (I can't say I am convinced...)
Day by day, working so hard on it, I feel I am losing knowledge instead of gaining more, let alone creating some as a PhD is suppose to do.
First draft almost done and yet... no new knowledge for the world. What a tragedy.
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