Happy Dance!

After two years of waiting for my advisor two read it and one round of revisions, my manuscript has been accepted!!

Posts Elsewhere

Today, I give advice to incoming graduate students over at Engineer Blogs.  Admitedly, half or more of it is basically "don't do what I did", but shh...

Outreach & CVs

A question for the professors in the audience: how would you classify/interpret outreach curriculum development on a CV for someone interested in teaching positions?

To clarify, I'm currently working on putting together several panel modules of demonstration experiments to present at next year's local steampunk convention. I'll be working heavily from the materials I got from volunteering at Teacher Camp, but I'm really trying to orient it towards my audience, so there will be a lot of customization. All in all, I'm hoping to do 3-4 panels this year, and add more variety as there is interest in future years. It's not a traditional outreach audience, as the K-12 members of the audience will likely be the minority.

My program offers fairly limited opportunities to teach, and pretty much no opportunities to develop courses. I was able to snag one of the few TA positions where you get any chance to lecture, and have more interaction with students than answering homework questions at recitation. I see this both as a way to get more practice teaching and a way to share my knowledge with an interested audience (I'm developing these panels at the request of some non-sciency friends).

Is there anything I should try and do to document these? Specific feedback I should ask for? Should outreach even be on my CV?

Comparing Paths to Grad School

I got to go to dinner last night with a friend from high school/ undergrad. He's also doing the grad school shtick, but for very different reasons, so it's very interesting to compare our experiences. He couldn't find a job after graduation, so applied to a master's program. He's already TA'ed for more time than I likely will in my entire program, and is on a much smaller stipend in a more expensive city. He's got one eye on the door, and would be willing to leave for a job if it came along.

I knew in middle school that I wanted my PhD, and have planned a lot of things accordingly. Because I'm planning to stick it out, I'm much more concerned about my relationship with my advisor, and much more willing to work long hours. He's currently on a three week road trip, something I couldn't imagine doing at this point in my PhD program (mostly because there's rarely a window long enough). On the other hand, even as much as I struggle with my advisor, I seem to enjoy the day-to-day aspects of my work more than he does. While changing advisors has crossed my mind, leaving altogether almost never has.

Right now, he's getting paid very little for something he's not really enjoying, and probably will be doing for another year until he can get a degree out of it. I've probably got another 3ish years, and even on days where I get frustrated with my work, I'm frustrated because I care a lot about what I'm doing and want it to work.

Maybe grad school was the right choice after all?

Give Teachers a Chance

Since moving to GiantU, I've been able to help out with the ASM Teacher Camp program. This year, due to scheduled server outages, I was able to help for a larger portion of the week. The program combines time in the classroom with time in the lab. One of the things I noticed this year was the emphasis on how to bring these new concepts to class for as little money as possible.

Many of these teachers, after replacing broken glassware, getting safety gear, and ordering basics, have roughly 1$ per student left to bring demos into class. The equipment budget of a single graduate student in my department pretty much dwarfs their annual budget for 100+ kids. These teachers are amazingly resourceful with what limited money they have. There are apparently hundreds of things you can do with a 3$ box of borax.

This program receives lots of donations from companies, and at the end of the week, the teachers get a goody bag with all sorts of supplies to do these demos, and lists of the cheapest places to find supplies. For some of them, this bag is what makes it possible to bring what they've learned at camp back to their classes at all. Even so, limited supplies mean students will only be able to watch, not do.

So if we really want to get more kids interested in the STEM fields, let's start with giving their teachers a fighting chance. Programs like Donors Choose are a way to reach out to specific classrooms. But if wonks in Washington are really serious about getting more young people interested in science, give their science teachers a fighting chance, and a budget to buy enough supplies for hands-on experiments, not just a few demonstrations.

Remembering Why I Do This

In spite of the flaws we've found, we've resubmitted the paper for another round of review. Once we hear back, it'll be time to discuss whether it's time for the Project That Won't Die to finally be laid to rest.

Helping distract me from worrying about this, teacher camp is back! So while I am in manuscript limbo, I'm volunteering to help teachers learn about materials science concepts, and helping demo labs. I forget how energizing teaching is for me when I don't do it for awhile. Teachers make great students, because they really listen. They ask lots of questions, both about the science and what it's like being a female engineer. It's a great chance to really share what I do love about what I do, and why I do it.

Today was metals, but over the week, we'll cover most of the basic materials classes (but not composites). I'm glad I have this week to follow up last week.

Radio Silence

Sorry about the quiet. It's hard to blog right now when I'm essentially mourning the loss of two years of data, because my co-author didn't do proper due-diligence, and I trusted what he gave me. Paper was submitted for review, and while most of the review was positive, and I think we'll be able to get the first paper out, a recommend reference has more or less invalidated everything we'd lined up for the next few manuscripts. The reference in question is experimental data that my co-author couldn't find, and points out some flaws in our potential that can't be ignored for the other manuscripts.

It doesn't help that I would have left my PI if I didn't think I had 3-4 papers worth of data when I considered leaving. So I'm also kicking myself about that.

I guess it's a good thing I'm working on 4 different projects at once. Still sucks.