Depression in Graduate School

I have just run into two fantastic posts on the experience of having depression in graduate school. The first, "Even Scientists Get the Blues,"is by a science student who puts a personal face on the isolation, lack of structure and open-ended nature of running experiments as you work on your dissertation. The second is a short slide-show/movie with personal comments by three graduate students who are struggling with issues such as the competitiveness of fellow students, the harshness of professors, and the endless hours of work. It's called "Depression in Graduate Students."

I applaud these people for telling their first-person stories. So many graduate students have told me that just knowing that they were not alone in their suffering made them feel less pain while in graduate school.

Deconstruction gone wild

Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu

CAMBRIDGE, MA-Out of sheer habit, English grad student Jon Rosenblatt tried to interpret the message within his Burrito Bandito menu.

It's finally happened. As reported in the Onion, a Harvard University English graduate student has gone off the deep end and used his hard-earned skills of deconstructing for evil instead of good. Yes, Jon Rosenblatt has deconstructed a Mexican fast-food menu.

As his roommate explained, "He has become so steeped in the complex jargon of critical theory that he's unable to resist the urge to deconstruct even the most mundane things."

You can read all the details of this tragic story here.

Grad-school-ruled notebook paper

Mead Releases New Grad-School-Ruled Notebook

RICHMOND, VA—Company officials say the new notebooks feature lines 3.55 millimeters apart, making them "infinitely more practical" for postgraduate work than the 7.1 millimeter college-ruled notebooks.

The Onion, always up-to-date with the latest innovations for highly educated people, reports that graduate students will no longer have to put up with inferior college-ruled paper, which is only meant for undergraduates. Because of the higher level of learning demanded of graduate students, they will get their own paper, with even more narrow lines.

You'll be happy to know that "the notebooks are currently available in several special grad-school-edition colors, including alabaster, saffron, vermilion, and, for girl graduate students, periwinkle."

What they didn't teach you in graduate school

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education has some truly useful career tips for junior professors. It is adapted from What They Didn't Teach You in Graduate School: 199 Helpful Hints for Success in Your Academic Career (Stylus Publishing, 2008). Included are tips about topics such as:

• Departmental politics
• Where to publish
• When to serve as an editor
• Why to change your career or move
  

I've just ordered the book from Stylus -- I'll let you know what I think.

Don't overdo your will power quotient

We only have a limited supply of willpower in our brains at any one time, reports an article in the NY Times. If we use up that supply resisting dessert, giving extra time to students instead of taking a nap, or staying within our budget, we won't have anything left over.

How does this willpower limitation apply to academics? One of the biggest struggles for academics is having the willpower to write on a daily basis. Because there is no one out there calling up each graduate student or professor and asking them how their writing went that day, it is extremely difficult for them to nail their butt to the chair and just write something. So days without writing become weeks without writing, which leads to unfinished dissertations, low publication records, and reams of research that the world isn't learning about.

The fact that we all struggle with willpower in so many areas of life is one reason I came up with the Academic Writing Club. Why use up all your energy trying to go it alone, when you can lean on the support and encouragement of many others just like you? It's a simple but powerful principle. Save all that willpower for organizing your closet or going green.

Mini-hint to help with editing: fact sheets

A client of mine recently told me about a technique one of her grad school peers uses to get a handle on all the information he's trying to incorporate into a chapter. He creates what he calls "fact sheets." Each fact sheet has one sub-topic or question at the top of a page, and under it he collects his notes and thoughts on that one topic. My client has been using this technique as she edits a chapter, and says that this helps her review her notes in a "somewhat orderly fashion."

How do you get a handle on all the information that is piling up in folders in your computer or on your desk? How do you make sure it all makes it into your writing?

Warning to Ph.D.'s going to Germany

Do you plan to present a paper at a conference in Germany? Or even worse, are you applying for a job there? Then you'd be better be careful what you call yourself. A Washington Post Article that came out today states, "Americans with PhDs beware: Telling people in Germany that you're a doctor could land you in jail." Apparently no one outside of the European Union can call herself "Dr.," even if she has worked at the Max Planck Institute for 10 years and has a Ph.D. from an elite university in the States. So, caveat scholasticus (ok, I don't speak Latin, but that's my best guess at "Scholar, beware"). Or perhaps I should say, Herr oder Frau Doktor, seien Sie vorsichtig (ok, I don't speak German, either.) But consider yourself warned.

Using EverNote for academic research

I have been rediscovering EverNote today. One of the members of the Friends group in the Academic Writing Club, which I participate in as well as run, brought up EverNote today and wondered who had introduced her to it. Well, it was me! I had tried an early beta version once and it had crashed my computer, so I had been wary to try it again. But she said she used it daily, so I re-downloaded it, and I'm excited about it all over again.

It's a deceptively simple program. I say deceptive because it appears at first glance that it's like a running note pad or journal, where you can write notes, copy and paste, or drag and drop anything that you find online or that you're working on in your computer, and store it chronologically. And that would be reason enough to use it, as far as I'm concerned. But it's a whole lot more. You can assign keywords and categories to each note, use the various templates that are loaded on to create to-do lists, or meeting notes, for example; or download lots of other templates available online such as a template for writing your notes on an article you just read. So you can capture all of your thoughts, all the articles, web sites, notes or even drawings and doodles (if you have a tablet) that you don't want to lose, and you have a way of finding them later.

If you think you might like to try it for your academic research, be sure and check out this post by GTD Wannabe. Also follow the links to the templates that s/he has created, including the aforementioned reading template. GTDW has created a pretty involved system of cross-referencing your readings, things you need to read, and locations where you can find your readings.

EverNote is a free download with all features enabled. After 60 days, if you want to access advanced features, such as image and text recognition, you have to pay ($49.95) although I think a lot of people would be happy with it without those features.