It feels weird to be giving advice to first-year faculty, because I still feel like I don’t know anything, but my spouse recently pointed out that I’m now more senior than most of the people I turned to for advice during my first year…

Interesting read wirh important implications for how we think about research quality.

I bought this book in the beginning of the year after coming into some gift card money for my local indie bookstore. Last summer, a mental health counselor on campus had recommended it as something I might look into; he hadn’t read the book himself, but it had come highly recommended from a colleague. I’m glad I picked up a copy, but I’m not sure it’s as good as I hoped it would be.

This is a darker version of some of the thoughts I had when I first heard about the “PhD comparison.” Before you click through to the article, I also want to use this short post as a complaint that I don’t think “intelligence” is a thing—and that PhDs certainly wouldn’t be a measure of it if it were.

Let’s be honest: I’d much rather be at my department’s writing retreat today (with free lunch, to boot!) and that my kid be going to (definitely not free) summer camp. All that said, I’m deeply grateful that a professor’s schedule is flexible enough that I can respond to a sick kid pretty easily.

I don’t know if I love or hate that McSweeney’s has so much content for academia.

Too much truth in this.

One of my favorite perks of academia is finding a personally interesting book through the university library.

Plagiarism is clearly bad, but its weaponization as part of a culture war could well he worse. I don’t love the idea of its escalation. Gift link.

The bassist for one of my favorite bands is an academic by day, which must be the reason why they have the only song I’ve ever heard with “post doc” in the lyrics.