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1500 questions
58
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11 answers

What can professors do to encourage properly written email messages from students?

(Motivated by https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55082/hey-i-was-wondering-of-your-students-write-like-this) The writing style probably [stems] from the electronic age of text messaging. In any case, an email between an a student and…
aparente001
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2 answers

How do we end the culture of “endless hours at work”?

In many of the research groups I’ve worked at or visited, there is a culture that endless hours in the lab equal successful researcher. (I am in a theoretical field, so requirement of long-running experiments are outside of the picture. Let's ignore…
F'x
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58
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8 answers

Anonymous Student Feedback: Moving forward from abusive comments

As a relatively new lecturer, I'm always looking for ways to improve my teaching. After doing a bit of research around how different lecturers etc approach student feedback, a number had stated that using anonymous feedback solicited during the…
postagepaid
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58
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11 answers

How to make thesis-writing feel less tedious?

I'm about to finish my master's thesis on a TCS topic (algorithms). I'm quite happy with my results; the most engaging part of the thesis was grappling with getting up to speed on the state of the art, then taking that and developing new and/or more…
G. Bach
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6 answers

How should a teaching-assistant deal with an angry student?

This happened two semesters ago, when I was teaching-assistant to a class of bachelor students. The lecturer had such marking weights, 30% for teaching assistant class including all the homework and his quizzes and 70% to the midterm and final…
enthu
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58
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7 answers

Do universities hire graduates from lesser universities?

Recently, someone analyzed computer science professors at top universities and found that over half of the professors at the top 51 universities graduated from a top 10 university. Others have also brought this up. From my personal observations,…
Austin Henley
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3 answers

Is it necessary to ask permission before including someone in the acknowledgements of a research paper?

I had the impression that obtaining written permission before including someone in acknowledgements was required. Therefore, I just wrote to someone asking for written permission to include him in the acknowledgements of a paper, and he said he…
Faheem Mitha
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58
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11 answers

Why do American universities cost so much?

Being from Russia, the idea of paying 5-6 digit sums for a university education sounds ludicrous. I understand that prices in the US are different but surely there have to be cheaper options. Besides, if your education operates like a free market,…
Iam Cleaver
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58
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7 answers

PI asked me to remove a student from author's list, but I disagree

I am a postdoc at the lab of, say, Prof. Johnson. Together with a few students and external collaborators, we performed a research study and sent a manuscript for publication, where I am the leading and corresponding author. Prof. Johnson and I…
Julio Cruz
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14 answers

Is there a single example of an outsider considered a "crank" publishing a ground-breaking result that was found to be correct (in the last 30 years)?

I'm interested mainly in mathematical and related fields, in which several important and famous open questions exist (e.g., Riemann Hypothesis). Almost every day a new "amateur" scholar (meaning, someone with no formal affiliation to a reputable…
Dilworth
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58
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9 answers

My research supervisor is asking me to fake results, what do I do?

My research supervisor wanted to produce a cost-benefit analysis for an infrastructure project (civil engineering). First he had someone else work on it, then he involved me. When I got involved, I noticed that the benefits were inflated and the…
IfeelExploited
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58
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11 answers

My PI is publicly humiliating me: Why would a PI do this and what can I do to mitigate the damage from this?

My principal investigator (PI) and I tend to get along pretty well; however, he is often moody and has some quirks about him. Sometimes this means that he is in a bad mood and will take it out on me. He is also very gossipy about other people at the…
user135806
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58
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10 answers

Is it appropriate to email a professor with a simpler solution than the one she provided?

I am in a graduate math program in the US, and the professor is teaching via online lectures. The proof she provideed for one of the theorems is a little bit tricky to understand. I think I found a proof that, though is about the same length, I…
Blue
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58
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13 answers

Stuck without progress working on thesis - worried about failure

I am a student of Indian origin. I am Studying Mechanical Engineering in a local university in north of Germany. I am writing my thesis in a company. My task is to optimize the throughput of the line. I tried to apply 2-3 concepts on optimization to…
K3yur
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13 answers

Does academia have a lazy work culture?

I'm a rising sophomore at a top US university, and I've become really fascinated with the world of academia over the past year -- so much so that I'm considering doing a PhD after I graduate and entering it myself. But there's something about…
gtoques
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