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1500 questions
49
votes
7 answers

Toxic, harassing lab environment

I have just started a research position (around 2.5 months ago) at a top-10 university. I am having my own funding and was initially quite excited about the opportunity, and did and do love my project. I have some trouble with the mentorship,…
TestGuest
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49
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8 answers

Retract an already submitted recommendation letter (written for an undergrad student)

In the middle of the current semester, a student in my large lecture class (of an undergraduate course) asked me for a letter of recommendation, to supplement his application to transfer to another, much stronger, school. (In case this matters: this…
zipirovich
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49
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5 answers

What's the purpose of writing one's academic biography in the third person?

I see some academics – both professors and grad students – write their biography on their university webpages in the third person, and it sounds really weird. What's the purpose of writing about oneself, e.g. research accomplishments, research…
user106769
49
votes
4 answers

How do I ensure that a search committee won't contact my current colleagues (that are not references) to ask about me?

I once applied to a job (in the US) where the search committee unexpectedly contacted one of my colleagues to ask about my job performance. This individual was not one of my references. I had never heard of this practice before, and now that I'm…
Richard
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49
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16 answers

Is it unreasonable to expect students to read the lecture notes before attending the first class?

The new semester will be starting in a few weeks, and I will be teaching a course which starts on the first day of the semester. The goal of the course is to teach students how to use the R programming language to clean and analyze data. I will…
I Like to Code
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49
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5 answers

How to find a good topic for a PhD research proposal?

In many countries an application for a PhD position includes a written research proposal, so my questions is what are some advises/strategies to come up with a good topic/idea for a PhD research proposal and how can one assess the…
tobigue
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49
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2 answers

Listing a Stack Overflow user as co-author for having provided substantial programming support

I received a lot of help from an active Stack Overflow user in my undergrad summer research project, which was based on statistical physics. Now, I'm writing a paper on it under my professor's supervision. The professor knows about the help I…
user96200
49
votes
8 answers

Legality of downloading books from websites such as Library Genesis

I am an international student who will be joining a graduate program at a US university starting Fall '18. In my home country, I have used such websites as Library Genesis and BookFi to download textbooks, from such publishers as Springer etc.,…
user82261
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49
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8 answers

Cheated on an exam when I was eight years old. Should I tell graduate admissions?

I cheated at a language exam when I was eight years old. I finished early and noticed that I had accidentally left a dictionary in my drawer. I double-checked my answers and promptly got caught. The incident is probably unverifiable at this point:…
Allure
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48
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8 answers

Saying no to student requests for excessive appointments and help solving homework

I am relatively new to teaching University undergraduate classes in mathematics. One of the harder things I've had to do is to say 'no'. To somehow respectfully deny a student what they're asking for. For example, very recently, a student has been…
user82663
48
votes
5 answers

Can one excel in graduate school with a demanding family life?

The essential gist of my question relates to what the real, unvarnished realities are of graduate, post-graduate, research, fellowship, and professorship attainment - when you aren't a single person with no pressing demands other than feeding…
vector_unknown
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48
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6 answers

Professor to whom I broke my promise is now a collaborator. What to say?

7 years ago, I got a PhD offer from professor X. Thinking that I would have no chance with other applications, I accepted it. I signed the offer, and the HR was helping me with the enrollment process. But then I unexpectedly got another offer, and I…
sean
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48
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6 answers

How to avoid thinking about research in free time?

I work on research, trying to get grants and publish papers and the like, I really like my job, could not think about doing anything else. When the weekend comes, or just free time I have the problem that I can not stop thinking on research, it does…
Open the way
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48
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3 answers

What happens if someone publishes a paper on your current PhD thesis topic

This is not in any way relevant to me, I'm just interested. What would happen if you chose a PhD thesis to work on, and halfway through someone somewhere in the world who was also doing a PhD in the same field published their thesis, which just…
Bluefire
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48
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8 answers

Is it plagiarism if someone else came up with something before you did?

Say you come up with an idea, but X already has written about it before, even though you don't know about this. Is it plagiarism to then publish the idea, even if during publishing you still are not aware that X came up with this idea first? That…
user56834
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