What reference manager do you use?

I’ve been using endnote because the university buys it for us and I like it better than refworks.

Recently one of my new coauthors has been using Zotero and it has a lot of advantages over endnotes, so I’m thinking about switching.

What reference manager do you use and what do you like or dislike about it?

How to make an exam

Advice my mom gave me ages ago plus things I’ve picked over the years– YMMV:

The first question should always be one that like 80-90% or more of the class can get.  Make it an easy question that will decrease student anxiety as they ease into the exam.

The last question (or second to last– I often end on a “fun” question that’s just an opinion if it’s a take-home exam, though not if it is in-class) should be the type that separates A students from B students.  I try to do this, but I am really bad at calibrating what each year’s class of students will find difficult– generally when they ask me what previous classes have trouble with, they study that part hard and nail it.  (This year nearly everybody got the interactions problem on the midterm.)

I have colleagues who want people to be able to do the exam quickly.  I had massive test anxiety and having a short time limit, even if without the anxiety I’d be able to finish within it, would cause me to completely forget everything the second I turned the exam over.  I also don’t want to punish people who find a mistake they made if they don’t have time to fix it, since in that case sometimes not fixing it optimizes your points if it takes you away from other problems.  For a 3 hour exam, I expect the modal student to be done by an hour and a half, my TA to be able to complete the exam in 45 minutes, and me to take 20-25 min.  Some students take the full time and I’m ok with that.

I’m a big fan of cheat sheets.  I think the creation of them helps with learning and, as someone with test anxiety, having that crutch always helped me remember what the class was about.  And in the world, being able to apply the formulas is generally more important than having the formulas memorized.  (This, of course, also affects the kinds of questions asked– you can’t do fill in the definition questions if people have cheat sheets.)

My MIL (who has also taught pedagogy) says students should never learn things during tests, but I disagree with her.  I think that sometimes the exam is the last chance to learn something.  Especially when I give take-homes.  But even an in-person exam can sometimes allow small insights if you, for example, request students do two things that are related and then compare their outputs (huh– these are the same!)– some students will have known that would happen because they paid attention in class and took the homework seriously, but for some students they’ll get it this time.

In terms of what to put on the exam– I think it’s important to not to try to trip students up– no trick questions.  I also think that the exam should focus on what is important in the class.  What’s tested should mirror what you hope they will remember for the next class if not for the rest of their lives.  (If they should remember it for the rest of their lives, then yes, you should test it!)

Grumpy Teachers– what exam tips to you have for the Grumpetariat?

Ask the Grumpies: Living in DC and affording twins going to college

Anon26 asks:

I am trying to figure out my plan and wonder if you have thoughts. We have twins and we live in DC, so I will have to pay two college tuitions simultaneously, and we don’t really have any public options. (The DC Tag program is a pittance.) We have only been in a position to actually save for the past year or so, and while we plan to contribute to 529s aggressively for the next several years, I don’t see how we will be able to cover anything close to 700 K without substantial loans (private tuition X 2 kids X 4 years), which is disheartening. I am pretty sure we won’t qualify for any aid with what I project our income to be at that point.

Huh, the DC Tag program is interesting.

DCTAG awards may be up to $10,000 per academic year toward the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition (awards will be reduced for less than full-time enrollment). The $10,000 maximum in this case may be distributed to your institution based on the academic calendar (semester, or quarters).

I’d never really thought about what people in DC do.  I guess everyone I know who works in DC lives in Virginia or Maryland or has young kids or was just planning on sending their kids to an Ivy league.  It looks like some really good state schools are represented, so they could go to, say, UCLA for ~33K.  That’s not so bad (though I assume that’s just tuition and doesn’t include room and board).  Michigan and UVA are way more.  UT would be ~31K.  So I dunno, that seems pretty reasonable for a family who is making 300K+ (aka, not eligible for financial aid at most privates).  If you’re concerned about money and haven’t been saving, then there are reasonably good public options if your kids can get into them.  That’s like, $280K plus room and board?  (Of course those numbers will go up every year, but it won’t be $700K.)

It has only been fairly recently that the FAFSA stopped giving a big benefit for financial aid if you have two kids in college at the same time.  From what I’m seeing on this DC Urban Mom post, there’s still some benefit at many private schools that use CSS in addition to the FAFSA, but that benefit varies across schools.  If you haven’t already, run some different scenarios across Net Private Cost calculators at schools of interest (google the name of your college and financial aid calculator).  That will give you a more realistic idea of how each school treats having a sibling in college.

Some lesser-known schools offer substantive twins scholarships.

Most of the private schools DC1 got into would have cost closer to $50K after merit aid than the $86K Carleton is costing — both of those sets of numbers include room and board in addition to tuition.  We were able to afford Carleton because we’d been saving $500/month since zie was born and the stock market had literally more than doubled what we put in (seriously, the cost basis for our withdrawals is less than 50% what we took out).  In retrospect we should have been completely maxing out our retirement instead, but we were following general retirement advice.  (And we did sacrifice a lot to get that 529 savings– every time I see bloggers who make/made a lot more than us complain about how we have an almost full 529 account, I have to bite my tongue about how much they could have saved if they didn’t go on multiple fancy vacations/year, didn’t buy cars so frequently, didn’t have a nanny, didn’t pay for private schools/fancy summer camps, etc.)  But that’s a sunk cost.  All you can do now is start funneling money in to target date 529 plans.  Loans are not the end of the world.

In terms of how to get college costs down otherwise– merit scholarships are still a thing.  If your kids are great scholars with great extra curriculars, if your kids are athletes, if they play needed musical instruments etc. etc. then they should get some merit aid at some of the schools they apply to, assuming they don’t just apply to ivies.  Some schools are more generous than others with merit aid– that’s something to look into.  And of course there’s the two years in community college option, but that’s not a great one if they’re aiming for a prestigious private after finishing (it’s fine if they plan to transfer to a prestigious public, though there may be some hiccups with transferring the full amount of credits, and most community colleges aren’t as good at retention).

So… to summarize.  There’s no magic bullet.  Go onto NPC (net private cost) calculators and put in a lot of different hypothetical scenarios and see what changes.  Save aggressively for college (while still not neglecting your retirement– you can get loans for college)– compound interest is magical.  Encourage your kids to do all the things that make them attractive college applicants.  Make sure they apply multiple places so you can compare aid packages.  Become ok with college loans.  Don’t give up on public schools.

Grumpy Nation:  Do you have advice for Anon26?

HW solutions got posted online

I had a cheating case last semester where it was abundantly clear that the students had a copy of a previous year’s homework solutions.  They even had the same typos.  They denied it and I had no proof, other than everything being identical, but I did search around and found that although that specific solution hadn’t been posted online, everything for my second semester class had.  (And a couple of assignments from the first semester class had as well.)

It looked like nothing important had been posted to chegg, but a lot of stuff was on course hero.

Irritatingly, I even recognized the names of the former students who had posted the solutions.  One of them had even worked for me as an RA!

If you’re teaching a class that has regular homework assignments, then you might want to take a moment to google your name and the class number or the full class number (Ex. ECON 411) just to see if your stuff has also been posted.  Then check out the major sites (course hero, chegg… I’m not sure what else) and search through them for your name or the course number.

It is relatively easy to put in a take-down notice– you don’t even need to sign up for the site.  You do have to give them your professional information and you have to say yes, this is mine, but that seems reasonable– if they really want my university number it’s on the university website for anyone to see.  Heck, it’s on the syllabi of mine they have posted.  (I don’t mind them having the syllabi, so I didn’t put take-down notices for that.)

For one of my requests they sent an email asking me to click a link or something, but for the others they just took the solutions down after a couple of days and informed me of the fact.

Do you teach any classes where students can copy solutions?  How do you deal with cheating?  How do you deal with solutions being readily available?

Ask the Grumpies: Good conference small talk questions

First Gen American asks:

What are good icebreaker questions when meeting people at conferences.

What are you working on these days?

Do you enjoy working at X?  What do you enjoy about working at X?

What do you teach?

I don’t know… I’m an introvert!

Grumpy Nation– Do you have better answers?

RBOCareer?

• UPDATE:  All the previous bullets were written before I was told “no”.  This is the second time I’ve been flown out for something that could have been a dream job and then been told “no” and given a reason, that, if true, would have meant they shouldn’t have flown me out in the first place.  I screwed up, and I don’t now how.  So far I have only ever been offered a job one place, and that place I was too sick from food poisoning to have one-on-one interviews.  I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.  How do I look good on paper and then just screw up so entirely when I get to in-person?  I don’t lick my fingers anymore (that was something I did on my first job market flyouts)!  This one hurts especially because at breakfast, the search head told me that they would be requesting me to upper admin no matter how well I performed during the day, but a few days later they told me they weren’t going to request me to upper admin because they were concerned it would hamper their ability to hire a macroeconomist in the future, which is something they didn’t need to fly me out to know.  (I am not a macroeconomist, everyone is hiring macroeconomists this year except this school plans to hire one in the future, not this year.)  I am feeling really really down on myself.  And worried about DC2.
• I’m currently at an R1 in the South and somewhat miserable.  There’s a lot of benefits to being in an R1– amazing libraries, mostly decent students, administrative staff, etc.  I’m highly valued by my colleagues, though not compensated for that value.
• Being in the South is killing me.
• It didn’t used to be this bad, but it has gotten rapidly worse.
• Also having a department head who is pushing me further and further into a “mommy” teaching and service role while she devotes resources to another (also female– it’s not sexist) colleague so her only responsibilities are research is a constant thought.  The most recent thing (the first thing was awarding her two chairs and putting her forward for another internal grant) is that this woman is being allowed to substitute online courses for in-person courses of the core classes that we teach.  But the online courses are canned– there’s no lecturing.  It’s just responding to comments on the website and holding office hours, which I do for the in-person classes as well.  The department head’s reasoning?  I’m a better teacher.  She’s been getting complaints from in-person students about this other prof who cancels class regularly and doesn’t get through the required material, so she needs to be rewarded for it with less onerous teaching.  In the past 3 years her research has taken off and mine has stagnated (not died, just not taken off).  Resentment about this makes me someone I don’t like anymore.  But not thinking about it is like not thinking about a purple elephant.
• I cannot handle being the only source of support for so many marginalized people.  I know I have a larger impact on folks here than I would in a normal place and they deserve so much more… but I just do not have the emotional bandwidth.  Seeing people as people should be the bare minimum and my doing that should not have an effect because that should be their day to day.  But also hearing people’s stories and knowing that one of my colleagues is an active TERF and many others are upset that we ever had DEI efforts to begin with…  and having to constantly shut down racist and sexist comments in class.  It’s really really tiring.  I wouldn’t mind over-correction in the other direction.
• And I’m worried about DC2’s high school experience.  They’re great at STEM but actively terrible at humanities.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be someplace where they’re allowed to read books together as a class, and those books have female and minority protagonists?
• But I am worried about leaving the marginalized students.
• I’m worried about leaving my 6 PhD students [update: possibly soon to be 7 since another one of the above bullet woman’s students wants to switch to me], many of whom have already lost their main advisor during their time as grad students.
• Oddly, I’m not worried about leaving the department in the lurch.  If they really valued my service, I would have been compensated for it.  My predecessors were compensated for their service and still have those chairs and permanent lower teaching loads despite not being very research active and cutting back on service.  The people after me are only compensated for research.
• If we move, it will be harder for DC2 to become national merit.  It will have impacts on which and whether or not DC2 can get into the school of her choice, particularly state schools.  Right now zie wants to be an economist but is also obsessed with all things science.  Zie wants to go to MIT for undergrad.
• All of this is to say.  I don’t know what is going to happen, but a well-endowed SLAC in a blue state (but isn’t Williams or Wellesley which are econ powerhouses) has requested permission from upper administration to hire me to run and build a program [Update: this turns out not to have been true, despite what I was told would happen].  I don’t know if they will get that permission, but if they do, I told them I would take it.
• My teaching load will be a little higher but only because I currently (as of this year) have a one-course reduction after I complained about being the head of so many important committees.  (The older full professors all came in with a lower teaching load standard.)  There are no course reductions for service, even being department head, at this SLAC.  My salary, thanks to me still not getting the equity bump that I was promised 3 years ago, would not drop– it would be the same or even increase a little.  (Though cost of living is higher.)  After a year, I would qualify for something like 30K/year in direct tuition payments for DC1’s last two years and DC2’s entire college (currently I would get 1K/year if DC2 attended my R1).  I would teach more preps (currently I usually have 2 preps because nobody wants to teach my required core courses– the new place already has people teaching them).  The students would be different– no business school means more “econ-bros.”
• When I visited, they complained about their administration becoming corporate.  I complained about my administration willfully fighting DEI and how the regents want to destroy liberal influences.
• When I write everything out, it seems like if I get a choice, the choice is obvious.
• But I worry that I am losing prestige.  That I won’t be able to write big papers anymore. But I’m already not doing that.  So why not be shunted into the “mommy” track somewhere I’m happier about it.
• I do have some (standard and) non-standard things I will want to negotiate at least for my first year or two as I’m getting my bearings.  I will have to think about them harder. [Update:  I guess not].
• I have applied to bunch of other places, but I’m not holding my breath given my not-so-stellar track record the past few years I’ve been applying. [Update:  Applying to more…]

Why can’t my graduate advisor remember what I’m doing?

When DH was in grad school he didn’t understand why his advisor didn’t seem to have a clue about what he was talking about at their monthly one-on-one meetings.  Thus the meetings were not that useful… until he talked about this with one of the senior members of his lab.

He’s busy, she said.  You need to come in every meeting and *start* with a summary of what you’re working on, what you discussed last time, and what you did.  Then he’ll remember and can give you actual useful advice about where you’re stuck now.

DH took her advice and it worked.  Meetings were way more useful after that.

I was PI of an interdisciplinary project and my head RA was a PhD student of a co-PI.  My co-PI got appointed dean of something and all of a sudden the RA was having the exact same problems DH had had with meetings.  I gave her the advice that DH had been given all those years ago, and it worked.

As a dissertation committee member pulled in all sorts of directions, I get it.  It’s not that I don’t care or wouldn’t remember the projects once they’re finished to the point where I have read a draft… but omg, remembering in the moment when I’m writing reports and dealing with coauthors, and grading exams etc.   There’s just a lot going on.  I know to say, ok, let’s take a step back… remind me…  and then I do remember, but it sure does help to give me some broad hints so we can get to the part where I will actually be useful.

So if your advisor seems scatterbrained or overworked, it’s not you, but you can take steps to deal with the potential consequences to you.

See also:  why your emails to faculty should usually be three lines long or less (or at the very least, you put the most important part that you want read in the first three lines)

Grad students and professors, what advice do you have for dealing with advisors/advisees?

Ask the grumpies: What would you tell earlier career you?

Steph asks:

 If you could talk to your past self at an earlier point in your career (say, starting grad school, finishing grad school, TT job hunting), what would you say?

Grad school:  Get therapy for test anxiety earlier.  Also:  DO NOT ALLOW THE PHARMACY TO CHANGE YOUR BIRTH CONTROL PILLS.  It doesn’t matter that Alesse went off formulary, the new version will make you crazy.

TT job hunting:  You will get a job.  It will be ok.

Mostly just:  Chill out.  Everything is going to be ok.

Surely grumpy nation has more interesting/better/more generalizable advice?

Ask the grumpies: Does having a college kid affect how you feel about your students or vice versa?

Steph asks:

Now that you have a child going off to college, does that change your feelings about/response to parents of your students? Or vice versa – how do you feel your life in the academy is shaping your experience with DC1?

FERPA means that I legally cannot interact with parents of my students (other than like, exchanging words of praise at the post-graduation party).  I like it that way.  I have zero intention of calling any professors at DC1’s college.  (Though I did ask if I could give a talk in the econ department sometime in the next four years and they were very down on it.  Macalester, on the other hand, has me down for next year.  They have a better econ department anyway, imo.  Though every SLAC in the country seems to be hiring in macro this year, so you’d think Carleton could give up a few.  Anyhow, I digress.)  So no change there.

I don’t know how much my life in the academy has shaped DC1’s experience above and beyond what zie would have gotten with me growing up with an academic mom.  I’m sure it has somehow.  But, like, we’d probably value learning even if we hadn’t gotten PhDs of our own.  We went to college not too many decades ago and my undergrad experience at a SLAC is much more similar to what DC1 is getting than the R1 state flagship experience I provide my students.  I might not have been so down on public schools in the South if I didn’t teach at one.  (The whole seeing everything in black and white with a single correct answer to be memorized is not typical of even an R3 experience in the Midwest.)

Something that did shape my teaching a lot was having DC1 in preschool a decade and a half ago, give or take.  Treating undergrads like adults isn’t as winning as all the old white dudes who preach say it is.  Treating them like toddlers, assuming you treat toddlers with respect, is.  Clear expectations, rules about respect (ex. not having your cellphone open during class unless it’s an emergency– I was just talking to someone who teaches at Chicago business, and told me said they have a no laptops policy in their MBA classes!), being eager to share a new world of learning, having food (chocolate) in office hours when someone is having a meltdown, and so on… these really improved both how well my students get the material and, ironically, my teaching evaluations.

Academic parents– has your college experience affected your parenting or vice versa?

RBOService

• Everyone has been gushing about how happy they are that I’m back, generally between noon and 4 when they’re asking about service stuff.  [Update:  now 9-5.]
• At the request of the department head, I ran part of the last full faculty meeting– usually the kind of thing that ends up in circular arguments that go on forever and makes the meeting run over.  (Also, one of those parts of service that I really dislike that involves arguing about words that seem like identical synonyms to me, but apparently not to everyone.)  I had 20 min before the meeting ended and I took 17 minutes and we got out 2 minutes early.  After I got back from the service meeting that followed (for the other major committee I’m on…), a bunch of people stopped by my office to thank me and just generally be amazed at how I kept to the time.
• Last time I ran a meeting like this (part of a faculty retreat), the newer people were kind of like why were you such a bitch (not quite those words), but apparently with me gone last year they have learned to appreciate getting things done.
• People make fun of pre-meetings before a meeting, but they really do help.  If you can figure out what you want the action items to be (ex. vote or not vote next meeting) and the take-aways to be (getting an idea of where faculty stand generally on these issues even if they disagree) and you communicate that effectively to the full group, you can save a ton of time.  It’s a little more time for the organizers/people in charge, but I think worth it in terms of reducing wasted time for everyone else and, equally importantly, frustration.
• The department secretary recorded disagreements this in the minutes as, “the complexity of this issue was acknowledged.”  I LOVE that phrasing.
• Am I ever going to be able to get research done again?
• Week 1 service requests started at noon and on my non-teaching days I had time for research before the stream started.  Week 2 they started at 9am.
• I’m going to need to to figure out how to cut this off somehow.
• I also have students from last year when I was on leave in another department sending me requests.
• So if you’re wondering why link loves are so sparse… this is why.
• It is like I never left!  But even moreso.
• And it’s so hard to do research when you’re constantly interrupted.  Which means I’m often doing service/teaching during the day instead of actual work.  I really need to figure something out.  It’s so easy to let the immediate but not as important stuff take over one’s life.
• Hopefully after the [major committee I’m in charge of] is done for Fall this load will diminish.  But I don’t know.
• I’ve also been setting up systems (lots of memos in appropriate places with instructions, spreadsheets with who is in charge of what when etc.) so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every year and so people after me can be more efficient.  That’s an up-front cost, but hopefully will pay dividends downstream.
• I just don’t have infinite energy.
• We’re down a lot of professors because of retirements and people leaving and we’re supposed to be expanding, but the department head has been putting off hires.  So we’re now in danger of losing lines.  AND there’s NOT ENOUGH senior people to do work.  In fact, there’s so few full professors, even with two of us becoming fulls recently, that we have had to get special permissions for things because we don’t have the university required numbers.  This is going to continue to be a problem if we don’t hire assistants soon!
• My department head is also making most of the people currently on leave also do service.  We need more people.  And we brought this up with the department head last year.
• I’m still underpaid.  We were supposed to get salary adjustments, but my department head has not wanted to remind the dean about his promise and now it’s too late because the dean who promised has left.  (Another department got adjustments.)
• Also:  when I went to look at my salary info for the year (which we only got two weeks after classes had started), it still had me at half-pay.  Lovely.  I guess last year they kept me at full pay until I pointed it out to them (which messed up my retirement contributions since their solution was just to give me the one full pay check and no paycheck the next month and then less than half a paycheck the month after).  At least this time I caught it before I got paid.  (We don’t get paid until October even though we start working in August.)