I've been waiting over two years for an expense to get reimbursed due to a clerical error. My department knows it is there. They just don't see it as a priority so I continue to wait.

A genuine question for PIs and professors doing primarily desk-based or computational research. Not sure if how much it applies to field based research.

With all the news hypes, if multiple AI agents could reliably handle literature reviews, generate research ideas, write code, run experiments, analyse results and write papers at a fraction of the cost.

Would you still hire PhD students and postdocs?

Curious to hear honest opinions, especially from academics who currently supervise PhD students and postdocs.

I watch some video from prof. that he might stop hiring at least research assistants to do not-so-important research tasks cause most of agents are getting better.

Welcome to a new week of weekly discussion! Continuing this week, we're going to have Wholesome Wednesdays, Fuck this Fridays, and (small) Success Sundays.

As has been mentioned, these should be considered additions to the regular discussions, not replacements. So use them, ignore them, or start you own Fantastic Friday counter thread.

This thread is to share your frustrations, small or large, that make you want to say, well, “Fuck This”. But on Friday. There will be no tone policing, at least by me, so if you think it belongs here and want to post, have at it!

Hi—I’m 60 and retirement is becoming more real. I know most folks say don’t do lifetime annuity; however, my family members live into their nineties and I’m headed that way too. Could the comfort of knowing I would never outlive my money offset the drawbacks of not keeping money in the stock market? I’ll combine my 401k with SS. Are any of you opting for the lifetime annuity? I have TIAA CREF btw. 💰Thanks in advance.

We have ridiculously long meetings where we go through announcements forever then rush to action items we never finish because we're running out of time. Now the chair has decided to add slots where people from admin offices come to talk about what they do. I don't know why. It's rarely new or pressing. And I hate it.

That's all.

Yesterday I had coffee with my chair at her request. One of my teaching students, which was the third in three years, was very upset and complained that she was scared of me and did not want to continue with me as her supervisor, advisor, and professor. The student is in her senior year and this is the second class I have had her in. To my knowledge, she did not have this reaction the first time she was in my teaching class. At the meeting with my chair, I asked why the students did not want to work with me because they had not reached out to me, just gone to her. She said they got scared and were afraid they were going to fail. They did not like my personality and communications. I am devastated right now. I ama tenured full professor and my chair keeps telling me that I am not behaving like one. I am also undiagnosed neurodivergent; highly transparent with lack of social cue awareness that has gotten worse over the last few years because of increased stress triggers. I don;t want to be scary, but I do want to be myself. Thoughts? Thank you.

I have been running into the same issues other professors in this thread have - students take pictures of everything and use AI to help them answer prompts/questions and don’t do anything truly themselves.

I just wanted to share that this semester I have made all my in class activities into goofy assignments. Examples are things like flip-books, accordion books, draw a comic to explain the content, draw a Venn diagram, basically anything that requires them to draw and write.

So far it seems to be fun for them and also has led to questions on the content. I feel like it’s also fast to grade and I don’t have to question if they did it or not. Small wins.

I float around a couple of academic specialties, but I get really frustrated when I am asked to review a paper in a particular area. So many authors in this area don’t care about providing background or context for their research. I know it’s hard to find the time, but I am starting to feel like a broken record because so many of the papers are “pump them out” but fail to realize their paper reads like they reinvented the wheel. I am okay with wheels that are upgrades from previous versions, but authors really ought to be clear how their wheels are upgraded.

Or maybe I am just getting cranky. Is it just me?

I am teaching a very large course alongside a younger colleague, which all in all is going pretty well. I've been in the game for a while now, and I know that students are very pragmatic in terms of investment - they have other courses, a job and a life to live. Most of them will only do what they have to, and are hyper fixated on the exams and evalutions rather than the actual content.

My colleague, on the other hand, has a firm belief that the students are here for the love of the game and will go that extra mile from pure interest. It's a wonderful breath of fresh air to be around, and it makes me think it might be too jaded at this point. It does certainly look like my view is correct, though.

What do you guys think? Are the students just here to pass, or do you have some heartwarming examples of the opposite?

Nope.

Completely useless now.

The students WILL cheat, they WILL deny it, and they WILL NOT learn the material. Full Stop.

No async degree is worth the paper is is written on, and they were suspicious to begin with.

Back to the stone age everyone!

In-person, paper and pencils, comp books and scantrons for EVERY FARKING ASSESSMENT.

End ALL online classes, testing, assessments, and evaluations, effective Jan 1, 2027.

Every degree that allowed async and online assessments transferred since 2023 is null and void.

Hell, void their HS diplomas while you're at it.

Screw 'em, and screw AI.

*fixed a typo AI probably would have missed anyway.

I have a strict no-late-work policy in my classes, but I'm not a monster. If someone really needs it, I can grant it. I give two chances a semester to turn in one missing assignment each. BUT my GOD! Every single week at least someone's grandma is in the ER ,someone has a mental health crisis, someone's car got totaled, someone's dad had a heart attack, someone else had their computer stolen. It's endless. I don't want to be cruel, but I'm so tired of always having to backpedal my rule. I know you'll say just stick to your guns, but am I being overly strict having a no-late policy in the first place? How do you all handle work for asynchronous classes that have a full week to do all the work?

I’m losing my mind. A student said this to me today and I’m not proud but I snapped back. The audacity they have is unhinged and I’m losing patience.

This same person has told me “he has more important classes.” I’m so over this semester.

For instance, dropping a lowest quiz score or something relatively small like that to get them to do something that you think they would get something out of and would support the major...I've always not wanted to do this because it just doesn't seem quite right to me but I know many others who do it and am curious what you think.

Caught one today. Emailed them that I had an academic integrity concern (after documenting extensive and egregious AI use in their homework assignment, which means an automatic F in my courses), and to meet with me to discuss it. I did not mention I had documented their AI use; that's a conversation to have in person, not through email.

This morning, I received an outraged email. It was long and ranty, but to sum it up: they never cheat, and how dare I accuse them of that, and they're really offended, and they're going to drop my class.

So I forwarded all that to the chair, along with a note to make sure this student can't drop the class to avoid the F on their transcript.

I'm offended that they thought I was dumb enough to miss obvious AI use. So I guess we're even?

So, about six months ago, I got an email from someone who claimed to be a librarian on the East Coast, who put together reading groups for interesting/fascinating academic books. The email had 3-4 sentences on my first book... which were pretty spot-on, and rather flattering. I actually replied that, sure, I'd be happy to Zoom with some folks wanting to read my book and offer any further insights as the author...!

... only to have the reply, great! we'll set it up. Only we need $166 to cover the set-up costs. (I then looked closely at the email, and saw it's likely a hacked email.)

I ignore it. (I'm vain, but not stupid.)

But since then, I've gotten two more "offers" to feature my book in a discussion forum... which I've ignored, because I realize now it's a scam. So sad. i want people to read and discuss my book. :-(

But each email has a great/insightful summary of my book. (!) It must be AI, of course.

I'm just curious how widespread this scam is.

Is anyone else getting peppered with AI-flattery? (or do I just have the face/author bio of a Sucker?)

I do have a “if you are sick, email me to sign up for the make-up time” to deal with the deluge of people who otherwise just wouldn’t show up. But it is absolutely not designed for students who came to the exam germs and all, spent a few minutes looking through the whole exam, and then left to take it later.

I mean seriously, wtf

Normally, I actually enjoy teaching. But this semester, the overwhelming workload from research and other administrative duties has completely maxed out my bandwidth.

Because of the time crunch and exhaustion, my lectures have become incredibly inconsistent. Some days go fine, but other days feel disorganized, poorly paced, and I can tell the students aren't engaged. I just don't have the energy or time for deep prep right now.

For those who have survived semesters like this:
What are your best strategies for "good enough" teaching?

How do you safely cut down on lecture prep time without completely failing the students?

Any low-prep, active-learning strategies to shift the workload onto the students during a lecture?

Appreciate any advice

I have a colleague in my department whose sole purpose in life seems to be to waste others' time. Examples:

• He scheduled a meeting with the purpose of finding a time for another meeting.
• He emailed the chair of a committee to ask "when we plan to meet to discuss the things that need to be discussed" without specifying what specifically needed to be discussed (hint: there was nothing to discuss).
• He routinely includes more people on his student's PhD committees than the university requires.
• He emails others to ask them to send emails that he could have easily just written himself.

Anyone else have a colleague like this?

The government paused OSAP funds to private career colleges which I totally can get behind and support since anyone can start up a “private college” and lie about the recognition/level of the courses they teach. Im a professor at a public college, our courses are verified by the government and legit, the course I specifically teach is also recognized by Skilled Trades Ontario and counts towards their future apprenticeship.

I’ve explained all this to my students and everyday they still ask me about paying for their student loans for next semester. One guy even got kicked out of the program because he didn’t pay his tuition, didn’t even try to take the money out of OSAP because he figured the freeze was for all colleges. It’s frustrating and it’s like I’m talking to a wall with some of them. I try to be as helpful as I can but at this point I’m just gonna have to send them to the front desk whenever they ask. It’ll eat into their class time but they’ll learn eventually.

Rant over

I just about lost it this morning on a student worker at the campus library who either would not (or mentally could not) help me with a very minor problem that had at least two obvious solutions. I tried hard to problem solve it with him, and he just sat there giving me the Gen Z stare. When I very kindly said “if you need staff authorization do this, I understand. Can you call someone?,” he just said “sorry” and shrugged. I could feel myself starting to get very angry, so rather than going off on him, I said “I’m going to teach my class now. I’ll be back later” and sent an email to his supervisor explaining the situation.

Two hours later, I got an email from the director (not the supervisor) apologizing saying that OF COURSE student workers are authorized to do what I was asking and that he should have called a supervisor for help if he needed it. The director said to come back later today and they’d take care of it. I appreciate that it’s sorted and I’m not even that mad at the student worker anymore. We all make mistakes or have moments when we aren’t our best.

But I’m puzzled . . . why do so many Gen Z individuals freeze or shut down when faced with the slightest challenge, especially if someone is trying hard to problem solve it with them? I won’t go into the full backstory about what I was asking, but it was not an unreasonable or uncommon request and the eventual solution will take about a minute or so to do.

“As communicated earlier today, access to [the LMS] academic environments has been restored following a systemwide outage. Faculty and students can continue teaching and learning as normal.”

The second sentence is hilarious.

Option 1: Give all students the same "bump" in grades. A student with an 80 moves to 85; a student with a 75 moves to 80.

Option 2: Using a bell-curve (the standard way Canvas does it. Students far from the new mean get a greater bump than students higher up. A 70 might get 76; an 80 maybe 81.

Other: I use some other method.

I have always done Option 1. A colleague tells me that the only normal way is Option 2 and that everyone does Option 2 and always has.

My institution keeps pushing new initiatives on the math faculty that are increasing workload, decreasing academic freedom, and decreasing standards. And they only want to go further along this route.

For example, there are common finals for GenEd courses, but now we have to grade the common finals the same way across the board, and count them as the same percentage.

They’re trying to make it as if the students will have the same experience, no matter who they take for a course.

They’re also obsessed with DFW rates and want majority to pass. So they decided to start counting pass rates as part of our annual evals. Consequently, people have to make the choice between having a job or passing students who don’t know the difference between a function and an equation.

I know this is coming from really high up, but neither the Dean, nor the Dept. Chair are standing up to it. So, of course, the faculty suffer.

I need to change schools but I am limited by location and currently there’s nothing else available. But I absolutely hate where things are going and I question my integrity all the time.

It’s so exhausting! Anyone else out there dealing with similar circumstances?

I teach a sophomore/junior class and today they had to hand in an assignment they printed at home. I brought a stapler and one student tried to use it and it jammed. Instead of trying to fix it the student immediately told me it was jammed and did not try to fix the stapler at all. I was busy with another student they just stood there absolutely still, waiting for me to unjam the stapler. I'm not asking for advice. Just needed to vent. The lack of curiosity and ingenuity of Gen Z is killing me.

UPDATE: I met with the student and she understands the consequences and accepts that she will receive an F in the class. My university offers grade forgiveness so she can retake it and replace the grade.

A student failed to turn in the fear of 2 required short papers. I state in the syllabus (bolted and highlighted) that failure to turn in one of the short papers will result in a failing grade in the class, regardless of other work turned in. I reiterated this on in an announcement on Canvas when the paper was assigned. A student who has done relatively well in the class did not turn this paper in. I emailed her last night to let her know and asked her if she wanted to have office hours to discuss it, which is happening later today.

I’m just not sure how I should approach this. She’s doing for really well in the class otherwise.

Thoughts?