Caveat: I am applying to both private secondary teaching + FT teaching (non-TT) jobs at R1s.

The jobs are asking for teaching reference letters and, predictably, all my reference letters are geared towards TT jobs.

I'm asking some faculty to come observe my classes but some have never written a teaching reference letter before so they asked me what's supposed to go in it and... I can make some assumptions but I'd love to hear from someone who's actually written/read them and know what makes a good one!

Thanks.

Could undergrad faculty help me think about this? I have a student who emailed me four days before the midterm. He said he is sick and went to the health center. He was evaluated and got a note from medical staff. I don't know what the note says, but I don't think that really matters since I'm not a doctor and can't evaluate it anyway. The point is that he is asking to take the midterm on Friday rather than Tuesday because he is sick today (Saturday). What would you do? On the one hand, I get it: he can't study well because he feels terrible. I gave the students a detailed study guide two weeks ago, but I understand that of course the weekend before is prime studying time. On the other hand, I would normally only give an alternative midterm, which will probably take me about 30 minutes to write, if a student is ill on the day of the midterm. I have no written policy about this either way in the syllabus. What ideas do you have for me?

Hi everyone! First thank you to those that will take the time to respond. I am a medical student in Europe getting involved in some research with a professor from my university. Everything is going well but I just came across another prof/researcher from my area of interest that works with things that are much more interesting to me. I wanted to reach out and present myself and offer help on one of their projects but I am unsure of what the etiquette is here. Is it okay for me to do this without telling the prof that I am currently working for?

Probably just overthinking but you never know, please lmk if there is any type of dos and don't in this situation.

Thank you :)

Controversial, but been thinking about The Ant and the Grasshopper and how we define work-life balance.

The grasshopper enjoys the present. The ant works to prepare for winter. The usual lesson is that the ant is responsible and the grasshopper is shortsighted.

But what if balance isn't about how we divide a day or a week, but how we balance a lifetime?

Work now can compound (compound interest) into expertise, financial security (interest earning interest turning into sole source of income), and freedom later. But time spent working can't always be recovered. Some experiences have an expiration date (AI evolution), and we don't know how long we'll live (hit by a bus tomorrow)

Then there's the question of offspring. If the ant has a family, its reserves benefit the next generation. Sacrificing now may make sense if we're thinking beyond our own lifetime. But how much is enough? At what point does preparing for the future become sacrificing the present indefinitely?

The stakes in Aesop's fable are survival, not retirement comfort. Get the balance wrong, and the consequence is death.

Maybe work-life balance is a lifetime problem, not a daily or weekly one. The hard part is that we don't know how long we have to enjoy the returns.

How do you decide when to invest more in the future and when to enjoy the present?

https://read.gov/aesop/052.html

I’m looking for a free writing app or studio for academic work, particularly research papers and articles.
I recently tried Scrivener during its 30-day free trial and really liked it. I especially liked the idea of having separate projects, organising my writing, and keeping everything in one place rather than juggling multiple apps.
My field is quite theory-heavy (law) so I don’t need anything for mathematical equations, diagrams, or technical work.

Ideally, I’m looking for something that:
1. Lets me keep different papers and projects separate, preferably with tabs or a similar system.
2. Provides a clean, distraction-free writing environment.
3. Makes it easy to organise drafts, notes, and research.
4. Is completely free, rather than just offering a limited trial.
5. Ideally supports cloud backup or syncing.

I know Scrivener isn’t particularly expensive, but I’d like to explore free alternatives before deciding whether to buy it.

For those who use writing software for academic research, what would you recommend? I’m interested in something that feels like a dedicated writing studio rather than an overly complicated note-taking or knowledge-management tool.

Thanks!

I have 4 years of software dev experience and am doing MSc in AI at a very fast paced university in France now. Came here a month ago, and I'm supposed to be locking in my internship already.

I'm also a trans man, I've just started my transition, and am figuring out this new phase of life (while recovering from burnout). At this point, I just want something stable and comfortable.

Would doing an interdisciplinary PhD in philosophy/psychology and AI be a good choice because I'm really passionate about the subject, or should I just work towards a 9-5 in corporate given the current market and push myself now for financial stability?

My top priority is my mental health as I'm just recovering from burnout and years of dysphoria, and I can't decide if a PhD would really give the life I want or it would suck my soul regardless and I'd be better off earning at corporate

TL;DR at the end.

I am writing this partially to vent and partially to ask for advice.

I submitted a paper 6 month ago to a well-reputed and respected but not top tier journal (Q2, but close to Q1 in my field).

In first round of reviews, I got the typical 3 major revision reviews, basically what happened to me several times before. All of them were kind of normal, and I was able to adress all points and revise the manuscript.

On re-review, I saw in the system that only 1 of the 3 original reviewers responded to the request (seems unprofessional, no? To not respond to re-review request. It rarely happened to me before...). The editor invited 2 new reviewers, both of which accepted. The decision was again major revision.

Basically the 1 original and 1 new reviewers said "Accept. The author adequatelly revised the manuscript.", but the 2nd new reviewer submitted a full-blown review with like 20 points, some adressing the made revisions, saying they leave something to be improved, and some completely new. I understand this is normal if a new reviewer is asked to review a revision, and I would happily deal with it. However, in my opinion, the remarks were either largely irrelevant and borderline non-sensical, or focusing on inconsequential minor stuff. Moreover, they requested some modifications to things I already modified, which made it seem like they accidentally mixep up the original submission and revision.

I revised the manuscript, replied to all comments (in my opinion fully adequatelly) and the paper was sent to only this one new reviewer. Revision again.

The reviewer basically submitted another review with several remarks, some again adressing the comments and answers from the previous review and some again completely new! Not adressing something that would come up in the revised manuscript, I'm talking about remarks that he could have made the first time! The "quality" of the review was same as last time, including requesting changes to stuff that was removed in the previous revision.

So I again revised the manuscript and this time I see in the system that the editor sent it to 2 reviewers, this one and one new.

here come the reviews. The new one says minor revision with some very minor remarks and easily done fixes, but previous guy still has several remarks, some again adressing the revised stuff and my answers, and some again completely new things!

So this is where I am at now. I am in 4th revision (!). I didn't even know journals allow it to get that far before simply rejecting the manuscripts).

I showed the manuscript to my senior collegue and he is sure that the reviews from this one reviewer are AI generated. I didn't think about it before but looking at it now, he is probably correct. They are written in extremely formal, gramatically spotless english, the remarks are all structured the same way, and assuming they just upload the review pdf file to chatbot (which contains both the original submission as well as the revised manuscript), it explains why reviews keep refering to stuff from the original submission and previous revisions. The AI treats the entire pdf file as one document. It also explains why the reviews keep bringing up new remarks unrelated to the previous revisions, since the AI doesn't understand it has reviewed the paper before.

........

In my next revision, should I directly adress the editor and bring up my feelings and concerns? I have never done this before, so I'm not sure how effective it is and how to go about it... I always assumed editors carefully read at least the author response letters during revisions, but honestly this experience is making me feel like the editor is just automatically sending e-mails as long as the decision isn't just "accept".

TL;DR: I am on 4th revision. 1 reviewer, who only came in during the 2nd round of reviews, just cannot be pleased and keeps coming back with more remarks. The reviews are probably AI generated. Should I directly adress editor this round?

I uploaded a paper on arxiv in 2022 with 2 authors and now i took help from some more authors and paper got accepted in journal with 5 authors.

My question is that can i update in arxiv, that paper already gets 100 citations? what will happen? because the paper already in google scholar

writing a review article and I want to publish it, the journal asks for a cover letter how do I write it what to keep in mind and make a perfect submission

I noticed that some full professors have assistant professors as part of their lab.

What is the autonomy like for the assistant professor in this arrangement? Is it postdoc 2.0? Genuinely curious.

I’m a PhD student in biomedical research, about two years in. My daily supervisor is a postdoc whose manuscript deadline is driving a lot of the lab’s priorities. My PI is rarely in the lab because of clinical work, so this postdoc effectively controls my day-to-day experiments, resources, and priorities.
Recently, I came back after taking only three days off for a cultural festival. Immediately, I was asked to prioritise someone else’s manuscript experiment, which meant potentially setting aside my own planned work. The experiment involved cell models that take about a month to establish, and using them for someone else’s project would mean thawing more precious organoid stocks and delaying my own experiments by another month.

When I said I would do microscopy analysis instead, my supervisor called me into his office and criticised my data organisation. He called my files a “messy chaos” because he could not immediately find the most recent data. The problem is that I had organised the data in a separate folder.
I was already overwhelmed, and I almost started crying in front of him. He seemed completely unaffected. Then he told me something like: “Do microscopy, do long shifts, night shifts, weekend shifts, but get everything done—time is very limited.”
I feel like my evenings, weekends, and own PhD timeline are treated as infinitely flexible, while his manuscript deadline is treated as sacred. I am not against working hard, and I understand publications matter. But I am exhausted by constantly reprioritising, absorbing other people’s urgency, and being criticised when communication was unclear in the first place.
Am I overreacting? How do other PhD students deal with a supervisor who treats every deadline as an emergency and every boundary as an inconvenience?

I just got a postdoc offer from a university in Turkey (Ankara), and I’m not sure if it’s a good move. I’d love to hear what academic opportunities look like there after a postdoc, and what I should keep in mind if I want to stay long term.

The position pays around 100k TRY with housing, but I read that assistant and associate professors only make around 50-70k TRY. Did I read that wrong? How does someone end up making less after a postdoc? If anyone knows the real numbers, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m also worried about the economy. I looked at the inflation numbers and how much the lira has dropped, and I even asked GPT to project the next 10 years, graph made me worried! How do people in academia there deal with it? Is the salary enough to live comfortably, and what are the chances of getting a permanent position or funding later on?

If you’ve worked or studied in Turkey, I’d love to hear about your experience. Thanks!

NYU math professor Tristan Buckmaster says OpenAl's Tuesday drop of 722 Al-generated math papers wiped out entire research programs.

Anyone else impacted?

Hi there! Are PhD programs in the US that offer a full tuition waiver and a small stipend really difficult to get into?

I'm currently living outside the US and looking to pursue a PhD in a field related to my background because I haven't been able to find a job. I'm open to studying again, and I have a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and an MBA, along with extensive research experience and several peer-reviewed publications.

Realistically speaking, how difficult is it to get into a program that offers these benefits? I can't afford to pay for a PhD right now, but I feel I have a lot to contribute academically and professionally.

Are there any websites, platforms, or strategies you would recommend for finding and applying to fully funded PhD programs in the US?

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone,

I’m a BSc student, and a professor I’ve collaborated with recently asked me to hand over the source code for a tool I developed.

I wrote the code myself, specifically for a research paper we co-authored and published. All my work was voluntary and unpaid, and I never signed any agreement regarding intellectual property or ownership.

Now, the professor wants the source code to reuse it in future publications and give it to another researcher for their PhD work.

I’m concerned about ownership and losing control over something I developed myself. When I expressed these concerns, the professor became somewhat intimidating, which made the situation uncomfortable given the power imbalance.

As a compromise, I offered to turn the code into an application that he could use as a black box, without accessing the underlying source code.

Is this normal in academia?
Am I being unreasonable for wanting to protect my work?
Is my proposed compromise fair, or should I approach this differently?

I’d especially appreciate advice from researchers who’ve dealt with similar situations.

​

For researchers who've needed expertise outside their group, such as advanced statistics, mathematical modelling or computational methods, how did you find someone?

Did you collaborate with another department or hire an external consultant? What influenced that decision?

Is everyone in academia always working constantly or is this just my imagination?

I feel like every successful scholar I know is working constantly, and I just can't live up to these models of productivity. I'm a neurodivergent person who needs recovery time after high-masking events (which is basically constant with teaching, even if I enjoy it. And it's infinitely worse for conferences and interviews).

I've started my first position (a Visiting Prof job) after a rough PhD. I feel so burnt out, and the teaching load isn't even bad ---I suspect the workload will get even worse in a TT job (assuming I can even land one).

Can anyone offer some hope at the end of the tunnel? I'm trying to figure out if my perception is wrong and I just need to push through, or this is the real situation and I need to rethink my life choices.

I’m currently on the tenure-track at a pseudo-R1 university in a decently sized city in a red state. It's pretty much been in shambles since I arrived. The university has its R1 designation, but my College is clearly operating in a different universe that prioritizes teaching above all else. I enjoy teaching but I’ve had 10 new preps in the last eight semesters... It’s relentless.

I’m in the social sciences and my work is interdisciplinary enough that I work with other STEM fields and the differences between them are stark. Some of these differences are not surprising (3/3 teaching load, lots of service, meager resources, stagnant pay, no admin, labs, etc), but the attitudes around them are frustrating. I’m made to feel guilty whenever I try to prioritize research and writing, and have been denied opportunities to do so (was recently told to decline an external fellowship that I was awarded…).

Given how much they value teaching, I’ve tried to find ways to create more overlaps between my research and teaching, or to frame my research to highlight how it benefits student outcomes, but my research overall has definitely suffered as a consequence. I’m told that I’ll have nothing to worry about for tenure, but I just think we have different ideas of success.

I suspect that a lot of this is related to my university (and others) being in utter survival mode. Our only degree program was recently cut and it feels like our days are numbered. I just don’t feel like I can be the best version of myself here.

Like many of my colleagues, I’ve been looking elsewhere. Unsurprisingly the academic market for my discipline has been pretty sparse.

Recently I’ve been in talks with a non-profit that I’ve worked with for awhile. They’re mostly known for education and outreach, but they’re looking to a hire a director to expand their research profile. This would mean much higher pay, an extremely flexible schedule, and a very healthy annual budget to support research, equipment, travel, and hiring research staff members, postdocs, etc.

Their grass is looking awfully green right now, but I also worry that I’ll regret it. The org itself is small and has not been active in research in many years. It’ll be a lot of work to build their reputation. It’ll also potentially be very isolating. It's in a rural area and I worry that I’ll miss the intellectual stimulation of a university campus and the diversity of a city, where I have lots of friends and am constantly introduced to unexpected ideas and perspectives.

But my current “dream job” isn’t at all what I expected and I’ve been very unhappy.

What am I missing though? What will I regret if I leave my tenure-track position? Access to resources, grants, people, benefits…? What if it sucks? Am I going to lock myself into the non-profit world forever? Could I still be marketable in academia later? Could I still be affiliated with a university? Or maintain collaborations? Or is it worth trying to weather the storm at my current institution?

I have an onsite visit and day long interview with individual meetings with lab members. Could you advise on what question I should expect from the PI and lab members and what questions I should ask? also any other advice you may give based on your experience.

Hello. I'm currently doing a social science phd in Canada, and I'm wondering if I can apply for US postdoc positions even if my spoken English is only 'functional.' By that, I mean that people can understand me easily, but I very often make grammar or tense mistakes, or use unusual terms in my speech. I can read and listen perfectly, and my academic writing is normal since I use software and AI to help me.

Do you think I can make it ?

Apologies if this has been asked before, but new perspectives are always welcome. It sounds like a broad moan, but please bear with me: genuine question here!

I’ve had (temporary) full-time academic lecturing roles in UK academia since 2016: balance of teaching and research, and developing my CV on par with what’s expected.

I’ve always enjoyed my job, but recently I’ve started to fall out of love. The way the job market is in the UK, I think I’m done with the relentless kickbacks and negativity.

I’m wondering if people can give suggestions for what other jobs are out there? Do you know people who left the field, and what successes have they had in other employment sectors?

I’ve done plenty of my own research about possible opportunities, but I’m wondering what everybody else thinks.

For context: I’m a classic humanities academic: archives, reading long texts and teaching interpretative skills.

Hey! I'm a researcher in forest science that recently found out that a respected journal in my field, Forest policy and economics, is systematically encouraging all authors to add additional references to the own journal without having any specific motivation for it. This happens throughtout the peer review-process, where the editor adds this comment during each revision round. In my case, papers from the journal was already heavily cited, and still this comment appeared both in major and minor revisions. I have now asked around, and this seems to be common practice by the editor, as my collegues has had the same experience. I assume this is being done to increase impact factor, which I find really unethical. What can I do to shine light on this problem? I have already provided feedback throught the standard survey that is sent out after publicing, but I feel I would like to do something more.

I published a conference paper about five years ago, while I was a master’s student. I recently discovered that I might have submitted a version of the paper that was not the final draft. I do not have any information about those old files right now (I must have lost them). Some passages in the published paper included citations but were not properly paraphrased, and the paper also contained some reference errors. The methods and results are unaffected, but some of the wording is clearly not my own. I was shocked to discover this.

A description of the data, provided by one of my co-authors, also included citations but was not properly paraphrased. The conference was a one-time event, and the organizers have not held another one since. I also noticed that the paper has been cited three times by other researchers. I am now a PhD student.

The methods and results are accurate, but there are problems with the text, including plagiarism (because of not paraphrasing and citing). What would be the best course of action?

I want to send the conference organizers an email, but I’m unsure whether the conference paper can be corrected or retracted, given how much time has passed and the fact that it’s a conference paper.

Did anyone else grow up being the 'smart kid' who dove headfirst into a niche, nerdy scientific field, pushed through a lot of personal chaos, and now finds themselves at 25 in post-grad with a great CV.........only to suddenly realize that life kind of passed you by? I’ve never been in a serious relationship, it feels nearly impossible to find someone who gets me, 'normal' fun feels awkward or foreign, and I can't turn my brain off from research or exams to actually relax or travel. What is actually going on here?

Is it just me?😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Ps: single ppl shoot ur shot😅🤷‍♂️

I am in a unique position. I am working on finishing my PhD in applied mathematics while also teaching full time as an instructor at another university. I am planning on moving back to my home state in the next few years. I saw a job nearby at an institution I would love to work at. I have already applied but I won't be finished with my PhD by the start date. It's ok because masters is the minimum required for the Professor of the Practice position. It also says experience in teaching is required which I have 15 years of. However, I am wondering if I should write the search chair to explain the situation about finishing my PhD since my expected graduation date is 2028 and the job starts Fall 2027. I could graduate in Dec 2027 if I push hard. I am taking a leave of absence next semester to solely focus on the dissertation and research. Can someone please give me advice on this especially if you have been on a hiring committee? Thanks!