More from @TaliaRinger

Talia Ringer

@TaliaRinger

14 Sep

I keep telling myself to blog about the job search process last year, in service of those of you applying next year, but I rarely have the motivation to blog. So I'm going to try to put together a quick Tweet thread and add to it as ideas come to me.🧵

I was applying only for research-focused tenure-track positions. I started thinking about the job search really, really early in grad school, way earlier than most people do, like maybe third year or so. So I felt ready.

And then a pandemic happened.

I guess that's life for you? In any case, the economy collapsed, and that was really terrifying. Schools started to enact hiring freezes. I remember crying to my parents over the summer and saying there would be no more jobs. I felt extra pressure to get my POPL paper in.

Read 63 tweets

Talia Ringer

@TaliaRinger

14 Sep

I think a lot of times I see people trying to wait out a conflict and let it "blow over." I think this is often a mistake. Apologizing and talking it out and repairing damage done if applicable works extremely well in most situations, and it's efficient.

Furthermore, if you wait it out, sometimes the other person gets angrier or moves on by deciding not to forgive you no matter what. Time heals, but only at an individual level. Healing the relationship between two people takes active work.

Getting angrier at the absence of an apology and repair makes sense to me for very large conflicts. Because choosing not to apologize and repair damage often comes across as a signal of bad faith, disinterest, apathy, self-interest, or too much pride.

Read 6 tweets

Talia Ringer

@TaliaRinger

13 Sep

Software engineering: you have 5 things to do, and they're all possible

Grad school: you have 20 things to do, and you'll probably mess up half of them

Faculty life: you have 100 things to do, but nobody actually expects you to remember to do any of them

You'll forget to do 90 of them, but it's OK, because for 20, your students will email you, and for 60, you can forward it on very confused to your admin, though like 10 you'll genuinely need to remember

But that's OK because you have faculty meetings, and you can take time to organize the things you forgot you had to do during those meetings

Read 4 tweets

Talia Ringer

@TaliaRinger

13 Sep

Got to actually think about some type theory today

Also some boba

After diving so deep into machine learning for proof assistants recently, I'm extremely grateful to have a type theory student to keep me grounded on the problems that are still fundamentally hard

Read 4 tweets

Talia Ringer

@TaliaRinger

13 Sep

One weird fact about me is that I can't physically play piano very well (I am uncoordinated and mess up a lot), but I can write piano music, and I can transcribe any song I hear, even if it isn't meant for the piano. My housemate who plays well but can't do that appreciates this

Here's a song I wrote in 2010 for example, but I kept messing up when I tried to play it, so eventually I just took the sheet music I wrote and used it to generate a midi file, which is what is on my SoundCloud: m.soundcloud.com/talia-ringer/t…