Scientist & Asst Prof at U. of Cincinnati: anthropological genetics & evolutionary biology. Feminist. Dog lover. She/Her👩🔬👩💻🐶 Tweets my own.
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Feb 7, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
You know what grad school did not prepare me for? The amount of time I would spend every day doing Urgent but not Important tasks. Like answering emails. And how hard it would be to do Important but not Urgent tasks like...finishing that paper. Or grant. Or whatever.
Yeah if you’re unfamiliar with Urgent versus Important, here’s what I’m talking about. But the advice to “delegate” Urgent Not Important tasks is honestly ridiculous. I can’t delegate required university trainings or responding to student emails about class.
A friend asked me recently for some teaching tips for a #newPI teaching a “new to you” class for the first time and I thought I’d share them with y’all! First I’ll say these strategies won’t work for everyone, especially if your teaching load is high and/or you don’t have 1/n
Materials from a colleague. So this works best for a class that’s been taught before, just not by you.
First, the biggest problem for new PIs honestly is spending too much time on teaching. We approach all things in academia as if we only get one chance to get it right. 2/n
Nov 14, 2022 • 24 tweets • 7 min read
Are you ready for a new "Katie's OverPlanning" thread?? Today, it's about 'Career Planning' #PhDchat#AcademicTwitter.
Disclaimer: This is my method, my anecdata, and I'm not tenured yet. If over-planning & organization stress you out, WALK AWAY. You've been warned. 1/n
Last week I made a ‘big picture’ plan for what I’m hoping to accomplish in the next 2.5 years, the period before my tenure application is due. Why do such 'career planning'? Because a lot of our projects take months or years to reach completion or even to get off the ground. 2/n
Oct 18, 2022 • 28 tweets • 7 min read
Today’s thread is a story about what you decide to do with those ‘overflow’ tasks you haven’t finished when Friday afternoon roles around – Do you mostly ‘catch-up’ on Saturday and Sunday or do you usually roll them over to next week? #phdlife#AcademicTwitter 1/n
Obviously some periods of #phdlife require that you catch up on the weekends. Grant deadlines, teaching crunches, etc. But I want to walk through why you shouldn’t make that your normal response and why it’s hard to resist! 2/n
Oct 3, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Today's thread topic: The benefits of engaging in self study as an academic, including how and why to spend time on this work.
You should read this thread if you've ever wildly under-estimated the amount of time a task will take you. 1/n
I HATE inefficiency & I HATE feeling overwhelmed. And yet for years, especially as a graduate student, I found myself in this cycle where I promised X and Y would be done by this date, but each project took much longer than expected. Part of this is because I was learning 2/n
Sep 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Hi new followers! I'm Katie Grogan, a scientist and assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, USA, which is on the traditional homelands of the Hopewell, Adena, Myaamia (Miami), Shawandasse Tula (Shawanwaki/Shawnee), and Wazhazhe Maⁿzhaⁿ (Osage) peoples.
I'm a biological anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, runner, dog-mom, and world traveler. I work in Madagascar and Uganda, studying how lemurs and human hunter-gatherers acclimatize to major environmental stressors or transitions. I do my best to be an ally for people
Sep 19, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
How do I "not spend too much time on teaching?" A couple of tricks I use - First, I accept that my teaching is a long-term improvement project. In research we are taught we have to do it perfectly the FIRST time, because there usually aren't do-overs. 1/n
But for teaching, if you're faculty, you're going to get to teach this class repeatedly. So it needs to be at least ok the first couple times, but not perfect! You can make it better with each iteration. That's been hard to stick to, but it helps to allocate ONLY a certain 2/n
Sep 19, 2022 • 39 tweets • 11 min read
If you know me in-person, you know I'm one of the most hyper-organized people you've ever known. Multiple people have asked me about my system b/c it's the only thing saving me as #newPI & I wish I had had it during my #phd, so here it is in embarrassing detail. 1/n
WALK away if you're a more "go with the flow person". Seriously, do not keep reading. Here we go:
Sheet 1 - Funding Sheet. Identify & Organize all grants/fellowships/funding opportunities, including deadlines, amounts & links. I do this my first month on any job... 2/n
Apr 10, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
I got shingles. When I went into the student health clinic, after the nurse looked at me and told me what it was, she said unprompted, “you’re a grad student aren’t you? When we see shingles, it’s always a grad student”.
Ok so getting lots of similar stories here! First, grad school stress is SUPER REAL and you are not alone. It often manifests as a physical illness in addition to anxiety and/or depression. Second, few of you are going to listen to me BUT I’m gonna try anyway. Buckle up 1/
Oct 31, 2019 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
As we’re in the middle of academic job hunting season, here’s what I’ve been doing to search & apply for jobs, & handle the stress. Disclaimer: I am a postdoc on the TT job market, so ultimate validation of these strategies is still unclear. Also your mileage WILL vary
More evidence I’m a scientist to my core: I’ve been collecting/analyzing data on total # of jobs posted & jobs I could apply for within several fields (yay interdisciplinarity!) for >3 years. Last year I did a test run, prepared my documents & applied to a few jobs.
Jul 11, 2019 • 40 tweets • 12 min read
Yesterday I offered to share some writing advice that has worked for me, & it garnered a lot of interest! So I'm going to share it here in a thread instead of individually by email because we can all agree that academic writing is HARD! So here we go #phdchat#AcademicTwitter
2-I find that it helps a lot to understand WHY I struggle to write. This graphic was the first thing that really helped me understand why writing my dissertation, in particular, was SUPER difficult. So reasons:
A few months ago, @Nature published a piece with advice on how senior women can confront #genderbias. While the advice contained therein was useful, the title was enraging. nature.com/articles/d4158…. 2/
Sep 19, 2018 • 20 tweets • 9 min read
A thread about this Nature advice column about how female scientists can combat gender bias - To be clear, I'm incredibly grateful to the women in this piece. The advice is clear-eyed & I definitely got some ideas. But I am also really tired of being told this is MY problem 1/n
to solve. Let's start here: Ladies, you need to somehow address the problem that you are SIGNIFICANTLY under-represented as editors, reviewers, & last authors. nature.com/articles/d4158…. Here's the preprint they're talking about - biorxiv.org/content/early/… 2/n
