Summer holidays in academia

A post about summer holidays in December? Why, Eva, why?

Well - I ran a poll about summer holidays a while back and I schedule posts months ahead of time, so that's why this post is here.
but let's take a moment - Christmas and the winter holidays are coming up. Are you going to be stressing over your thesis while you are with your family? Are you going to stay on campus and try to keep working (but feel lonely and watch too much Netflix?), or are you giving yourself time and space to celebrate and be with your loved ones?

I was surprised and not surprised at the same time by the results of this poll about holidays. Where I know people who completely disconnect from work and spend 6 weeks camping out next to a lake in Italy or close to a Spanish beach, it seems impossible for me (in terms of time and cost). But, I thought the vast majority of people would take about 2 weeks off. I'm surprised to see that only roughly 50% of respondents are taking 1 week or more of holidays, and that 19% are not taking any holidays at all.

Here are the results of the poll and its wake:

Career paths post-PhD

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to learn more about the most common career paths after the PhD. While three of the options that I listed are perhaps the textbook options (postdoc, assistant prof - directly assistant prof - postdoc, industry), I learned that there are a variety of options out there. As a result, 1/3rd of all correspondents selected the "other" option. Some clicked on other because they just wanted to see the results, but the majority explained the different career path they followed. I also learned that in the humanities, postdocs are much less common.

Here you can find the wake of this poll:

Time for writing a dissertation

Some PhD students wait until the very end of their studies to spend three (miserable?) months writing their thesis. Others work in a more gradual way. I spent about 1,5 years on writing (while still finishing up research tasks as well).

To have an idea of which method is most common, I ran a poll on Twitter on this topic.

You can find the wake of this poll here:

Does the funding of our projects cover the time it takes to finish a PhD project?

I recently ran three combined polls trying to understand if we are applying for enough funding for our PhD students to actually do their PhD research. I've heard a number of stories about professors relying on unemployment benefits for their PhD students for their last year in almost every case, and I don't agree with such practices. I think we should hire PhD students with enough funding to pay them to do their research work within a reasonable amount of time.

What I learned from this poll is that not all students are actually hired on projects. This different funding scheme for the PhD seems to be more common in the humanities.

The three elements that I evaluated for this poll were:
- How much time it took to finish the PhD
- If you finished within the allotted time
- If you finished before funding ran out, and if not, how you survived financially after funding ran dry.

I learned that the majority of voters needed more than 5 years for their PhD project, a number that is in stark contrast to policies in various countries where there is a push towards projects of only 3 years in length. Luckily, I also learned that for the majority of the voters (note: not everybody voted in the three polls, so there may be some discrepancies) the funding provided sufficient time to finish the PhD project, and, therefore, that the majority of the voters were funded throughout.

Here's the wake of this poll and the following discussion:

First generation students

I recently ran a poll on Twitter asking if people are first generation academics, or if they come from a more privileged background. The results are interesting, with the majority of votes coming from first generation students.

I certainly come from a privileged background, and if you put my last name in Scopus you will find my grandfather, my father, and myself. Even though I come from such a privileged background, and I grew up in an environment where going to university was the obvious choice, I don't feel like the love for research was passed on to me from my family. My grandfather passed away more than a decade before I was born, and my father had alzheimer's disease when I was at university - I never got to talk to him about the joys of doing research. But I do remember him sitting on the beach during our holidays, while flipping through the British Journal of Urology and the American Journal of Urology. At that time I couldn't believe one can read such boring things on the beach...

Here's the wake of the poll:

Which email address do academics use?

How prevalent is gmail in accademia? I was wondering and decided to run a poll!

What I learned is that most academics have several email addresses, and use these depending on the purpose.

I too have four email addresses that I use daily (gmail for blog and personal use, TU Delft account, USFQ account, ADSTREN account which runs on the gmail platform). Three out of four get redirected to my Outlook. I do InboxZero, so I use Outlook files to save my emails.

You can find the results and the wake below:

When is an academic "mid-career"?

I ran a poll on Twitter to see when an academic is considered mid-career. As I'm still looking for ways to replace Storify, I tried out Wakelet this time (see below). The general consensus seems to be that mid-career is based on your rank as a faculty member.

When do you consider an academic as "mid-career"?

— Dr Eva Lantsoght (@evalantsoght) January 3, 2018

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On finding the right time to meet - poll

I recently ran a poll on which time of the day is the best for meetings. Some time ago, I wrote a post about how certain times of the day may not work for your colleagues. You may not have thought about this, but one colleague needs to leave early to pick up his kids from school, and the other colleague gets anxious when a meeting involves food... Moral of the story is that you best ask your colleagues which restraints they have. If you are a supervisor, create a climate within your research group that allows your colleagues to speak up and tell you about the restraints they face regarding a meeting time.

Out of curiosity, I ran a poll - and the opinions are divided. The most popular time slot is in the early afternoon, but there is no clear winner. You can find the Storify about the poll below:

Maternity leave in academia

I recently ran a poll on Twitter about maternity leave in academia. I can't draw a main conclusion about the length of leave, as I learned through the interactions that there are many different schemes: paid versus unpaid, no leave versus up to a year of leave, ...

Here you can find the Storify of the discussion that followed from the poll:

The hardest stage of the PhD

I recently ran a poll on Twitter, asking people for their experience on what they considered the hardest stage of the PhD. The results, and personal stories, are quite interesting. For 45%, the end of the PhD and the writing stage are the most difficult phase - I had expected this percentage to be higher (say 67%), based on my perception.

For myself, the hardest stage was at the end - not the actual writing, but the patience I needed until my promotor had time to read my draft. Patience is a virtue, but unfortunately not one that I possess...