text:
Asking host to select a project topic for JSPS fellowship
I am going to apply for JSPS postdoctoral fellowship in Japan. I need to fill up the application form which also requires a research proposal.
As I have very less knowledge over the matter, I don't know what the common norm is.
should I ask the host professor to choose a research topic for the proposal or I have to choose a topic myself (based on the research themes of the host professor) and send it to him?

For the most part, JSPS postdoctoral applications require the student to be acquainted with the new supervisor (aka the "research host") in advance, and discuss with him/her the research plan thoroughly, before writing the application papers. There are some similar programs such as the Hakubi program, where it is not required to know the research host in advance, but in practice, almost all of the successful applications go to applicants who already know the research host in advance, and have prepared together a research plan.
Most of the time, the student applicant is introduced to the host researcher in Japan through a common acquaintance (ex: the doctoral supervisor of the applicant might already have suitable contacts in Japan and introduces his/her student to them). Even so, it is sometimes possible for the student to directly contact by email a potential host in Japan and propose a research topic. If the research host thinks that the research proposal is interesting, and has enough spare time to do it, then both of them can start to prepare the JSPS application proposal in detail (to be clear, most of the burden of preparing a detailed proposal will fall on the student applicant). If the research host already has a good idea and wants to work with the student, then they might take the initiative and propose a detailed plan, but this is somewhat uncommon.
All of these mutual discussions need to happen months in advance of the submission deadline in order to prepare a suitable or competitive research plan. The submission date written in the JSPS website is the final deadline for the host universities to submit the papers. In reality, both the host researcher and student applicant have to submit the paperwork to the host university at least 1 or 2 months in advance of the JSPS deadline.
The application papers have a section that must be filled out by the student applicant, and another that must be filled by the host researcher. The application must be submitted by the host researcher to the administration office of the host university, that will then submit it to JSPS (however, there is also an online submission system where the student applicant will have to log into and submit some papers). JSPS then investigates all of the submitted documents to make sure that the applicant and host researcher sections are coherent with each other, and whether the plan is feasible as a whole.

Thank you for your suggestion.

Latest update. Me and my potential host have chosen a topic and we are writing the proposal. Thanks everyone for your suggestions


text:
Preparing CS Grad Application As An Interdisciplinary Studies Major
I started my Bachelor's as an international student in Electrical Engineering. Later, I switched my major to Computer Information Science (because I loved working with C and Assembly language programming while in EE) and minored in Mathematics. I completed my minor.
Due to a family emergency, I had to forfeit my studies and returned home with just three major courses left. However, without taking any further courses, I later completed my bachelor's, earning a BSc in Interdisciplinary Studies (as it met the graduation requirements) with a 3.20 GPA. Although my GPAs in CIS, Math, and EE were around 3.33.
I am now planning to pursue a master's degree. What's the best way for me to write an SOP and convince the graduate admissions committee? Will my background in different subjects be helpful to highlight, or will it be considered a weakness? I am open to both course-based and thesis-based master's programs.

Application in which country?

I am doing research on US, Canada, Australia or Germany universities and professors for now. But it can change.

But in which countries are you applying for graduate study?

Sorry if I was not clear. The countries I mentioned above. I am planning to apply to those countries.

There are a couple of issues. First is that a US application might need to be quite different from a German one. I'll focus the rest on the US.
An SOP should be forward, not backward, looking. Focus it on what your goals are for grad study and thereafter, especially if your eventual goal is a doctorate. In fact, in the US, you would probably be better applying to doctoral programs in that case rather than masters programs.
Also, in the US, let your letter writers make the case that you are well prepared and likely to succeed with your goals, especially those related to grad study and future research.
I'll also note that most (all?) US undergrad programs are pretty interdisciplinary. Much more so than, say, Germany. So, we expect that to some degree. If you have done well in "key" upper level courses in your field then I see no block. While the GPA is a bit low, it might be better if computed on those more advanced courses. That would be a plus.
And, my usual advice is to make a broad search for an institution, which you seem to be doing, but also on ratings scale. Don't apply only to "top" institutions, nor to only universities that are very similar to one another.

Thanks Buffy. I've got few key points from your reply. I will go with the first one.
As you said, "most (all?) US undergrad programs are pretty interdisciplinary", in that case, don't I have to mention it separately in my SOP then? Explaining why my major was changed?

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text:
Salary of Maître de conférences (France)
I am inquiring about academic positions in France and their salaries.
In particular, I have received an offer for a "Maître de conférences" position. According to my current information, I should start in the normal class of MCF with index 559 (https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-maitre-conferences/1/5141.htm), i.e., €2,358.01 before taxes. I am wondering if there is any way to improve this salary? Can my prior experience (5 years PhD in Switzerland, 3 years postdoc in the US) be taken into account somehow?
I would appreciate any advice and/or guidance regarding the French system.
Thanks!

TL;DR: Past experience does count. There are bonuses too. I estimate 2600€/month net for the given info.
The question is directly related to the application of the French decree n°2009-462 (last modified in 2022).
In short, someone newly recruited in one of the MCF/PU corps can benefit from some of their experience to start at an echelon above 1.
Some case sheets are available, though they are  not up to date.
Recruiting establishments themselves have access to a "calculator" where they enter the recruit's info to get a number of years.
That calculator's source code is even available thanks to the efforts described here.
My interpretation of the main rules in the decree (for an MCF who is not already a public servant):

(Article 5-1) You get one (bonus) year just for holding a doctorate.
(Article 4) If your doctoral work was financed via a work contract under a public agreement/receiving public aid (mostly for French CIFRE theses, but possibly applicable to other cases in France or abroad), it is accounted for up to six years, after appreciation by the academic council (or equivalent).
(Article 5) If your post-doctoral (research) work was financed via a work contract, it is accounted for (usually) in full, after appreciation by the academic council (or equivalent).
(Article 8) If your work was funded via some specific French mechanisms (doctorant contractuel, ATER, allocataire de recherche, moniteur), it is accounted for in full.
(Article 15) If not concerned by article 4 and/or 8, your doctoral work can instead be accounted for a flat two years.
(Article 15) Any eligible part time activity is accounted for on a pro rata basis. You cannot take into account the same period twice (or more).
(Articles 10-14) There are other articles taking into account some other relevant work experience, usually for half or two thirds (or other fun fractions) of the time.
Knowing the seniority leads to the computation of the echelon, but any leftover seniority is kept as progress towards the next echelon.

Since some appreciation is built-in the application of certain articles (e.g. 4 and 5), it appears difficult to give a definitive answer working every time and for every establishment.
Based on the case of a 5-year doctorate in Switzerland and 3-year postdoc in the US, it seems likely for the full 8 years (= 9 years with "PhD bonus") to be taken into account.
If it is the case there were issues regarding the appreciation of the contracts/fundings/nature of the work, the doctorate should still be worth at least 3 years (2 years flat rate + "PhD bonus") and the postdoc at least half its duration (= 4 years and a half total). The best case means echelon 4 six months from echelon 5, and the presumed worst case means echelon 3 some way towards echelon 4.
Note that the starting salary will indeed be based on echelon 1 (or 2). However, within the first year, HR is supposed to work with you to compute the correct echelon, and pay you back the difference.
That is not all, since the French decree n°2021-1895 introduces a revamped (gross) bonus regime ("RIPEC" with three components, "PEDR" becoming much rarer). The first component of RIPEC is basically just a mensualised standard bonus, it is supposed to evolve from 4500€/year in 2024, to 5200€/year in 2025, to 5800€/year in 2026, to 6400€/year in 2027.
The second component of RIPEC is based on special responsabilities (6k€, 12k€ or 18k€). The third component of RIPEC is based on outstanding personal engagement (from 3.5k€ to 12k€) and is meant to concern 45% of the workforce at a given time (it lasts three years and you cannot get it again for the same reason for one year after that).
That is not all, since the French decree n°2021-1617 describes an annual differential allowance for an MCF which guarantees at least twice the (gross) "SMIC" based on 1607 hours per year.
At the time being, it would mean that an MCF recruited at an echelon below 4 (gross 3189,96€/month, from IM 648) would receive a boost to nearly that (gross 3120,26€/month, from 1607x11,65€/12). If you include the first component of RIPEC in the computation, and since echelon 1 basically does not exist anymore, only someone at echelon 2 would benefit from this, albeit slightly. Since the SMIC may evolve faster than the index point against inflation, this decree remains however an interesting safety net, so to speak.
That is not all, since it is usually possible to teach some "heures complémentaires" paid about gross 41€/hour "equivalent TD". There is apparently a limit of about gross 7.7k€ you could earn this way, but it would roughly mean doubling your teaching load. Often you have no choice but to accept some "heures complémentaires" to be a team player, but too much of them would likely kill your research career.
For an MCF, being promoted to MCF HC or PU (requiring the HDR), etc. is indeed the natural way to increase their salary. Such successful trajectories would actually go hand in hand with eligibility for RIPEC bonuses. (And not so much with a higher than average teaching load.)
In summary, a newly hired MCF with no experience outside a 3-year PhD should get around (gross) 37-39 k€/year. With 8 years of relevant experience, we are looking at (gross) 43k€/year, and 46k€/year within a year.
You basically need to be nearly retired Prof. Groovy McRockstar with high responsabilities to have a shot at more than (gross) 100k€/year.
To give a ballpark of net salaries, this simulator gives some decent results, though you need to piece official info and tools together for more accuracy.
For the numbers in the question, I think 2600-2800 €/month is thus a reasonable estimation, and incidentally around what many new hires would get.
Is the starting salary as an MCF pitiful compared to similar jobs in the CH/US? Quite. Is it as bad as what the "grilles" suggest? Not so bad. Is the starting salary as an MCF sufficient to live decently in France? Sure, but in Paris you would not exactly be dreaming the dream, and/or if you have a spouse who would have a hard time finding a job, and/or children, then it gets rough.

You can find here a slightly more detailed table summarizing the salary (before and after taxes) for the different grades of MCF. It is true that the salary of a tenured position in France can be significantly lower than a postdoc salary in many other countries. However, the following also needs to be considered:

"Echelon" evolution and salary increase are de facto automatic and regular, based on seniority;
The salary goes along with several extras ("primes"), which depend on the institution you will join: you can directly ask the HR department of your future university about it.
For MCFs, the "échelon" (and hence the salary) seems to be only a function of your seniority, and not of your previous experience (which is not the case for other tenured positions, such as "Chargé de Recherche", in which the salary also depends on the time since you defended your PhD thesis, see for instance the INRIA salary policy). However, I found some online discussions mentioning the possibility to have your previous diplomas and experience taken into account in the computation of your primes: it is probably better to directly ask your future unions and HR department about that.
The lower salaries compared to other countries are balanced by the stability and continuity of the position. Moreover, after some years, MCF are meant to pass their Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches and to become full professors with a higher salary.

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text:
Tutoring Unfamiliar Material
Context: I've been tutoring in software development for the better part of this year. I've been a hobbyist and student software engineer for the last 3 years and I have decent experience in a few different areas. Usually when someone approaches me regarding unfamiliar topics, I turn them to a different tutor.
Issue: I'm working with a student right now who is working on data structures. I'm familiar with basic data structures, but not very much so with what this student is working on. I'm trying my best to learn as I go and understand the concepts and I'm able to hang on, but I feel extremely guilty that I'm not proficient in this area. I would normally not tutor this student, but they insist that they prefer this style of tutoring (where I'm not perfectly familiar with the material) so that we can work through problems together with our time, rather than review already-solved questions, etc. This student is smart and hard-working and I enjoy tutoring them, apart from the aforementioned issues.
Question: What should I do? Should I continue tutoring them and overcome my guilt and understand them from their perspective? Should I dedicate more time than I already am to learning the topics they're learning? Should I end my tutoring with them? Or perhaps I'm thinking too deeply into this issue and should continue as I have been. Thanks.

"I'm working with a student right now who is working on data structures." What qualifications do you have to tutor data structure ?

@Nobody to be honest, not much. My qualifications go as far as studying simple data structures on leetcode, etc. and doing some research. I don't have any professional qualifications to tutor because I'm just a student and a hobbyist.

Is this a paid relationship? Nothing in here really strikes me as related to academia. If it's a paid relationship, you're entered into a contract to provide something for which you are not (yet) qualified. You've got to figure out whether you can provide the service you're being paid for.

@WolfgangBangerth It is a paid relationship. It is academia-related as I'm asking a question about best tutoring (and by extension, teaching) practices with clients. I understand your point on qualification -- As the marked answer points out, the student is well aware of the service they're paying for and are happy with the service.

I think the answers are very good. I'd like to just add that as part of your effort to teach this student, if you need some help on how to improve/some difficult material, I teach data structure at my university this semester and would be happy to provide some support

@JackRed , thanks for your input, I would be very interested to get in contact with you. Let me know!

@dvub finding people who can teach and at the same time complete novice in a particular area is very hard. And for middle level topics (like non-basic data structures) it is even harder - there are a lot of people who can teach basics, there are a lot of people who are expert (but have hard time to remember what are problems to learn middle level concepts)... so your student found you to be the one - I'd definitely be paying for the chance to learn from person who feels the same problems... If you are into podcasts check out https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/what-is-aws talking about ...

...somewhat similar case (writing documentation for just-above-basic concepts) and how she figure out that she is one of rare few  people who can do that efficiently.

@dvub yeah sure. I have contact information in my profile if you want to get in touch

@Nobody In this field there is really no such thing as a qualification to teach data structures. Large numbers of computer programmers and others competent to teach it have no formal qualifications at all.

I would assume that you and this student are still not on the same level of general understanding, though - you likely have some background knowledge which aids you in learning the new material. I think it can be immensely helpful to observe how someone with more experience approaches learning something in your field - to see what kinds of questions they ask and what general strategies they apply.

Imagine that you went to the grocery store to buy some cheese, but when you got to the register, the cashier said "Oh no, this cheese sucks, you're a rich, sophisticated person, you should buy better cheese, I would feel guilty if I sold you this." And you try to explain that you just need something quick for a sandwich and you didn't have the time or inclination to consult a proper cheesemonger, but the cashier absolutely refused to sell it to you. Your bemusement would quickly turn to annoyance and even indignation -- this store sells cheese, you want to buy cheese, why is this cashier creating a problem where there isn't one?
There is absolutely no indication in your post that the student is being taken advantage of. On the contrary, they are a "smart" adult, they are aware of your limitations, and they still want to work with you. And you want to work with them. Don't make this harder than it is.

I agree with what I think your point is, but that is a weak analogy. A product is fundamentally different from personal services. Look at it this way, I'm a lawyer, I provide legal services. But I do civil appeals and civil litigation. If someone came with a criminal matter, I would refer them out. If they insisted, I would set an outrageous retainer fee and raise my rates as a gentle way to dissuade them because its not my field. And if they asked me to handle an SEC matter I would have to flatly decline because I could not become knowledgeable fast enough. Cheese is just cheese though.

I likewise agree with what I think your point is, but I also find your analogy to be weak. A non-lawyer would have no way of knowing that you aren't competent as an SEC lawyer, so declining to represent them would be an ethical requirement. But OP's student, like my cheese customer, is quite capable of deciding for themselves whether OP adds value or not. And OP is just helping their student to learn material set by a qualified professor; the duty of care is way lower than if they were independently designing a curriculum and evaluating students.

In general, I think your instincts are spot on. If you do not have a reasonable degree of expertise in a field, you should not be tutoring. In general, I think you are doing the right thing by referring potential clients that want something you don't have expertise in to other potential tutors or even just turning them away when you have nowhere to refer them to.
The case you are describing though is different. You have someone that is well aware of your limitations and despite that specifically chose you for an articulable reason. They at least apparently are happy with the services you provided.
Under those specific circumstances, I do not think there is any reason for you to feel guilty or need to turn them away. If you were to be uncomfortable for other reasons, such as affirmatively not wanting to learn this material, then you are not obligated to provide your services. But under these specific circumstances, I do not think guilt or concerns about your ability should stop you.

Students might not always need an expert; they need someone who makes them spend time with the material without being distracted by their phone.
Also, tutoring is not always only about teaching the material, it is about teaching how to study.
You not being familiar with the topic is not a big issue if you know strategies on how to read the course material to extract the knowledge needed.
Students (in my experience) don't know how to read the course literature and many times just ignores it. Reading it together (even if it is new to you) is probably beneficial for the student. I suppose searching online (together) is a way for you to teach how to find answers.
As long as you are upfront about your skills, I do not see why not.
Finally, many questions are not about the material per se, but prerequisites.


text:
How to Get More Tutoring Clients & Grow?
I'm a student, and I've been tutoring in Computer Science for roughly a year. I've been studying computer science and doing projects for fun for about 3 years. For most of my time tutoring, I've made the occasional post in communities on certain apps like Discord, offering my services and a brief description. (obviously, posting where permitted) I've been a member in some decent communities, which has been netting me a few clients, especially in the past months with the start of many fall semesters.
However, I'm looking to grow beyond this in terms of the number of clients I reach. I've considered putting up advertisements (if you would call them that) around my school, but other than that, what could I do? Should I consider pushing further for online growth, or look at in-person options? (as mentioned above) Thanks.

Are you asking how to grow your business ?

I tutor, and it's a lot of fun, but you have to market yourself. Using social media is essential for anyone trying to generate serious business nowadays, whether it is a one-person home-business or a large corporation.
You should not compete on price. You will never be as cheap as a student who is still supported by loans or his parents. You will also get the type of clients you deserve for that price.
Concentrate your services. What classes do you teach? Which age groups/school types are appropriate? This makes it easier for you to gain an advantage in the subject matter, develop teaching materials, and so on.
Request recommendations and testimonials. In the tutoring world, word of mouth is extremely powerful. Children and students converse with their classmates, and parents converse with one another.


text:
Can I upload unpublished research in github?
I am a PhD student working on Catalysis. During this lockdown, I took some data science courses and did my own data science project in form of a meta-analysis from catalysis papers.
However, right now it is not possible for me to submit this work to a research journal as I want to conduct some additional studies on it.
Still, I want to show my data science skills in my resume and mentioning this project can be great. But without having a research publication right now, the project can't be visible online.
Thus, is it a good idea to upload the project on github now, so that interested people (maybe future recruiters) can look at the project before it is published in a good research journal?
Will it affect the future submission if I decide to submit the work to a peer reviewed journal later?

If you are asking about recruiters, this question is potentially out of scope because it's about industry jobs. But no - uploading your work to github will never affect future journal publications

One possible solution is to write a preprint describing nicely what you're uploading to github, and post it to something like arXiv. Later, when you're ready, publish it in a journal with the additional work that you plan. Pro: you clearly published it. Con: some journals would not want something that's already been posted, as you're probably aware.

@Taw Thanks for  your suggestion, but I couldn't get what you meant by the question is out of scope. Do you  mean that the  industrial recruiters won't care if the project is in github or is published in peer reviewed journals?

It's out of scope for this site because this is specifically for questions about academia.

Of course you can, but keep in mind that everybody can see it. So people could use it:

If they are not honest, they could try to publish the work itself under their own name. It's unlikely but possible. You could certainly prove the plagiarism but it would be quite unpleasant.
If they are honest, they could use it to obtain some other results that they can legitimately publish under their own name. They would cite your github repository, but that's not as valuable for you as citing your paper.

The usual solution is to publish a preprint, i.e. a non peer reviewed paper which unambiguously shows that you are the author of this work and can be cited in case somebody does some other work based on yours. You can put a link to the preprint on your github repository, so that people know what to cite if they use it. Once you publish the work in a peer-reviewed journal or conference, you can update the link so that people cite the official paper.

Thank you  Erwan, your answer was quite helpful. I just wondered, will there be any copyright problem as I will have to upload almost similar figures in github repository and future publication? I guess there shouldn't be such a problem as github is open-source, but is there any chance?

@Keshri I'm not very knowledgeable about the legal details, but in general there shouldn't be any problem because nowadays all the journals allow preprints and associated github repositories are encouraged for reproducibility purposes. The fact that github is open-source is irrelevant though, the main issue would be whether the copyright can be transferred to the journal, which is a requirement most of the time. There are some related questions on the site in case you're interested.

Thank you  Erwan. It helped a lot !


text:
Regret after declining a postdoc offer over another one
I have accepted a postdoc offer, then an other offer came out and I declined it mostly because I already accepted the first one. After taking time to think and consider multiple factors I have some regrets.
Is it normal to ask if that position has been filled yet and if not is it okay to take it?

Regret, at least, is pretty common.

Proceed with caution here. Regret is common and, as we say "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence".
I can't really recommend one way or the other, since it is both your decision and you who will benefit or suffer from any decision you make. But I suggest you consider the following.
You leave yourself at risk of seeming unreliable to both institutions if you try to make a change after you have accepted an offer. That wouldn't serve you well if it were to occur.
Personally, I would only be tempted to try to switch if there were something decidedly negative about the accepted offer/position. I would be more inclined to write the second institution, thanking them, telling them that you just recently accepted another offer before this one was made and that perhaps the future will offer possibilities for joining them.
But, consider that there might be risk in trying for a short term optimization here. Think about the longer term.

Reget is common in our life; I would suggest discussing with the Professor again if it's not filled he/she might offer you. If they don't offer, you will not regret in future that you did not ask.

That leaves open the question of declining the accepted offer. That might be problematic.

@Buffy Yes, it is better to quit in the beginning rather than declining the performance, At the end only performance matters.


text:
How to recover from academic burnout as an undergraduate student?
I am from Nepal. I am computer engineering student. We have 7 subjects per semester. We have options to take fewer courses exams per semester. But this is Nepal, graduating even a month later is not culturally accepted here, otherwise I would have decided to not take 1 or 2 exams fewer.
So that is not the option.
I study for may be around 3/4 hrs during class days and around 8 hrs during no class days i.e 1 month before exam. The rule for studying in engineering is 3x the lectures that you have. We have 25 hrs of lectures per week, so 75 hrs of study per week is the bare minimum to succeed, I don't do that much though...
I am an average student, I love studying computer engineering. I find it fun. I studied with my own nobody forced me to do it.
But always during exams, I get burnt out. I did well in my first exam as I studied 8 hrs for 3 days continuously. (We have 3 days exam gaps before each exam).
I get burnt out during only 1 exam or 2 exam at max. Not all. How do I recover quickly from burn out. Tommorow is my exam and I got burnt out the day before, I didn't know about stackexchange or else I would have asked previously (it didn't come to my mind)...I don't want this to repeat again. My exam tomorrow is gone. Of course I will pass as I have already completed the syllabus. But I won't get good marks like I expected. This happens a lot to me.
This is going to ruin my future. Due to this my net gpa will be extremely low. Which won't really show my true knowledge. I don't know who will take me in the future with such a low gpa. Every postgraduate program wants you to get higher gpa, every job always selects people with higher gpa and here I am losing gpa on subjects that I have already completed just because of burn out. I think my life is finished tbh...I have very little hope at this moment.
My medical conditions-:
I am taking medicine olanzapine and fludep. They don't have any side effects on me. But they help me a lot for my mental health issues. In the past it was even worse than this.

It seems like a heavy load. I was once in that situation and was able to drop a course to relieve it. Does your university have a counseling office that can help with such problems? They are fairly common.

I am not very familiar with the culture in Nepal, so this may be off the mark. But it seems there is external pressure on you to finish the coursework faster than required by the University system. It's perhaps worth keeping in mind that such external pressure can feel overwhelming in the moment, but sometimes turns out not to be so important five years later. It might be worth thinking about whether your job prospects will be better taking a few extra months or a year to get better grades at University, than finishing more quickly with a less good understanding.

@Andrew the thing is none of the students take classses off..All take 7 subjects per semester, so it is quite uncommon to take few classes. And my issue tbh isn't more classes, I just get burnt out studying. I had finished studying this subject already, all I needed was a revision to score 50/80, with what I have studied I will get 32/80 but that is just sad. AFAIK, opportunities will be better if I get better gpa rather than graduating fast.

My instinct is that comparing yourself to others ("none of the students take classes off") is exactly the kind of thing that seems important now, but turns out not to be in five years. What matters is whether you will be successful in your life. I would guess (again, with major caveats around cultural differences), that many employers would prefer to hire someone with a stronger background and gpa that took one extra year at school, than someone who finished "on time" but has a poor gpa. (I would rather work for such an employer!) Reducing workload is surely a way to help with burnout.

But I do agree with Buffy that seeking out counseling is a very good idea.

Thanks man, @Andrew This will help me decide. My common sense tells me having a good gpa will help me go further in life than graduating faster as I have heard most US college students graduation rate is <60%. I think I will take an extra year in school. But I am sure it is going to be unbearable as it is not culturally acceptable here to graduate late. It makes sense tho, as we don't have to work for studying and we are full time students. PS I was always a great student in the past and that puts up pressure.

But how come some students have no issue with this at all. While I agree most students study just to pass there are around 10 students out of 100 students who consistently score 80%+ even in these circumstances. How are they doing it tho?

I was a great student in high school and struggled a lot when I started college. I'm sure the details of my situation aren't transferrable, but I found (a) the environment to be very different and difficult to adjust to, (b) going from being a big fish in a small pond to just another fish in a huge pond to be very challenging, (c) the level of the work was higher than I was used to and I needed to put in more effort than I had before. Don't spend too much time comparing yourself to others, that way lies madness. Focus on what you can control.

Also I went to school in an era well before covid. I can only imagine that makes everything much harder.

It's better to drop a course than fail 3. I do think undergrad programs often try to cram too much in and do none of it well. Quality over quantity is better.


text:
What is the term for managing programs and their relationship with students within a university?
I'm developing a web application to help conduct assessments for a college. I have several components in the application:

Component
Description

Content
Deals with the management of the content (questions that will be used in assessments later) for each course and allows organizing them into categories.

Exams/Assessment
Helps create tests/exams from the content/questions created in the Content component and then schedule and assign them to the right audience.

Evaluation
This component takes care of evaluating test responses, calculating scores and grading.

Users
Manages user accounts (students, teachers and administrators) in the system.

However, there is one unnamed component.
What it takes care of is:

Managing (adding, removing, updating) the programs offered by the college and the courses within these programs.

It also controls the students' enrollments and defines how long they are valid. This includes both admission to a new program and promotion to a further academic term within a program.

It associates students with one or more programs during a timespan (academic year).

This component will help determine if a student's enrollment is current or is expired (of an academic term that has already passed by).

In other words, it determines the relationship with the college programs and students by tracking them across multiple academic terms in these programs.

The main entities in this module are programs, courses, students and their enrollments.

Admission does not really seem to be the right word here because it only represents part of what this component does. I have also considered Program Manager but could not come up with a better name. What would be the closest term that describes what this component is responsible for?

I don't think this question belongs here, perhaps on the English Language stack. However, how about "Administration"?

I think English.SE would consider this a "naming" question, which is not on-topic there. You could ask about it in their chat or meta, or possibly craft an on-topic question there after reading their site guidelines, but I don't think it's suitable for migration in the current form.


text:
Do graduate schools dislike when students take 5 years in undergrad?
I am currently a junior Materials Science and Engineering major at a top engineering university, and have done research in a very physics-based materials science lab for the past two years. I love this research, and plan to continue in the field for graduate school, but I am realizing more and more that I will need to strengthen my physics background significantly.
I have the option to double major in physics, which I can also use as part of the requirements for the honors program I am in, but it will mean taking an extra year to graduate (5 years instead of 4).
I am honestly OK with taking a bit more time in undergrad., as I have had a wonderful experience so far, but I want to be sure it is not frowned upon by top graduate schools (in either MatSE or Applied Physics) that I am taking 5 years instead of 4. Is this usually the case?

See the https://academia.stackexchange.com/help on asking questions and take the tour. Academia.SE is not a discussion board, but a Q&A site for specific questions: "any advice?" is not a specific enough question.

I disagree with "too broad", but oh well... I don't think adcoms will care that much about the duration, as opposed to the reasons for it (eg. if you took longer because you failed a class). Actually a lot of people do double majors and take 5 years because of that, I haven't heard of that being seen as a negative per se. Instead, the added course load leads to lower GPAs, which is seen as a bigger minus than the plus of the double major.

I don't agree this is too broad. The substantive question is in the title: "Do graduate schools dislike when students take 5 years in undergrad?". Voting to reopen.

I vote to reopen as well. Will suggest some edits to the question and hope the OP is ok with a slight tweak.  @Allure points out the gist of the question is on topic.  Question just needs some editing, not a quick reaction close vote.

Do you plan on going straight to grad school, or do you plan on going into industry first? (It makes a difference; if you go off and get some great industrial experience that helps you narrow down your research plan, etc., then nobody would care how long you took to complete your undergrad.)

To be clear, this question was substantially edited after my original comment where the title was "5 years: MatSE and Physics double major?" and the only other statement containing a question mark read "Any advice?"

For the OP, where in the world do you want to go to graduate school? (what countries). This is deeply material to how a 5-year undergraduate career is perceived.


text:
Can a graduate student on a university stipend work a remote internship concurrently?
Due to the current public health situation, my graduate studies and research work have moved entirely online. I was offered a remote full-time internship for summer. Both being online, I am able to work on tasks from both the internship and my research in my own time. There is also significant overlap in my graduate research and the internship. That is, research I do in one benefits the other as well.
My advisor wants me to get an internship over the summer. They expect I will focus on the internship, and work on a reduced basis on my graduate work as well. This I want. The expectation is that I will stop getting the stipend while I am on an internship. This I do not want.
I want to work both jobs. One, for the financial incentive. And two, to continue working on my graduate research and degree, and be paid for the work I do.
What are the legal, ethical, and practical implications of having another job while being on a research stipend? It it generally disallowed or discouraged? How do I negotiate such an arrangement with my advisor?
Visa issues are not a concern.

This depends entirely on your institution's rules.

What are the legal, ethical, and practical implications of having another job while being on a research stipend?

Legally, this depends entirely on your university's policies and your contract.
Ethically, there will be a wide variety of opinions:

One line of thought will say that a research stipend is not a "normal" paycheck in exchange for your work, but rather an investment in your future by the donors or taxpayers. This investment is designed to cover your financial needs while you focus all your professional energies on launching your career. Such a view would be incompatible any paid work while receiving a research stipend.
Another line of thought will say that your research stipend is very much a normal paycheck, and whatever you do in your off hours is your own business. This view would allow students to do whatever they want on their own time.
But in your case, you say there is "significant overlap in my graduate research and the internship." This complicates the issue further, since even in the second point of view, you are not really doing the internship "on your own time." In this sense, your proposal could be considered equivalent to asking your advisor "could I work twice as much as your average student and get paid twice as much?" to which the answer is of course no.

Practically, of course it is difficult to sustain a very intense schedule, particularly for "creative" jobs. The fact that your internship and regular work are so similar exacerbates this, since you are using the same muscles for both efforts.

It it generally disallowed or discouraged?

I would say, generally discouraged and often disallowed. Though there are some exceptions, particularly in technological fields where students might be allowed or encouraged to do internships or even start their own companies on the side.

How do I negotiate such an arrangement with my advisor?

This will depend entirely on your university's policies, your performance, and the advisor's personality.


text:
Should I write a paper describing my comparisons and user guides for free tools?
I have already done a project for an organization about android non-functional testing and now they've forced me to write a paper about that.
I have read many scientific papers but I've not written any yet. So I really don't know if I can publish my work as a paper.
This project was about non-functional testing tools in Android and my task was to find existing free tools (best tool for each test) and write a user manual for each of them. (I have done this for almost 8 non-functional tests)
Does this sort of comparison seem like it would be publishable in an academic journal? This work seems like it would be helpful for others, but doesn't seem like "real research."

Who is this "they" you're talking about? Could they perhaps give you some guidance beyond suggesting a journal? Try asking.

Have you written a seminar report or a BSc thesis? Write the same, but only the contribution parts (no background and expose). Then start removing text, until you land at the required page limit. This is hard and it's totally overdoing it, but a viable option is you really have absolutely no idea.

Welcome to Academia.SE. Your question was about to be closed ("shopping questions" are considered off topic here), so I eliminated your last paragraph (asking your journal recommendations), and rephrased the question / title. Please feel free to "edit" my edits as appropriate.

The exploratory work that you have done in non-functional testing tools can be easily summarized in a kind of survey paper. You need to enumerate the tools that you have played with, describe the features and limitations (even with a summary table) and describe your tool selection process (free tools seems like a criteria that you did taken into account). Further, you can even detail the tests that you did with the different tools.
You can then make a extended critique over the existing tools, pointing out the most valuable features and, then, pointing out the lacks, limitations and suggesting further research directions that need to be done in that area (e.g. suggesting the implementation of missing features or other ways of testing).

Thanks buddy. I was confused about writing a review or a survey and your answer really helped me to get an idea.


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To continue or quit my PhD in physics after 4yrs？
I am from China, currently a 4th year physics PhD student in Boston. This is a small department with ~10 professors. I am working for one assistant professor now. But I am thinking about leaving this group/school if I have a better choice.
I have a colleague who is also from China and we joined the lab about the same time. At this beginning, we have some advanced experiment instrument to build with the help from the instrument company engineer. My advisor asked us to take a video of the building process so that we can refer to it later if needed. The other guy took the job since he has a video recorder. When the instrument was ready to use, my advisor asked me to write an operation manual and so I needed the videos. The other guy said yes at first, but refused to let me copy any of these or just viewing from his recorder unless I take him to a restaurant!
I was completely shocked by his behavior. My advisor was also there and tried to figure out how to deal with this and asked me if I can do that. I agreed to give that guy a treat nearby but then that guy said it must be a fancy downtown one. That I cannot endure anymore and just said no. Then he attacked my personality and not being grateful to him. My advisor stopped him by saying sometimes you have to work with different people. This is the first time I am in a quarrel with that person. But I still trusted my advisor.
Then similar events like that happens again and again. My advisor failed me every time. When I mentioned this stuff,  he just said he doesn't care and he wasn't there to see what really happened.
When I was working on my project and made some progress, my advisor promised that guy he can use my data to write another paper. My advisor mainly talked to the other guy about data analysis because I had a busy work schedule. One time I need to use the data analysis code they have used, and the other person sent me code with problems. I had to figure out how to write it by myself.
Stuff like that makes me decide to work independently. So I told my advisor I would like to have only me working on my project and wouldn't work on his at all. My advisor agreed, but started assigning all funded projects to that guy. For the entire past year, I have only two months project time working on some random samples.
My advisor rarely comments on my work compared to the other person's work. The rest of time, well, I was mostly following my advisor's guide, doing bunch of data fitting. While he only looked at my result for a minute and asked me to fit again. When finally it was finished, he decided it will not be used in my second paper.
During such time, I was almost driven mad and got into a bad relationship with my advisor. He will also be triggered by some small mistakes of mine and so am I at his. He promised me that I can graduate in 2yrs if I worked really hard but I just lost faith in him.
I had planned to be a pioneer in physics. But after this, I only want to get a decent job in industry and have a chance to stay in US in the future. But I only have limited experience in programming besides my experimental experience. What can I do at this point?

If you're in your 4th year, I'm guessing that you have a thesis committee or something similar. Go talk to them! One of their main roles is to deal with problems like this, especially problems the advisor seems unwilling or unable to deal with. If you don't have a committee, talk to your department head or other faculty you know.

We only have half the story. What you describe seems outrageous (particularly the dinner part!), but I imagine if your professor had described the situation, he would characterize it quite differently (I have one socially-awkward but useful student and one whiny, unproductive student...just as an example, not saying you're actually whiny or unproductive). Given this, I'm going to avoid criticizing any of you.
In any case, the current situation is clearly untenable. A couple of options:

Talk to your advisor. Send an e-mail asking for a formal meeting to discuss your status. In the meeting, you might start by saying something nice about finding his work interesting and regretting that things haven't gone as well as you would like. Then, ask him when he sees you graduating and whether he will give you interesting work going forward. If you can smooth things over and make a good plan going forward to work independently, maybe you can finish out your last two years. If not, better to find out now so you can cut your losses.
Get a new advisor. In a small group of ~10 professors, this may be difficult. I would start by talking to the department chair or a trusted professor
Transfer to a new university. I realize this may be difficult with your visa restrictions.
Leave with an MS, if this is possible. If you are OK going into industry, an MS is not so bad (and you can always apply to PhD programs after leaving with an MS).

There are two issues. The first is that it sounds like your fellow student is trying to actively sabotage you. He is taking advantage of your work without helping you in return. This is wrong and should be stopped. Your advisor is primarily responsible for doing that, and I don't understand why he isn't being more active. There are faculty, sadly, who are more interested in research results, than in their students, though I hate to attribute that to the advisor without more information. But you need someone to listen to your complaint and act on it.
The second issue is that working for the wrong advisor, for whatever the reason is a terrible situation. If you have any options to change without a major setback you should explore those options. Do so quietly with other faculty if you need to. If your advisor is a junior person on the faculty it might explain, but not excuse, what is happening to you. He may just not have the experience to deal with it correctly, or he may be fearful of upsetting more powerful forces. In this case, a more senior person as advisor will probably do you well. He or she will have more power to do the right thing, but likely also more ideas.
The extreme solution is to change universities, though I realize that for someone on a student visa this may not be possible. It will also force you to abandon some of your work and add to the time of completion of your degree. But if you change universities, you automatically get a new advisor.


text:
As an outsider, how do I get academics to discuss my idea with me?
I got a physics degree nearly 30 years ago. My goal was to understand general relativity and quantum field theory, but at graduation I still could not understand them. I then embarked on a career as a software developer.
About 10 years ago, I was reading an article and got an idea. I found my idea really helpful. Major swaths of physics that previously hadn't made any sense, suddenly did.  For the first time I felt I had wrapped my head around relativity and quantum mechanics and many other aspects of physics.
I was excited about the concept and wanted to discuss it with someone: "Hey...  I have an idea and want to hear what you think about it."  Something, I had done countless times as a University of Chicago student hanging out in the C-Shop.  However, I was totally taken by surprise by what happened next.  I totally did not expect the barriers, the hostility, the ridicule and scorn I was about to encounter in trying to chat with someone about the concept.
Over the last 10 years I've attempted the following:

Discuss the concept online: Any such post placed online is immediately removed / ridiculed / banned / shadow-banned.  It is with great fear and trepidation that I post this here.
Chat with former professors: I tried to talk to my former professors, but they were retired (or worse).
Chat with new professors: I tried to talk to new professors at the U of Chicago or at UW-Madison (where I had gone my freshman year), but no one was willing to chat with me for even 5 minutes.  I once offered a professor at UC-Berkeley $400 to chat with me for an hour; he refused.
Try to publish: Trying to publish something or even posting it to arXiv is absolutely impossible.
Tried to signup for Sabine Hossenfelder's help desk:  They mention I was 35th in line and they couldn't estimate if they would be able to get to me in weeks, months or years.  Which I took to indicate that it is now defunct.
Create an iOS / macOS App:  I quickly realized that in Physics the phrase "hey... I have an idea" is an instant nonstarter.  So, I shifted to the formation of an imaginary universe I call 'Universe X' and ask people to imagine what the physics of this universe might look like.  I wrote an entire app that concisely explains the concept and includes numerous qualitative simulations.  Unfortunately, this hasn't been any more successful in starting a conversation than anything else I've done.

A serious issue here is that the number of people that exist in the world that can actually give useful push back on this stuff is incredibly small; are there even 10,000 world wide?  I have had to work on this in a vacuum for 10 years; I've had no-one who rides math rails or anyone else to discuss it with in that time.  Science is littered with examples of people outside of academia making contributions to it.  Given the current state of things how would that remotely still be possible?
I have an idea; perhaps that makes me a bad person; perhaps it indicates I have a mental illness and certainly, there is an excellent chance the my idea is wrong. But I think the idea is promising: it allows specific, correct calculations and is falsifiable. I am not looking for universal acclaim, I'd just like someone to seriously look at my idea and give me a reality check. How can I make this happen?
For those who asked, the app is here and my GitHub, which inclides a 6-minute description of the concept, is here.

"Trying to publish something or even posting it to ArXiv is absolutely impossible." Why? If you have endorsement issue, please read How to find an arXiv endorser and related questions.

Consider what your end-goal is. For example, had the Berkeley prof accepted your $400 offer and then told you your idea was Just Plain Wrong, what would you have done?

@thegreatemu rejoiced.  I would finally be free of it.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/talk-to-physicist_27.html sounds like it could be useful?  Kinda pricey though

@Ryxuma Thanks for the suggestion.  That's actually Sabine Hossenfelder's help desk as mentioned above.  I'm in the queue, but...

Let me start by saying that I read your readme page and watched your YouTube videos, and I think they're very interesting. I'll give you some more details of what I think shortly.
My advice to you is: try not to think about what your idea might be, and focus on what your idea is.
Your idea might be a great tool for understanding relativity and quantum mechanics. Your idea might be a more or less accurate description of our universe. Your idea might allow us to make new accurate predictions that we weren't able to make before. Frankly, I don't think that your idea is any of these things, but it might be.
Well, as you've discovered through painful experience, it's extremely difficult to get anyone else to be interested in something that might be wonderful. I've had the exact same experience. I've come up with lots of wonderful ideas and told them to lots of people... and nobody cared about any of them at all. I've found that it's pretty much impossible to get anyone to see the same potential that I saw. (And looking back, I think none of my ideas were all that wonderful after all.)
From the perspective of the people around you, what you have is not something useful; it's not something interesting.
But the thing is, what you have is, at the very least, something. You have a computational model, which you call "Universe X." You have a pretty app which demonstrates some of the properties of Universe X. You've done some explorations into Universe X and you've found that it seems to obey the laws of special relativity (at least approximately). You've found that its behavior matches general relativity in some respects and differs from general relativity in some respects. I find your Universe X really interesting—not interesting in the sense that I think it shows promise as a model of real-world physics, but interesting in the sense that I would have a lot of fun playing with it and thinking about it.
So, my suggestion is that you don't go around telling people "I have this idea that I think might be a really great model of the physical world," but instead go around telling people "I have this cellular automaton that's inspired by general relativity and simulates expanding and contracting space." Lots of people are interested in cellular automata, and some of them are likely to be interested in yours too. And most importantly, if you say "I have this cool cellular automaton," people will actually believe you, because the claim that you're making is very modest, and people can easily see that it's correct just by watching a video.
(And let's suppose that Universe X really is a wonderful model of the real world. You don't need to try to convince anyone that it's a good physical model. All you have to do is get people interested in your cool little cellular automaton, and they'll explore it and find out what its strengths and weaknesses are. If—and I must warn you that I think this is very, very unlikely—but if it's a great model of the universe, then the people who are fans of it will start to notice.)

It's also important to note that a paper about the cellular automaton will not begin with an autobiographical preface, which is also likely to turn off physics researchers.

Are there really that many people interested in cellular automata theories of physics right now?

@Tom In academia, I don't know. Outside of academia, judging by the popularity of things like the Game of Life Wiki, it seems like there are hundreds of people who are interested in cellular automata in general, and I would guess that a large fraction of those would find ones inspired by physics interesting.

As someone who's published on cellular automata and relativity (from traditional academic channels, mind you), I feel this is the best approach. Just write a short paper about your automaton and what it does. You can submit it to peer-reviewed journals and hopefully get some relevant feedback that way. Or submit a poster to computer science conferences.

This is not exactly an answer, but it got too long for a comment. Please don't take it the wrong way, I just want to try and give some context to help you understand why physicists may be reluctant to discuss with you.
As a cosmologist I get spam/crackpot emails about "new theories" on average once a month. I'm not remotely well known or senior, and I hate to think what the inboxes of my more established colleagues look like. I've even received physical letters in the post with crackpot theories. They are invariably from retired engineers or computer scientists who claim to have "disproven Einstein" or something similar, and want my opinion on it. These theories are almost never couched in mathematical terms which is a huge communications barrier; the authors are not even trying to speak the same language that physicists use on a daily basis.
Furthermore, it's hard enough to keep up with the "legitimate" literature in cosmology; there are around 20 new papers a day posted to arXiv which bear at least some relevance to my work and perhaps one or two a week which merit a close read (i.e. a few hours to go through the calculations and figures). You can see why it's nearly impossible to make time for reading about and discussing unestablished theories.
Some people see this as the scientific establishment's desire to ignore or suppress alternative ideas. I don't think that is the case; it's just more sensible to trust the work of someone with a PhD in physics and who has been teaching general relativity for twenty years than someone with an undergraduate degree in physics which they openly admit left them with an incomplete understanding of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Think of it this way: would you be able to compose a beautiful and powerful symphony after only having listened to Beethoven's 5th a few times on the radio? Or would you need to undertake years of study in melody, harmony and instrumentation in order to achieve it, making many mistakes and writing many bad pieces of music along the way?
It's also important to realise that science does not progress via outsiders making some huge, paradigm-shifting leap once every few years. Progress is instead made in very small increments worked on by tens or hundreds of people over tens or hundreds of years. You need to ask yourself if you are truly trying to contribute to physics research, or if your greater motivation is the fame and fortune that would come with the acceptance and propagation of your theory. If the former, then the way forward for you is very clear: try to get a Master's degree and a PhD in physics. If the latter, I'm sorry to tell you that it is simply not going to happen.

I appreciate this response, but I would ask you to perhaps consider a few things:

I didn't know about this phenomena previous to having this thought and of course it is causing me much personal anguish.  But, out of curiosity, I have chased down some of these "ideas".  Most of the time it doesn't take more than a few minutes to see there is no content in their idea.  The will say something like "universe = energy / time" or such or else they don't say anything at all, either there is no idea there or they don't want to divulge it.

Imagine a world where option pricing is entirely understood using the Black-Scholes model.  Some crazy person comes along and says "actually, I think option pricing must be determined by some sort of market where people buy and sell these instruments based on their predicted movement of some underlying security."  Certainly, a powerful response would be to complain about "not using mathematical language" to discuss 'options'.  http://worrydream.com/KillMath/ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sabine-hossenfelder/lost-in-math/

The field of Physics like many things has many filters for aspiring Physicists.  Are these the correct filters?  Do they prevent false negatives; do they prevent false positives?  Would Faraday or Maxwell survive the filter these days?
Are you sure the only motivation of people trying to understand our universe is fame?  It's not possible people are motivated by a genuine desire to know the truth?

How much time and energy has been spent on String Theory?  The current accepted concept of our universe says that 96% of it has never been observed.  If some alien race comes to Earth and asks us to send a Physicist to an intergalactic Physics competition; asks us to "Show us what you got!"  What does your gut say about your chances of Earth doing well in that competition?  Are we cocky about our understanding of the universe?

There are 8 billion people in the world.  Certainly, the chance a given person is able to figure something out is miniscule.  But, what are the chances that none of the 8 billion people figures something out?  Do we totally preclude that possibility?

@aepryus I've written some answers to your comments in chat.

@aepryus The chances of you being right are bigger than zero. However, there's a signal-to-noise ratio problem. Even if you're correct, your suggestions drown in the noise because your background doesn't put enough power behind the idea to get heard. This is as expected. How should someone see the difference between your idea and a crackpot idea without having to read multiple pages (for which they don't have the time)?

I might add a lot of the “crackpot” people can act in hostile ways if you engage in any way. E.g. hat least that used to be a thing), some people trying to disprove Einstein were basically just antisemites. If you make such an experience even just once, you might ignore an E-mail on “unofficial” channels the next time.

Let me pick up on the points made by @astronat.
First, I'm even less well known than they are as I only get crackpot letters every 6 months.  The common thread to these letters is the authors don't even know that they don't know.  Too often, these people don't even realize their understanding of a particular phrase or concept was entirely incorrect.
I have myself lectured to students who had their pet theory of quantum mechanics.  Well actually their pet theory wasn't about quantum mechanics, but about some extremely narrow subproblem for which they claim to propose a solution.  It's great to come up with a theory that reproduces the spectrum of hydrogen, but does this still work when you include perturbations?  Does this work for the 3D harmonic oscillator?  Does it predict the correct degeneracies and transition rates?  etc etc etc. The reason a particular paradigm has survived the passage of time is not that it solves one problem but that the weight of accumulated evidence makes it clear it applies to a huge number of situations.  No progress is made if your solution to one specific problem immediately causes a plethora of other problems, so you need to be aware of what these other problems could be.
Any communication with a specialist should demonstrate that you have an accurate, profound (beyond Wikipedia) and clear understanding of mainstream ideas in the field, not just the specific area of the problem you're trying to solve.   To be taken seriously,  you must be able to convincingly convey your idea accurately and clearly using the jargon of the field.
To rephrase this in the software language: if someone comes up to you with an idea for a new routine to diagonalize a special type of matrices, but cannot clearly explain how variables are assigned, would you seriously consider investing your time to check if this method works in general?
Mastering the jargon is very difficult to do unless you have quite deep background, so the first order of business is start spending your evenings and weekends seriously studying the classic references of the field, not at the dilettante level but at the professional level.  We're talking here Misner, Thorne and Wheeler (or equivalent) as a starting point, moving up from there.  This will likely require 1000s of hours and would be similar to a self-study MSc degree in this area.
The hard reality is if you don't have time to do this, nobody will have time for you.

@Trunk The downside is that self-study is likely going to take much more time than formal university education. (Post)graduate programs aren't primarily meant to keep all the lecturers employed, but to cover a given amount of material in a reasonably efficient manner. It's simply easier to take the guided tour instead of exploring a given field completely on your own.

@TooTea true enough but stopping work for a couple of years (and apparently not work at entry-level salary) to investigate what could be a fringe idea is a huge gamble.  Elementary caution would dictate a lot of prep work to justify this decision.

@ZeroTheHero Right, I really don't think OP should quit their job to pursue a full-time university programme. However, at least in those EU countries that I'm familiar with, universities also offer distance or blended learning programmes. Those are typically perfectly doable next to a full time job (with some dedication).

In short: "If you think you can contribute, get back into academia and work your way up the ladder". Blunt and probably true, but particularly cruel to a man who probably by now has professional and family responsibilities which he can't walk away from.. and even if he could get onto a distance learning program he'd need to follow that with 20 years of research and publication before being taken seriously. The truth is that there are far too many of us software developers who think we understand the Universe, and having chosen that path in our youth our old age would be better spent fishing.

@MarkMorganLloyd it’s more like: “If you think you can contribute, first  make sure nobody can dismiss your idea in 30seconds (or less)”.  Getting an idea is easy.  Getting an idea that works is much much harder, which is why most ideas that work are due to professionals.

@ZeroTheHero I'd suggest it's "make sure nobody /will/ dismiss". I'm not arguing OP's corner here, but I think his point is fair that somebody who doesn't have the credentials will be usually dismissed without a hearing, irrespective of whether his idea would stand scrutiny,

@MarkMorganLloyd I'd not quite say that the point is fair. From the point of view of the person without credentials it seems unfair that they will be automatically dismissed without a chance to prove themselves. From the point of view of the expert it would be unfair to give a not insignificant amount of their limited time to the untrained and inexperienced and their ideas while there are those who have been trained and have experience or who are being trained at the moment.

The experts instead use signals to decide who to pay attention to, major claims often signal untrained/inexperience, correct use of jargon/personal knowledge of people in the field often signals has put the effort in.If you have an idea and want to take it to take it to an expert without having the training/experience yourself, the only way I can see is to work your way up the levels of trained people and ask for issues with your proposal, not to verify it (and don't challenge with prove my theory wrong) only moving to the next one when the current one can't see any issues.

First off, I endorse the idea suggested by @Nobody, in the comments, of seeking a way to publish a preprint paper on arXiv. However, I think that there is a greater problem that is exemplified by your overall discussion and presentation. It is simply that the impression you convey, and I doubt that this impression is actually correct, is that out of the blue you had an extraordinary vision of a way to revolutionize a well-developed area of physics and that your revolutionary idea is so radically different from everything that precedes it, that the history and context are unimportant.
Once again, I would stress that I am unsure whether that is your experience of the development of the idea, but I do think that it is the impression conveyed, and I doubt that it is true.
Most revolutionary ideas in physics and cosmology (think Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Einstein) are actually deeply embedded in the history of what preceded them and can be shown to be a logical progression from them, albeit with a component revolutionary idea. To get other people to attend to you, even if you manage to publish on arXiv, you will most likely need to show that you understand what has gone before, and how your idea is both logical and transformational.
And now, on a completely different note (and beware that this comment comes from a non-physicist), your remarks about a checkerboard metaphor bring to mind the cellular automata ideas developed by Stephen Wolfram in A New Kind of Science. It might be worth your while to at least read a (kindly, if you can find it) review of A New Kind of Science and see whether your ideas do indeed have a similar flavour. If they do, that might give you at least one entry point from introducing your own ideas.

"kindly, if you can find it :-) " Wolfram's book was very harshly received by the scientific community: http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_reviews.html.  This one by Rudy Rucker is fairly positive: http://sjsu.rudyrucker.com/%7Erudy.rucker/wolfram_review_AMM_11_2003.pdf

There is no conspiracy in the physics community to ignore laymen's contributions. It just extremely unlikely that such contributions are really  important. However, every single good idea will be picked up eventually.
So, set up a website where you explain your idea. Then use social media to make people aware of it. If your idea has any value, it will be picked up.
Approaching physics professionals directly has a close to zero chance of success because they don't have time to waste on people who might be crackpots.

Or write a book. That forces you to lay everything out for others and re-evaluate your ideas more rigourously and fill in holes. If you can overcome that hurdle it will also persist after you're gone if it's any good. It won't mean it's not crackpot book...I've seen some, but at least it will have passed some measure and will have indicated you have some skin in the game. Yes, it's a lot of work but that's what it increases credibility.

The asker is most likely a crackpot and thus this website idea will not "work" and will languish alongside every other crackpot website. Most likely.

I retract my "most likely" claim as it seems the asker seems to have created something (still dunno if it's useful to physics or not). The accepted answer's advice to "focus on what it is" seems appropriate.

The notion that "every good idea will be picked up eventually" has so little empirical evidence. The very best that we have available if evidence of good ideas that took a very long time to be picked up. Horribly censored data, as a statistician would say.

@crimsondark "The notion that "every good idea will be picked up eventually" has so little empirical evidence.". On what empirical evidence is that statement based?

Have you considered going to a conference (such as APS March Meeting) to present your work as a poster or oral presentation? This would give you a venue to discuss your ideas with working physicists in both formal and informal settings and might provide some valuable feedback.
One word of advice based on your post and comments: In my view, you can't really blame anyone for not understanding (or not being interested) in your ideas. As @astronat explained in their answer, there are hundreds of papers published every day which people worked very hard on (myself included), and you will have to compete against them. You will have to speak the language of your intended audience and respond convincingly to their questions and criticisms if you want their attention. If you can't pass their personal "bullshit" test, then they will quickly move on. It is simply too risky to spend time on speculative theories which may not pay off.
At the end of the day, research is a free-market of ideas. Why should people invest their time in your ideas rather than their own (or someone else's)? It is great that you created a professional-looking iPhone app, but this is not the currency of working physicists. They are more likely to care about the mathematical foundations of your idea, how it fits in with other accepted theories, and whether it can accurately predict the outcomes of previous experiments. Until you can provide these answers (or create a track record which will make others more likely to take a gamble on you), then you may have an uphill battle to fight. Good luck!

At least you are not alone
Gregor Mendel: Known as the father of modern genetics for his experiments with pea plants, which established the laws of inheritance, was not widely accepted as such until many years after his death.
Nikola Tesla: Struggled to gain recognition for his work during his lifetime. It was only after his death that his contributions to the field of electrical engineering became widely acknowledged.
Ignaz Semmelweis: Discovered the importance of hand hygiene in preventing the spread of disease. However he was ridiculed by many of his colleagues. It was only after his death that his work was recognized as a significant contribution to the field of medicine.
Ludwig Boltzmann spent a great deal of effort in his final years defending his theories. He did not always get along with his colleagues in Vienna. In the end he committed suicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann
Stephen Wolfram who wrote three books by the time he was 14 and had a PhD by the time he was 20, was friends with Richard Feynman and has the Wolfram programming language to his name has tried on more than one occasion to get physicists interested in his theories. He is still struggling to win their approval.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-criticize-stephen-wolframs-theory-of-everything/
On a personal note, I have severe misgivings about analogies with checkerboards. I would have to read more but basically there is a problem with directionality.
So what should you do?
One possible idea is to create your own YouTube channel and explain your ideas bit-by-bit from the ground up. Make it a series. As always, the problem is to find viewers. Unfortunately, you have to find suitable click-bait to attract attention. Look at your favourite channels and see how they do it.
You mention Sabine Hossenfelder. I've seen a couple of her things. If you review some of her output, simply mentioning her name as the title of one of your videos is likely to attract attention. Once you have any kind of following, you have an audience. By showing that you appreciate the ideas of others, you may find that they reciprocate. If you steadfastly ignore the output of others in favour of your own, then you can't blame them for doing likewise.
I would consider reviewing many ideas that are out of the mainstream and treating them critically but impartially.
Good luck in your endeavours!

@Trunk - My mention of Wolfram was not a defence of him as a person. It was intended to point out that even someone with lots of qualifications, awards, money, and famous friends can have difficulty promoting their non-standard ideas about physics. This, unfortunately, makes it even tougher  for the OP to get their ideas known.

The question was, essentially, "how do I get someone to consider my idea and give me some feedback." I'm not sure how this provides an answer -- can you clarify?

@cag51 - Thanks for pointing that out. I'll add to my answer.

I’m not sure if putting a potential crank on the same pedestal as Mendel, Tesla, Semmelweis, and Boltzmann is the most healthy or productive thing.

@Eric - I have no idea if the OP is a crank or not, I'm just answering the question.  Some people labelled as cranks turn out to be right in the end, some are just cranks all the way down. I'm not here to judge either way.

You say “I’m just answering the question” but as was already pointed out, that part doesn’t answer the question.

@Eric - Okay, I'm not 'just' answering the question. I have put in some background thoughts as well. In a way it is answering the question because it shows there is not a simple answer when past geniuses have had tough times.  It is a caution before I proceed to my actual answer. The fact that I didn't insult the OP by saying "No chance - you're not as good as this lot" is my choice and my point of view.

Certainly any comparison to someone who has contributed to science is (perhaps wildly) premature or perhaps just wrong.  But, FWIW, after 10 years of scorn and invective for trying to discuss the idea your response was a much appreciated refreshing respite.


text:
How to effectively e-mail a professor I met briefly about collaborative work?
Recently in a conference, I met a professor from an esteemed university and head of a research group I have been following. I told him about my research and he gave me his email address (though I could easily find it over the web, he personally wrote it down for me). He told me to write to him and he will direct me to his post-doc and see how we can collaborate. His research group has some testing facilities I would love to work with.
The following is the email I am aiming to write to him. Any corrections and/or suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Dear Professor XYZ,
Hope you are doing fine. We met at ABC conference, in TTT a couple of
  days ago. I introduced myself as the PHD student at 123 University and
  expressed my willingness to work on a collaborative project with your
  research group (utilizing your practical testbed for DDD project).
First of all, I appreciate the time you spent with me, and the opportunity
  to introduce myself, my research, and my interest in utilizing your
  testing facilities. Second, I would like your advice on how I can further proceed to initiate a collaboration between your research facilities and our RRR research group.
I will wait for your reply.
Thanks again,
Kashan

I always suggest being a bit more succinct, and mentioning (but not delving into!) the technical aspects of your work. How about this:

Dear Professor XYZ,
This is [name]; we met at AAA conference in TTT a couple of days ago. As you may recall, I am working on [xxx] and you suggested that your post-doc could get me started in your testbed for my [yyy] project.
I'm very eager to pursue this. Could you please introduce me to your post-doc? I'd be happy to set up a call or provide any information you might need.
Thanks in advance; I really appreciate the opportunity,
Kashan

I would suggest changing This is [name] to My name is [name].

@camden_kid It might depend on where you are from but to me My name is [name] would make it sound like I have never met the person that I am writing to before.

@MarkusTenghamn Yes, I agree, either may depend on where you are from. My suggestion was from a British perspective and the fact that the prof may not remember the name since they met briefly.

To me, "my name is name" sounds like a cold-call -- if the prof also didn't remember the name, he would likely assume the mail was from some random person, and so would give it very low priority. "This is name" sounds like they already have a relationship - if the prof doesn't remember the name, he'll probably keep reading at least to the end of the first sentence, at which point he'll be reminded. That said, I know very little about British English, maybe things are different there.

I have written to professor and he responded me to write him back. I did that too. After that, I have not heard anything from him. How can I ask him politely if he is still interested or not?

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Absent a formal policy, is it rude to use a mobile phone to take notes in lectures and seminars?
I like to use my iPhone to take notes in lectures and seminars. I prefer it to using paper (easy to lose, hard to search, bad for the environment) or a laptop (cumbersome to carry and loud to type with).
However, I get the impression that many people are against the use of phones in lectures for any purpose. As an undergraduate, I remember some lecturers publicly shaming people who used their phones, even when they were making notes or looking up something relevant to the lecture. One lecturer in particular even brought a jug of water to the class with her, and threatened that if she saw anyone with a phone she would put it in the jug. Admittedly phones can be used for irrelevant or distracting purposes, but this is also true of laptops and paper! I am now an academic myself, but still worry about offending colleagues.
Is it acceptable to use a phone to make notes in a lecture? If not, what makes them particularly unacceptable/rude compared with a laptop or tablet? And are there any strategies that can be used to indicate to a lecturer that you are using your phone to make notes (and not to make Tik Tok videos)?
Note, I am not asking for advice about whether taking notes on an iPhone is wise, nor about whether a "no phone policy" would be a good idea (the latter point is discussed here).

You should indicate which country your question refers to, as there are legal implications in different places to this question.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Does this answer your question? Should I ban electronic devices (smartphones, tablets and laptops) from a course?

Phones are not perceived as note-taking tools, making them undesirable in education and business settings. Laptops are tolerated in both settings, but don't expect respect. Tablets are perhaps the lesser-evil, especially when used with a stylus. Better still, specialised note-taking devices (not dissimilar to tablets) are now available. Paper will serve you well and set the best impression.