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Medically undiagnosed condition: how to inform?
I am currently a final year grad student. Sometime last year, I developed severe pain in one of my hands which led to a lot of time lost. I have seen some of the best doctors in the country for my condition (I am doing my PhD at a hospital so that helped) but we have not been able to narrow down on any diagnosis. Through out this time my supervisor has been super supportive and helpful; he even helped me arrange a few consultations. My PhD committee (which monitors my progress among other things) has also been mostly supportive. A few months ago, the pain began to subside (could be on its own, could be medicines helping). I communicated this to the committee members last month (who have usually been concerned and periodically checking up on me).
A couple of weeks ago the pain is back suddenly and this time it is in both my hands. This has put me in a difficult spot work-wise and I feel that I might end up losing some more time if the pain persists.
Therefore, the premise of my question is: I have medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). In general people really have low tolerance for such conditions and often think "its all in the head".
My questions are:
1) How do I deal with telling my committee members that I am in severe pain once again? Given that I just told them last month that I was doing fine and that I do not have a diagnosis, I am afraid I might come across as someone using my illness as an excuse for reduced productivity.
2) I am due to submit my thesis in June. I am interested in applying for post-doctoral positions (most likely in Europe). Should I let my future boss know about my condition? I feel that it would be unfair to not let them know given that my pain can lead to (significant) loss of work time; however, since I do not even have a diagnosis I don't even know how should I go about disclosing it to them.
3) At this stage it looks like I might have to deal with pain on a long term basis. Should I expect discrimination (not legally, of course) in academia simply because I might not be as productive as other people? Any advise on how to deal with this kind of situation?
I have read some other related questions (for example, this) but I feel that my situation is slightly different given MUS.
Edit: I am currently doing my PhD in India

I think that the fact that you don't have a diagnosis is not unusual. Pain is, if I've read correctly, poorly understood by the medical community. This has led to over prescribing of opiates, for example.
For your committee, just tell them. I doubt they would change their supportive attitudes now.
For the long term, there may be no real effect on your productivity if you can obtain some assistance in certain tasks. There are other 'disabled' academics who do well using students and other associates to help manage impossible tasks. The blind and deaf, for example. Stephen Hawking comes immediately to mind, of course.
As for the issue of informing employers it might depend on location. I have no specific knowledge about UK/EU or other places such as India, but in the US it would likely be regarded as improper to consider it as a condition of employment but, on the other hand, might give notice that you will need assistance for some tasks. As for the lack of diagnosis, if you want to inform a potential employer, a letter from one of your physicians explaining the situation is probably best.
And, of course, don't take diagnosis suggestions from a place like this. Your condition may be long term or not. But even if it is long term, you can find ways to compensate and be productive, though the pain won't be less.

I think you should inform your thesis comittee about your current situation. Best case, they are understanding, worst case they will ignore it for PhD-related matters. It might help to get a sick note from an independent professional even if the diagnosis is difficult.
As to your second question, I would suggest to not disclose any health issues in the hiring process for the same reasons as stated in your linked questions, unless the position is specifically advertised as 'disabled applicants preferred' which I believe is a thing in Germany, for example.
Regarding your third question, I cannot say in general whether discrimination is to be expected. Depending on your condition and country of future employment, there may however be laws in place to protect you from discrimination against your condition.
I can only offer limited advice on how to deal with discrimination otherwise, but coping strategies against pain may be of interest to you in case of chronic problems, and may be subsidized by (potentially employer-paid) health care.

"However, I don't think you should rule out 'in your head' as an origin, as there are plenty of psychological problems that may cause physical symptoms." C'mon, don't say this. You have no idea what is going on here, you should not be speaking to the poster's mental or medical state here. Stick to academia, back of the internet medical opinions.

Sorry, you are right. I did not mean to allege making pain up, but I was thinking more stress-related like stomach pain sometimes occurs, for example. I removed the sentence anyway.

You're totally right that mental issues can get physical but, yeah, this is between the poster and their doctors.


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How does one proceed when publishing a research paper to refute the conclusions of another (someone else's) research paper?
I am a computer science undergraduate going into grad school and trying to learn more about research.
How does one proceed when publishing a research paper to refute the conclusions (or some of the conclusions) of another (someone else's) research paper? For instance, let's say that you study a machine learning research paper that makes some dubious claims, and then offers hand-wavy reasoning and a computational simulation experiment to support said claims. If you then study the subject matter further and use more formal and/or rigorous reasoning (perhaps a formal proof) to show that the conclusions (or some of the conclusions) are wrong, then how does one go about publishing a paper that refutes the other research paper? Is there anything different about this type of research paper (or, rather, should anything be done differently) compared to the more conventional, non-refutational type of research paper?

Once you are in graduate school, this is the sort of question to discuss with your advisor.

Some folks make a cottage industry out of publishing papers with titles like “A cautionary note regarding yadda, yadda ...” The line between smart and snark can be fine.

Treat others the way you'd like them to treat you.

Showing that something in the literature is shaky or incomplete or mistaken is part of how science advances.
If you can replace a published claim with something better rather than just showing that it's wrong, all the better.
When you find an instance of that you write it up carefully, professionally and kindly and submit it to an appropriate journal - perhaps the one that published the original work.

And cite the original, of course.

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As an electrical engineer, should I study pure mathematics in my spare time or do a second bachelor degree?
EDIT: Short version: Can a full time engineer ever hope to learn pure math up to masters level on weekends in less than six years without burning out mentally or is full time study required to achieve this goal?
I am an electrical engineer who has 100% decided to learn pure mathematics properly so as to expand my mind. Should I do this in my spare time or quit my job and do a second degree in pure math?
I'm 25, been designing hardware for two years and have learnt a lot related to electronics/magnetics/control theory/ embedded systems programming etc. I've reached a point where work is becoming very repetitive and I feel my brain is slowly dying. However, there are still small crumbs of very valuable experiential knowledge to learn as I do design after design. My salary will also significantly improve as I transition from junior to mid-level if I stay in my industry.
Is it possible to learn pure math properly in my spare time or should I dedicate 100% of my energy to it? If I do it in my spare time, can I hope to reach mastery in a reasonable timeframe (5 years), or is the nature and volume of the knowledge such that it requires full time attention? I don't know the extent of what I don't know. I also don't want to burn out.
Thanks

John, this seems to be likely an opinion based answer? I don't think there are any studies that has proven effectiveness of study due to study intensity in maths? Also, it really depends on what your goals are with the pure maths knowledge and studies... https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/937/there-was-a-way-to-flag-questions-as-difficult-to-be-generalized, https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

However, do consider looking for more challenging electrical engineering jobs. As a computer architect I worked with EEs who were solving very, very difficult problems, harder than anything I met getting a bachelor's degree in mathematics.

From your question, I assume that you are NOT interested in taking a degree in mathematics because you need to prove to somebody that you have a qualification. What follows is based on that assumption.
Learning 'pure math' is not the same thing as learning a language: pure mathematics is a myriad of languages. A bachelor's degree course in pure mathematics traditionally covers, shallowly, a very wide range of topics, most of which the students will never use again, even if they pursue careers as full-time professional mathematicians.
I strongly suggest to you that if you need a better understanding of some aspect of pure mathematics for some particular purpose, then you should study just that aspect of pure mathematics. You may need to rewind a bit to find a starting point that you do understand. And you may need to broaden out your reading as you go along.
If you have no particular purpose in mind, then just pick something that you are interested in. Do not expect to understand everything immediately. Do not be afraid to pick up non-academic 'popular science' type books. There are so many entry points that I am sure you will be able to find one that suits you.

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politely refusing authorship opportunity?
I (a grad student) first-authored a paper with my ex-PI and some colleagues. The paper was rejected from a journal. Meanwhile, this ex-PI also bullied me, did something else that was hurtful, and did not provide helpful feedback on the paper.  The ex-PI is now asking if I want to re-submit.  Can I politely refuse? If so, how?

Have you taken actions concerning the bullying itself?

No, I haven't. Thank you for the question.

What is likely to happen if you refuse to re-submit the paper? Will the paper just die, or will the ex-PI (and colleagues) re-submit it without your name on it?

They’re an ex-PI and one that you’ve had negative experiences with. Still, networking and connections, even if faint, can come back and be helpful directly or indirectly. Diplomacy is key. Give your appreciation for their interest in collaborating, but decline, citing other obligations, time commitments, etc.

If you were happy for the work to be resubmitted more or less as it is but didn't want to spend time/energy doing so, you could ask one of your colleagues to be corresponding author (citing other obligations as in cralr's answer). If you would need to make substantial changes to the work to have it published (if reviewers' comments from the rejecting journal were quite extensive, for instance) that might be more complicated, but another author might be willing to coordinate these changes.
Either way, you'd be well within your rights to say that unfortunately you don't have the time to do anything with this paper. No reasonable person would take offence to this, but that's predicated on the ex-PI being reasonable. An unethical PI might simply take your name off and resubmit elsewhere - you may be able to take this up with the administration of your institution, but it could be a difficult fight.
Sorry you've had what sounds like a really difficult experience.

From your question, it seems that you are not keen on resubmitting the paper. If that is the case, you have every right to refuse. However, make sure that your response is polite but firm. You need not give any reasons or excuses. Just thank him for the request, and say that unfortunately, you are not interested in resubmitting the paper at the moment.
Having said that, however, given your past experience with your ex-PI, I would suggest you reconsider your decision. For all you know, if you refuse to resubmit, your ex-PI might just go ahead and publish the paper without you. While I can understand your feelings, refusing to resubmit would just give him another opportunity to get one over you. If you resubmit the paper, at least you are sure that you will get credit for your work (and an additional publication in your CV). However, make sure that your communication with him/her is polite but firm at all times.

It's extremely difficult to understand your special situation with your adviser.  As always, there are at least two sides to every such story, and you're telling us your side of it.
Getting papers through is an important academic goal for PI's, and many uncomfortable situations occur during the process.
I recommend thinking about this in the context of your career aspirations, and not necessarily how pleasant the experience has been so far (though that should certainly factor in).  Do you have the time to resubmit, or is your current work demanding all your time?  Can you agree on a timetable with the ex-PI?
The way I see your situation from your terse description, it looks like there is an opportunity to recover from an unpleasant situation.  You can get a first-authored paper, and maybe patch up a relationship with your ex-PI.  If this is important to you, you should consider it, and if it isn't, you should consider telling the PI you're not interested.  Since the PI is obviously interested in pursuing this, and you've already submitted once, you might tell them you'd be happy to cede first authorship if they want to take it to the finish line, and you will review all manuscripts  promptly, but you have no time for major effort.


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Will a professor always say so if they can't write a very strong letter of recommendation?
I am applying to graduate school currently, and all schools I've been looking at require a number of recommendation letters. I go to a fairly small school, so I've had many repeat professors. Thus, my pool of professors to ask for letters who taught me in a relevant subject is somewhat limited.
One professor in particular I have had many classes with, and I did well in most of them. However, in my most recent class with him (last semester) I did fairly poorly. I was often behind on assignments, and while I was in communication with him and tried to work with him to catch up, he would often say things like "you probably just need to study a bit more, this material shouldn't be too hard."
There is probably some good in this. Since I did well in his classes in the past, he may be confident in my abilities and thought that I should be able to keep up in this class. This could also mean that he thought I really wasn't trying very hard. This is probably true to some extent, as I was having some personal issues last semester.
So with that said, I still felt like I had overall positive experiences with him throughout my college career, and like I said, my options were somewhat limited anyway, so I decided to ask him. I figured that if he was unhappy enough with how I did in his class last semester, he would just decline outright, or say that he couldn't honestly write an overwhelmingly positive letter.
However, he did end up accepting, so all should be well, right? Maybe I am just being paranoid, but I am kind of concerned for a few reasons. One, other professors who accepted clarified that they were willing to write a "strong" letter of recommendation for me, whereas the professor in question did not.
Another reason is the fact that I do believe he will have positive things to say about me, even if there might be some negative mixed in there. So it might be that he considers what he has to say about me positive enough to write a letter, even if it isn't all amazing.
In my research, I found this question: Should I take a "positive, but not enthusiastically strong" letter of recommendation?
So I'm concerned his letter may fall into that category of "positive but not enthusiastically strong", which, as the answers to that question point out, is generally not a good thing to have.
The last factor is that since this is such a small school, he may know that my options are kind of limited, and figures that I pretty much need his letter, even if it's not extremely positive.
Am I just being paranoid? Is it a bad idea to ask him about this?
EDIT: I was reading through more posts on this site and came across this: Difficult student would dispute every grade in the course and now wants letter of recommendation. It was a question asked by a professor, and some answerers mentioned that the OP made no promise to write a strong letter of recommendation, so they were not obligated to, despite accepting to write one. This is kind of worrisome to me, as it's clearly not implicit in acceptation to write a letter of recommendation that you are willing to write a very strong one.

Since someone downvoted this, could someone let me know how I could improve this question?

Since you ask "always", the answer is clearly no. Some will not. Most will try to do "as well as they can" for you and not sabotage your chances, but their feeling may be hard to hide in any letter they write.
My suggestion is that you go talk to him in person and ask about his current feeling toward you ("How am I doing?") and what you might do to regain his confidence in the future ("What should I do now/next?"). Admit to any faults if they come up ("Yeah, I blew it.") and explain them if given the opportunity ("I got distracted by ..."). But don't press that if not asked.
I once disappointed my main mentor (by getting overextended and focusing on things outside math) but he still came through for me when it counted. All is not lost.
At small schools this is much more likely to be successful, actually as you are more of a person and not just a student.
Such a conversation normally clears the air if it is cloudy and leaves the person with a better sense of you and more likely to want to help. If he feels just a bit better about you after the conversation you will benefit in his "mood" when he comes to write the answer. It is the unconscious negative feelings that you want to dispel if you can.
And if you come away feeling bad "vibes" you might want to consider other options for letters.

Thanks for the advice! How would you recommend I start/approach the interaction? Should I be clear that I'm concerned whether or not he can write me a strong recommendation letter? Because what you described sounds like just trying to get a reading and dancing around it a little bit.

Personally, I'd start with the dance. "I'm concerned that I've disappointed you lately". Play it by ear and listen carefully. Don't focus on the letter. Rather than ask about the letter, I would say at some point (not at the start) that you have hopes for the future and are depending on his advice and his help. You need the advice as much as the letter, in fact, if you are thinking long term.


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Why don't Universities pay PhD students more?
I've worked in higher education on the administrative side. I've been able to get a very thorough look at University budgets. From my perspective it's really a travesty that research Universities, with their multi-billion dollar operating budgets seem more inclined to hire largely purposeless administrators than to increase PhD stipends/wages such that a PhD wouldn't be so financially painful for students.
From my own perspective working in administration, it seems to me that the blame can be placed squarely at the feet of the near universal tendency for bureaucracies to naturally increase in size over time if left to their own devices. The discussion of why this is the case is beside the point, but this near universal law seems to be at work here. This limits graduate student stipend size because when faced with the choice of expanding the bureaucracy or paying graduate students more, the administrator - as a bureaucrat - will almost invariably decide to expand the bureaucracy.
That said, there are other dynamics at play in Universities that make me wonder why bureaucracies have been so successful at vacuuming up funds. Elite Universities often compete for top PhD candidates, so why haven't the competitive forces that drive up wages in the face of labor demand also driven up the stipends offered to accepted candidates? Are Universities coordinating to keep stipends artificially low? Or is the bureaucratic tendency to expand overpowering the market dynamics that would otherwise compel Universities to offer higher stipend packages? Or are existing stipend packages already at what we would expect the market level to be?

Why do you think if there was more money in the budget it would go to pay students more and not faculty more?

Or about four people to make sure the grad students don't spend too much money when traveling?

This appears to be more of a rant than a focused question. Yes, as a grad student I wasn't paid what I could have been paid as an engineer with a BS. But, I also wasn't competent (yet) at being a researcher - I had much to learn. Further, most US grant agencies limit the amount of overhead (which pays the bureaucrats) that can be taken by the university. Your argument does not hold up.

@StrongBad I'd actually extend that to "Why do you think they even come out of the same budget?"

Can you give some examples to illustrate your claim that administrators are “largely purposeless”?

@DanRomik sure. The work they do, from what I've seen, neither increases revenue for the University, lowers costs, or contributes to the University's main mission of educating students or engaging in research. They are hired without any clear purpose simply because the University has a very large budget (from large student tuition costs) and create initiatives that very often have no clear benefit to the University, simply so they can justify their existence. In order to support these initiatives, they hire even more people.

or for postdocs or research fellows. this is such a sad reality. interesting and admirable question from an administrative side. thank you for thinking about this

the system implies that postgrads & postdocs are slave labors

For students funded via the NIH and similar mechanisms (CDC and AHRQ come to mind), there are standard rates for what graduate students are paid. This is a fairly extensive treatment on the subject for one university: https://controller.ucsf.edu/file/4361
There are some ways to supplement this, but "This is what my grant pays for" is a very strong pressure on budgets, and departments often set grad student pay by policy in light of this, to prevent there being clear gradients of funding between students in their department.
Note that going over this by a lot via something like unionization can have extremely unintended consequences, like PIs suddenly becoming much more interested in postdocs.

NIH postdocs have a well-defined scale that influences salaries throughout academia. The same is not true for grad students supported by NSF—even within universities and schools, individual departments may pay their students wildly different amounts.

@aeismail Our department sets things based on the NIH rate even if you're paid through the NSF, DoD, Merck, newly discovered pirate gold, etc. to prevent that. But I'll edit out the NSF. But do also note that the "postdoc" rate is also functionally a grad student compensation cap.

Just to say that in the UK, the PhD stipend is also set by the body funding the PhD rather than the university.

I think this is the wrong question to ask. Remember that throughout high school, undergraduate studies and most masters programs, students pay for themselves. Viewed from this perspective being paid to do a PhD is a huge blessing. Imagine if PhD studies not only not pay five figures a year, it cost five figures a year. This isn't that far-fetched either, since PhD students consume faculty time, university resources, take courses, and so on. A student who complains about the paltry pay sounds pretty ungrateful to me, not to mention ignorant, since he presumably knew what the stipend was before accepting the offer.
You also write that "Elite Universities often compete for top PhD candidates, so why haven't the competitive forces [driven up stipends]". This is because top PhD candidates are generally not driven by money (if they were, they usually would not be doing a PhD in the first place). Many top PhD candidates will not think twice about taking a $25k/year position at an elite university instead of a $50k/year position at a lower-ranked university. Hence normal rules for supply and demand don't apply. Further, even with low pay, there's no shortage of PhD students. There's no need to pay more then.

The "top PhD candidates are generally not driven by money" claim is false. In most countries, full professors at top research universities have much higher salaries than the median salary of all full-time employees. This suggests that money is an important factor for top researchers. It's not the only factor, but once they gain more leverage, researchers seem to prefer a higher salary over the chance to hire one more PhD student / postdoc.

@JouniSirén I meant PhD candidates, not faculty.

Today's top students are tomorrow's top faculty. They accept low stipends/salaries as students, because they have no choice, if they want to stay on academic career. Their true preferences are revealed once they are able to make choices.

@JouniSirén The question deals with PhD students. A university could conceivably try to attract top candidates by offering a larger stipend. Also, perhaps when it's time for PhD students to become faculty, they've grown older and wiser, which is why they choose differently.


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Deferring start of PhD program because of self-doubts
This year I applied to several universities in the US, and got into a top program in my field. It was great news; I was given a very nice project to work on, and accepted the offer, along with excessive impostor syndrome.
Then I went to an internship to a nice university. I asked the grads there about their plans after PhD. Most of them did not have thoughts reaching that far, as if PhD was a default. This was interesting, considering the strength of the university, and made me wonder.
My motivation to go to graduate school was something along the lines "I want to work with strong people, I like working in the lab and this field seems nice". So, the self-doubt creeped in. I don't think I'm the worst candidate; I guess I am just scared of committing 6 years of my life, because with the job market I am not sure I want to be a professor and would rather work in industry.
My questions are:
1) Is it normal that I have self-doubts before even starting my PhD program?
2) Is it often for students to defer admission and take a year off to think the decision over? It's late, but it is better than going there half-hearted?

Yes, it is normal to have self-doubts and imposter syndrome is pretty common. However, the external validation you are getting seems to indicate that your fears are unwarranted. When other professionals and "strong" people consider you a top candidate it is pretty likely that you you are, no matter your doubts.
However, burnout is a serious problem for some, and finishing one degree with a flourish may leave many exhausted. You should work to avoid this, partly just by thinking of the new program as a fresh environment, but also, by pacing yourself just a little so that you don't overcommit too early.
Don't worry about job markets six years in advance. It is nearly assured that they won't be the same as now. They may be better or worse, but it is not possible to predict so long in advance. You also have the intervening period to work toward your goals and even to adjust them. Aiming to work in academia or industry, again, need not be a decision that you can't revisit over time.
You seem to have an opportunity. Better to grasp it, IMO, than to let it pass you by, possibly leaving you regrets in the future.
I don't advise taking a year off for the reasons you state. If you want to do so to get industry experience or solve a burn-out issue that might be good, but don't just let doubt keep you back. Others believe in you. Believe in yourself. That is doubly true if the position you are now offered won't assuredly be available in a year.

Thanks. I guess I have no idea what I am doing, and apparently most of grads have it the same. It doesn't sit well with me, though.

@Mr.Student, Just work hard. Change the things you can. Work also to keep stress low.


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Presenting unpublished work at PhD defense. What will happen if the committee are excessively critical of the results?
I am about to defend my thesis and part of my presentation would involve results and conclusions from my two unpublished works. Personally, I am confident about the results and conclusions. My advisor is yet to work on the drafted manuscripts so she is familiar with the results but has not critically thought about the numerical methodology implemented or any other issues with the results. I have presented the results in different conferences, but again, no one really asks questions at conferences. These were not conference proceedings, so no peer review has been carried out yet.
So, I was wondering, what will happen if the committee (who are experts in my field) sees a potential fault with my work which I might have overseen? What if the potential fault undermines the works I have done? Will that lead to a negative outcome in my defense?

Take a deep breath. Calm down. Relax, even. Your defense will go just fine.

In some fields (such as mine) almost all work that will be presented as a thesis defense will be unpublished as PhDs have to be finished in a time scale that makes it very hard to publish your work before the defense. Don't worry, no work is perfect and your committee will understand this.

@IanSudbery, I think the OP means that it is based partly on the unpublished work of others. Not their own.

@Buffy oh no! It's my yet to be published works.  I am just concerned that I might have done things wrong in my work. Since they are yet to be peer reviewed, I am not sure if they are technically sound or they have some logical fallacies.

Oops. Missed it. Thanks for the clarification. I think my answer still works.

@IanSudbery: Agreed that unpublished content in a dissertation can be normal: While in my field (applied CS), publishing several papers every year during one's doctoral candidacy is the norm, I was explicitly told that even a "stapler thesis" should be constructed as previously published works plus something "extra", some new findings (or even just overarching conclusions) on top of what has already been published elsewhere. Thus, unpublished content in the thesis is not necessarily a flaw, it can even be a requirement.

Aren't you required to give copies of your thesis to your committee members well in advance? ... so that they could identify any serious problems?

@paulgarrett yes, but I don't know their comments or decisions yet

Couldn't you politely ask them if they have any comments, corrections, criticisms, etc?

@paulgarrett it's forbidden to contact the committee before defense. They will let me know their decision only during my defense. Now that I think about it, my post was a complete rant and impulsive in nature. What they would comment or decide is out of my control. I should just focus on giving my best that day. I believe, that's what everyone here's trying to tell me.

You system is very different than mine, in which there are many opportunities to repair any problems before the actual defense... in part because the rule is that to fail the thesis defense is permanent. No second chance.

@paulgarrett in my department, the defense is scheduled only after the external and internal committee members have given their comments and have green signaled the defense. But their comments are provided only on the day of defense.

While I agree with the comment of Jon Custer, you could, indeed, have an issue if someone, validly, finds a flaw. But, assuming everyone is rational (not always valid, I know), it is unlikely to result in total failure.
I've had students in such situations (not my own, but I was a committee member). We just sent the student back to work to resolve the issue and re-schedule a defense after the dissertation was revised as appropriate.
But, it is what it is. If objections are raised, do your best to explain why you accepted the papers. That is, show due diligence and that you seriously considered the arguments. But anyone can make a mistake, either you or the person raising an issue. Work it out.
I hope you have a rational committee. And good luck. If they are rational, then fining a flaw now is better for you than finding it later, I think.


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Lack of motivation to carry out research or search for positions post PhD. How to address this feeling?
Tl;dr: Defended my PhD two weeks ago. However, right from the time of the defense and up until the present moment, I am experiencing a huge lack of motivation and sense of purpose to do anything related to research or search for future positions. How to address this?
Other details****: I had applied for other positions before my defense and was not successful in securing a suitable position. I have an offer from my PhD advisor about a postdoc position which I am expected to start early next year.
Leaving every other concern aside, I am very appalled by my lack of motivation and the constant feeling of lethargy to start with the pending research work and/or resume with the dedicated job search.
I have no idea how to address this feeling. I have taken two hiking trips during the last two weekends. However it feels empty and unproductive inside. I have so much to do before I start with a postdoc position. But all am I doing is wasting time.

If you already have a postdoc position which you haven't started yet, why do you still need to dedicated job search?

@Allure That's because I want to do a postdoc at some other place as that would help my CV. Though I will be doing a new project with new modeling technique,  pursuing postdoc under the PhD advisor is frowned upon in academia. Also, I am getting too comfortable with the current city and things need to change.

Burnout at this time is completely understandable. Burnout is like an injury. You have to give yourself time to rest and recover.

Take a holiday.

Give yourself some time
You just finished an important step in your career, which has presumably taken you between 3 and 7 years. Congratulations! For a while, it is normal to feel like celebrating your achievement instead of going on with everyday research and making important decisions. It is even more normal to have doubts about the next step.
Try to find out why you are not motivated
The good news is that you have an offer for a postdoc position, so (assuming you do not have to give an amswer now) you have some time to reflect on why you are not motivated. Is it just a temporary feeling? Do you really want to continue in academia? Do you want to do research at all? The answers to these questions should become clearer after a while.
Talk to people
Your advisor might have some suggestions about other options you might have after your PhD that motivate you more. You can also ask other colleagues/people in the field that you trust. Maybe they have had a similar experience and can tell you how they overcame it.

What you are feeling is very normal. Similarly, when a marathon runner completes a successful race they just collapse for a bit. The need for intensity has ended and the body and/or mind want a break.
I'd suggest that you don't worry to much about the feeling, as it is very likely to pass in time.
But, you have things you need to do to continue with your career. Make a list of things that you need to do now and would happily do if you felt better.
Then, just do those things. Forget how you feel. Ignore it. Just do what your list says is required of you.
Make a list of job opportunities. Follow up on them. Write good applications. Get good letters of recommendation arranged. Go back thorough your research experience and mine it for possible future work, keeping a notebook of ideas that might be pursued.
But don't wait for the feeling to pass and for inspiration to hit. Make a list of what you should do now. Then start on that. Throughout your career there will be periods of low productivity. Try to make momentum carry you through them. Your current sense isn't permanent unless you give up.


text:
On areas of overlap between Computer Science and Economics
For those who want to be involved in both disciplines throughout academia (BS to MS to PhD) as well as in the workplace/career, what are some places of overlap between Economics and Computer Science?
Take, as an example, statistical computing using R as a programming language in econometrics.

There is a large and thriving community studying what is commonly known as Economics and Computation. This includes

Algorithmic Game Theory: the study of computational strategic agents. A good reference for this is the seminal Algorithmic Game Theory book. This subfield includes routing games (how selfish agents behave in network routing), mechanism design (auctions, such as spectrum auctions or Google ad auctions) and more.
Computational Fair Division: fair allocation of divisible/indivisible goods. This includes matching markets (college admissions, kidney exchanges) and assignment problems (course allocation, public housing assignment)
Computational Social Choice: efficient aggregation of opinions. This includes standard voting analysis as well as multi winner elections, opinion dynamics and more.

Let me add: agent-based computational economics (ACE). You may want to extend your response rather than me adding an answer.


text:
What should I do about a bad TA as another TA for the same professor?
I have been a math TA since my freshman year, and this year as a junior I was made head department TA. One of the TAs under me is what I deem to be a poor fit.
He is incredibly sexist(at a liberal arts school, so a huge no-no, and he is especially so to me), he talks down to students instead of trying to correct them or nudge them in the right direction, and the smallest mistakes set him off. When we TA the same class, he acts as if I am always wrong, belittles me, then teaches students the incorrect way(i.e. , the students are just beginning to learn limits, and instead of giving them the basics, he's trying to teach them derivatives).
The biggest, in my opinion, is that this student is a known cheater, and didn't get the grades needed to TA the honest way, and I am worried he will encourage our shared students to follow in his footsteps(he was discovered cheating in every class he attended last semester, and a couple of them the semester prior to that).
Unfortunately, he is the department head's favorite so I am at a loss of what to do. I don't have control over who is hired or fired, I am just head TA in the way that I have been doing it the longest, and I answer the questions the others can't.
Should I bring my complaints to the department head or my adviser? Do I risk my position to help my students? I can't bring myself to work with him any more, and don't want to lose the job I love because of a sexist, cheating TA.

Why aren't the students complaining to the head? What you describe seems pretty blatant.

Is there a professor teaching the class for which this person is the TA? If so, then I'd expect that this professor will want to know what's happening and to do something about it.

Write down everything that happened and when.
Tell your advisor about it.  It's their job to help you.
There's no excuse for sexist teaching.  It cannot be tolerated.  I suggest you limit your complaints to this main issue.  The other issues just complicate the situation unnecessarily.

It's unclear who supervises TAs in your situation, but your advisor should be able to figure that out.


text:
Why do lecturers not just assume all students have read the book?
One thing I don't understand about lectures is why the lecturer covers the material that is already presented in the book and assigned as reading material to the students.
Is the assumption that some students are actually incapable of reading? If not, what then is the point of covering the same stuff in the lecture? Imagine that reading the book is a lecture itself: what then is the point of giving two identical lectures?
I understand that some students may not understand the book, and a spoken lecture makes it possible to answer questions and provide clarifications on unclear statements from the book, or just to add more detail/intuition to a certain topic.
But, truth be told, those parts of a lecture make up a small, small minority. Most of the lecture is indeed spent on just repeating what the book said - except of course with much less detail, since you can't cram 30 pages of written words in a 1 hour lecture.
So would it not be much more efficient to do it differently? Here's one example for a 1 hour lecture, but you can think of your own:

Spend the first 15 minutes on recitation of the book material. It gets everyone on board, sets the tone, refreshes everyone's mind. During these 15 minutes, certain added remarks can be made if the lecturer feels them necessary.
Spend the next 10 minutes answering questions by confused students.
You now have 35 minutes left to cover extra material not presented in the book. This could be in-depth examples or intuition of the topic just covered, advanced extensions, or just some extra topic that you wouldn't have time to otherwise cover in your course.

This way you are both more efficient since you are not wasting time repeating stuff, and you also take care of students' questions and get some time to add clarifying remarks. You get the best of both worlds.

In some cases, most of the students don't read the assigned material, or just skim over it.

For the same reason they don't (normally) assume that all students are perfect copies of the professor: it's an obviously false assumption.

In fact some students fail to remove the cling wrap from the book....

What if there is no single book? My courses are typically blends of multiple sources.

I wrote an answer but I found it difficult to make it credible. A good SE answer to a "Why do X do Y" type question should cite sources where X explain why they do Y. I'm not sure it can be done here, so perhaps the question is a bit too broad or opinion-based for SE?

@Bitwise listening to an identical lecture is more convenient than working through a book. For a student following the path of least resistance, the lecture sets a disincentive.

you might think about reading the book AFTER the lecture. You will find that you will understand the mentioned 30 pages+1h lecture a lot faster than by just reading the 30 pages.

@henning I think there is a chicken-and-egg situation here. The lectures are built this way because the students don't read the material, and students don't read the material because the lectures are built this way (well there are probably other reasons also at play).

@Bitwise So what if they skim it? That's their problem, is it not? Why should all students be held back because a small group of students are incapable of spending a few hours a week reading a few pages? In fact, reading the book is a far easier task than attending lectures (I personally spend more time riding the bus to lectures than I spend on reading the assigned material), so if they can come to the lectures, they can sure as hell also read the books.

@OlegLobachev So what if there are multiple sources? Then they can just read those multiple sources. I don't see how this is even relevant.

@Makeo If the goal is to educate students, professors must focus on what students actually do, i.e. at best skim the material, rather than what they ought to do.

Different students learn in different ways. Some can read the book and all is good. Some can listen to the lecture and all is good. Some need both.

This must be culture/professor-dependent. Your "different example" is similar to my experience as a student, at least from the better professors.

You seem to refer to flipped classrooms, I've heard them be used in high school and in schools but never in universities.

As Llopis says, your suggestion is similar to a "flipped classroom" model. I have actually been in university classes that did this (students expected to read book & provided notes on own time, and then use classroom time to ask questions and work through homework with the professor for guidance). It worked ok? I'm sure there's studies if you look for "flipped classroom".

@Makeo: having enough copies from the uni library is hard, negotiating (rightful) digital copies is harder, I do not want to limit myself to freely available books (such as "Real world Haskell" or some further excellent efforts, but this is field-dependent and I digress). I also really don't feel like forcing the students to buy multiple 80-100 Euro books, which is the real consequence of having a course book – at least it was this way for me, when I was a student.

If you can just read the book, why have lectures at all?

It provides a convenient outline for questions and discussion of the material.  You can ask about something during the lecture if you don't understand the professor's summary of that section in the book.

I didn't read ahead very often and felt bad, so one class I decided to read the assigned work. When I went to the lecture I was completely bored. I stopped reading.  If I didn't understand something I would read after the lecture.

One way many of the classes I took went is that it was assumed students did the assigned reading, and then the class period was spent answering questions about the reading, and going over any assigned questions that students had difficulty with.

Closely related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/52678/19607

One other possible factor, the canned "book in powerpoint form" slides that some professors use are actually provided by the publisher of the book; I've known a few professors who had almost no time at all to prepare for their lecture (due to research workload and other issues) so they just read the slides to the class (seeing them for the first time while they were presenting sometimes). I'd hope this practice isn't too common though. IMO programming courses can really benefit from the "flipped classroom" strategies you suggest. I had only one class like that, it was excellent.

Why go to university at all, its all in the books.

Personally, outside of Calculus 2 and 3, I didn't even buy the book for the majoirty of the classes I took during my bachelors/masters. The only books I bought were ones with online license the professor required us to use to do homework on.

Anecdotally, I knew a lot of people who if there weren't homework problems assigned from out of the book would never have bought it at all. The approach of "will doing this thing outside of class directly give points towards my grade? No? Not doing it." Which often extended to class itself. "Do they take attendance and assign points for showing up? No? Not showing up to class unless there's a quiz or test".

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

Keep in mind: 1. there are good and bad textbooks and good and bad lectures. Any any combination of these. 2. You may not be able to cram 30 pages textbook in a one-hour lecture. But also, a few minutes lecture on a single textbook sentence ("I follows trivially") may save many hours of frustration for the student. (Disclaimer: here, we have lectures plus recommended reading lists - lectures typically do not just go in parallel with one particular textbook; and when I was studying the exam mode was mostly: I don't care where and how you get the knowledge, I just examine your level of knowlege)

The answer may depend on what type of course we are talking about, here I'll focus on STEM.
The most obvious answer would be "because it would be a false assumption". Many students don't read the books. But then you get to the question: why don't the students read the books?
I'm an engineering student, and here's my perspective: in STEM courses it's quite often the case that the lectures are quite simply a boiled-down version of the books; they present the same theorems as the books, in the same order, often using the same examples, but without all the "fluff". Students don't read the books because we go to the lectures, take notes, and get all the necessary material in a document we wrote ourselves. Writing it ourselves helps us learn the material, and since it's a boiled-down version it's much less material to read through when preparing for exams.
As for professors, if they assume that the books have been read and understood, they wouldn't have much to talk about since what they planned to present was the book's material. They could use lectures for Q&A sessions and practice problems but attendance would be quite low in that case and students would complain about paying for simply being told what book to read instead of being presented the material. Besides, (at least in the case of my university) Q&As and practice problem sessions are typically done by the TAs on a regular basis anyway.
I imagine this may not hold for other types of classes such as history or literature in which documents are assigned to be read and then discussed and analyzed in class, but I have little to no experiences with those so I can't give an informed answer.
P.S: "Imagine that reading the book is a lecture itself". Fun fact: the word lecture is french for reading.

There is also the fact that some people are auditory and some are book learners. Lectures appeal to one of those, books to others.

Not to mention that students usually have lots of other coursework to do as well. If I have to choose between doing my homework, reading for tomorrow's lecture, and sleeping, I can guarantee you I won't be reading the book.

@ElysianFields: There is no evidence that's a real thing: http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html

@DanielR.Collins perhaps my wording was not precise enough but acting as if 100% of students will have the same learning affinity towards readings and lectures seems.. a stretch. People are different in their abilities (or disabilities) and preferences.

@Elysian "I feel like this should be different" is the opposite of science. The linked article references a review on the topic (Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. & Bjork, R. 2008. Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 106-119) which claims to not have found any studies that demonstrate your claim. But if you have convincing studies that show a difference I'd love to read them as well. It is an interesting topic.

@Voo you're telling me people who are deaf or have reading disabilities learn the same? I have a close friend who is dyslexic. He struggles a lot reading. Are you saying there is research that shows someone who is dyslexic or deaf learn just as well in either mode? I would love to show that research to my friend to help him realize he can learn via reading just as well as via listening.

They could use lectures for Q&A sessions and practice problems -- this is a well-known technique called a flipped classroom. YMMV as to its effectiveness.

@Elysian Wait you think that the idea behind people having different learning styles is "deaf people will have a hard time listening so they're not auditory learners"? You really want to read the linked review to understand the topic before commenting.

Nailed it. Particularly with undergrad books, there's a bunch of unnecessary crap piled on that makes it hard to sift through and actually find the info that's of any use. These tomes would be improved if half their content was literally just thrown out. (Not to mention the benefits of the reduced weight.)

@Voo Your source explicitly states that learning "styles" don't exist and then states next that "abilities" do. Okay. So maybe a given student doesn't have a "style" which favors listening, but they're instead markedly better at listening than they are reading, because they're had more practice. Given no explanation of the link, your objection read much more like "everyone has equal reading and listening abilities", which people might blow off no matter how credible your URL is.

@SeldomNeedy Not my source if you check. I just thought the topic interesting and if someone already links a meta review paper why not quickly look through it? I guess it's a futile hope even on academia SE to expect people to actually read up on the subject matter before commenting. This is about the same level of discussion as the people who argue that global warming can't exist since they had a really cold winter this year. Now if someone would link to a peer reviewed paper that shows a different result I'd be more than interested.

Re: the fun fact. I have heard that originally, lectures were out-loud readings of the book so that students could write it down and that was how they got their own copy of the book. Don't know how true it is, but considering academia's reputation for sticking to traditions, it may well be one reason why lectures today are often just out-loud readings of the books. It's also one of the easiest teaching method available when the classes can have hundreds of students.

@Seldom Since I guess it's hopeless to expect people to read up on the literature themselves, here's the gist of the argument: If people have an innate learning style in which they excel this would imply that they should learn more effectively when using this style compared to a different one. The claim here is that no evidence for this has ever been found in studies. What has been found is that people will prefer one learning method over another, but be as efficient with one as with the other.

I think that Flipped classroom is what you are looking for.
Flipped classrooms are designed for students to prepare the material by themselves and devote lecture time to exercises, debates and questions.
I have heard about Flipped classroom implementation in university courses but I have never taken any myself. Personally, I find more appealing the idea of using lecture time for debates and exercises rather than expanding on the material. It gives the opportunity to go over what students have read and to put it into practice, reinforcing their knowledge. Every student can read and listen to the lecturer but fully grasping the material goes beyond that.

In theory flipped classrooms are great, in practice they can be a way for the lecturer to hide his/her inexperience with the material.

The flipped classrooms require a level of discipline from the students and the lecturer. Students which (think that) they don't have enough time to truly understand books (understanding a page can take several hours!), which are under pressure from homework and other 6 subjects they have this semester, might not dedicate enough time to  prepare for the lecture. If the students (or at least the majority of students) did not prepare for the lecture, then flipped classroom is wore than regular lecturer talking at the audience which might or might not pay much attention.

@AndrejaKo It is true that flipped classrooms would not work if students do not prepare. However, I think that knowing they are expected to use the material in the lecture instead of just listening is an incentive for them to prepare. Having said that, I admit that flipped classrooms demand more work from the lecturer and that they would work better is small classrooms where students would know they would be indeed required to participate.

@bendi I think that depends. Answering questions and preparing exercises can be more challenging than reading slides aloud.

@bendi well yes thats what one would think. But in fact flipped classroom really needs the teacher to be even more prepared and even better informed. Since the teacher is now in a position where he needs to be able to steer the class home form uncharted waters. Try it it is surprisingly challenging.

This answer says that it is possible for a lecturer to seriously expect her students to have read the assigned material. It is reasonable in my opinion to take it a step further and claim that if some material is assigned to be read before class, the lecturer should act accordingly. There is no point in giving an assignment and acting with the premise that nobody did it.

I agree with you that lecture time (i.e. face to face time) is often badly used. Copying my notes to the board so that you can copy them to your notes seems (and is) foolish, unless the course is absolutely unique and I'm the only resource. The joke is that while this copying is going on, the information goes through the mind of neither.
However there are a few reasons to explain this. The lesser reason is that instructors try to be realistic in their explanations about what students do (and don't do). So they try to present a coherent picture of a topic, rather than just answer questions helter-skelter.
A more important reason is that the book itself doesn't tell the whole story and a good lecturer will, as part of that coherent picture, fill in additional ideas and, most important, insights. Many topics are actually insight-driven and it can be hard to capture that in print.
A still more important reason, however, is that different people learn differently. The term of art is "learning modalities". Some people learn fine by reading, others by seeing, or hearing, or interacting, or practice, or ... So a good use of face to face time is to "ping" the students with preferred modalities other than book reading.
But your bullet point description of a better way, is very good. You also need to get the students to practice the art, what ever it is. Sometimes this is done within a lecture period so that you can give immediate guidance (or use pairing so the students can help each other. But usually you end by sending them off to some active task (and more readings, of course). In fact your final 35 minutes might well be spent in having the students practice. This is called active learning and is an extremely important modality and generally a good use of at least part of "class time."
In fact a better use of class time is to do only those things that can only be done face to face. For the last several years of my teaching (retired now) I never lectured in the sense of writing things on a board (or showing slides) that students were expected to copy. We did group work (sometimes paired), active demonstrations (sometimes with student "actors"), academic games (think Jeopardy), etc. Students would have outside reading, but even then, most of their work was active practice of some skill.

An historical note: Charles University (Prague) was founded about a hundred years prior to the invention of the printing press. Books were very expensive if they even existed. Lectures then, were an efficient way to spread knowledge. But what was optimal then is past its "use by" date, perhaps.

"The book doesn't tell the whole story", uhm, right, but the running assumption is that the lecturer spends most of their time repeating the same story the book is telling. So how are we any better of?

@Makeo, as we agree, it isn't. There are better ways. Your post is a start.

Btw, studies have shown that hand writing notes improves retention over "passive" listening.

@industry7, I've made similar claims in other fora. Can you provide any reference to these studies. I also think that hand written notes are preferable to real-time typed ones, but that is a different idea.

@industry7 I find that ridiculous. Who says passive listening is the only alternative to writing? Active listening is the superior alternative to both. Lecturers that force their students to into writing notes miss the point. Copying is a passive action that redirects the student's focus to rote physical activity. This attention could be much better spent actively. How to force students to be active listeners? Begin by learning to teach!

I believe that it is the student's onus to design and organize their own minimal, condensed set of notes. That is far more active than the passive act of copying.

@MateenUlhaq are you implying that the most productive lecture is an active dialogue between the prof and students accompanied by powerpoint slides?

@LLlAMnYP There are ways to be active other than discussion. That's one technique. In class exercises (make the students do these!), examples, questions to the audience, Socratic dialogue, motivating arguments, applications. From a student's perspective, you can be an active listener simply by thinking, arguing with yourself, making connections, providing yourself with examples and counterexamples (esp. in math). But we're going off topic. :P

@MateenUlhaq Why I'm sure there are many other ways, I found that taking notes is the best form of active listening (since it requires you to rewrite in your own words the lecture in real time) and can be done in pretty much any lecture or seminar. Of course, as is the case for many things, doing it well requires practice.

I would go further than most of the commenters here. Perhaps the "Sage on the stage" model is just broken. If a prof wants to do that, the student must adapt, of course, but the prof should find a better way to teach. Use the face to face time more effectively than talking or showing (usually terrible) powerpoint slides. Lecturing can be just a lazy solution to the problem of teaching.

@MateenUlhaq As an anecdotal reference: Copying was for me the most effective form of learning, just listening and watching did not help as much as listening and writing. Copying reinforces the information while you should follow  everything happening in the lecture. I generally found that people who did not copy during the lecture, did not grasp as much of the topic as the ones writing. But as I said that is ancedotal.

@KamiKaze, it is good that you found a way. But everyone is different. What works for one won't for the person next to them. That is why professors need to use a variety of "tricks" to reach their students, making it possible for everyone to learn without disadvantaging any one. Especially, professors should be aware that their students (except perhaps at the doctoral level) are not like themselves. Professors represent a smaller range of learning styles than the population at large (IMO). Or maybe they are just more flexible in learning style. Different anyway.

@industry7, Buffy, KamiKaze I am very interested in any references about whether taking notes improve retention, blackboard versus slides, and similar topics.

University of Cambridge was founded 200 years before Gutenberg, and there is another place in England which is even older (not to mention the University of Al-Karaouine, founded in 859 - more than half a millennium before the printing press).

There was a psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus that introduced the idea of a forgetting curve.  In a nutshell, after an extremely short period of time you will begin to forget about things you have read or heard in a lecture.
While reading part of your textbook in preparation for class is important, you need spaced repetition to increase the amount of what you remember on a topic.  The class period is a good way to add a "spaced repetition" and ask the lecturer about anything that is unclear from your reading.

This is the actual answer.

Why doesn't academia incorporate spaced repetition in higher education?

Lectures are used to enhance what you learned from reading. They are used as a way to help guide interpretations on the material in the books. Most of my professors emphasized this a lot (especially in the STEM courses) during my time in school. The professor takes time to focus on the main focus of the material often glancing over the peripheral information provided in texts to ensure that the students are getting to the base of the course. The redundancy is meant to help students retain the information as well.

This will vary a lot by level.
I concluded at one point that, in "remedial" type courses1, many students are not able to read the textbook.  And, therefore, the lecture was best used to help the students in reading the textbook.
Here is the definition given in the textbook.  What does this phrase mean?  What does that notation mean?  How is this related to what we did last week?  Let's do some examples that illustrate it.

1which, in my university as far as mathematics was concerned, included a large percentage of the incoming students: students who "chose" to take as little math as possible in high school.

Please say more. Too many times the "lecture" is just writing out the textbook (or nearly that) one line at a time. No progress is made.

"Not able to read the book" is  not the same as "Not able to read the words and sentences in the book". Many university entrants (at least in STEM subjects) will have had zero experience and practice at reading an entire technical book, as a method of learning the information it contains. "English comprehension" exercises based on half a page of text about some random topic don't count for much as preparatory training for that skill, IMO.

Usually the lecture is reserved for the most important material... As you point out, lecture time is more costly than book space. So if it is important enough to lecture on, then why wouldn't you also include it in the book?
If you lecture for 35 minutes on extra material (genuinely not covered by the book), then you will probably want to make that material available in a printed format. Even if you don't care about the poor student who got sick and missed it, you probably care about the student who diligently came to class and took notes but who didn't perfectly transcribe everything into their notes since they were trying to understand brand new material while taking notes. Since it's so much material, you might even decide to publish it as a bound copy, with pretty figures and nice problem sets for students to work in order to check their understanding. If you're really lucky, you have actually already written a textbook on the subject (or know someone who has), so instead you amend this material into your textbook... Now you're back at square one.

Many students lack the discipline and/or commitment to devote themselves to a completely unknown subject. Instilling such work habits and essentially making the students independent is a major part of the school experience. In its extreme form, in grad school, students are expected to perform research by themselves, guided by the mentor, but still largely by themselves.
Students are also often inexperienced when it comes to extracting the important things from lectures. The professor can of course talk about only a limited amount of things from the book during the lecture, but these are the crucial parts of the subject. Think of it as a steel structure, which can stand on its own and provide students with the crude basics, but can also later filled in with walls, floors, windows, etc. as the students further study the matter. In other words, it gives them a framework for further study.
Finally, there is the scope. The contents of a course a covered in the literature for it, i.e. the book. The professor tries to convey those contents in a manner that would enable his students to absorb as much of the matter as possible, ideally so that the book can only be read through to fill in the gaps or even to realize that nothing new is in the book.
On the other hand, people who don't have access to the professor or the university can still learn the same things by going over the literature, same as with students who refuse to attend lectures. From experience, this is usually the much much harder way.

Disclaimer: I'm not an experienced teacher, and I certainly don't represent all lecturers, so this is mostly just guesswork based on my experience in academia.
Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not claiming that what lecturers do now is optimal, I'm just explaining why they are doing it now. However, planning and executing a good and pedagogical course from scratch requires a lot of time and effort that might not be available to many university teachers, even if they were motivated. So the current method may indeed be a "local" optimum in many cases.

Lecturer's job is to help the students learn as well as he can in the time given to him. In an ideal world, the students would do everything as the lecturer has planned, but experience has told us that this is not what happens. So the lecturer needs to adapt.
I've been TAing a course where the lectures start by a small quiz about the contents of that lecture. The quizzes aren't graded, but you get some extra points by attending a lecture (on time), so the students have some motivation to do it. And the results vary from end to end. A few students seem to know everything the course wants to cover, and a few students seem like they haven't even heard about the things in the course, and the rest are anything in between.

Why? Is the assumption that some students are actually incapable of reading? If not, what then is the point of covering the same stuff in the lecture? Imagine that reading the book is a lecture itself: what then is the point of giving two identical lectures?

The assumption is not that they are incapable, the assumption is that they are not willing to learn everything just by reading a book, for good or bad reasons. Lecturers often have chosen to target their lectures to people who, for one reason or another, prefer not to learn stuff only by reading a book. Beause students who learn well enough by reading the book don't really need lectures as much as the ones who don't.
Even the worst lecturers I have seen don't just recite the book. They allow questions and try to explain things in their own way. Another point of view often helps you if you didn't understand what the book said.
And if the lecturer's quality of teaching is so low that they really just recite the book without adding anything, I don't think the problem is the structure of the lecture, it's their motivation, skills, or time constraints.

So would it not me much more efficient to do it differently? Here's one example for a 1 hour lecture, but you can think of your own:

Spend the first 15 minutes on recitation of the book material. It gets everyone on board, sets the tone, refreshes everyone's mind. During these 10 minutes, certain added remarks can be made if the lecturer feels them necessary.

Earlier you said you can't even cover everything in the book during one hour. So everyone who has not read the book or has not understood something will definitely not understand anything here.

Spend the next 10 minutes answering questions by confused students.

From my experience, at this point the questions would be anything between "no questions" or "I didn't understand anything" (which looks like "no questions"). If someone has a real question about one part, I don't see how this is any better for them than asking it while the lecturer is teaching that part in the 1 hour lecture.

You now have 35 minutes left to cover extra material not presented in the book. This could be in-depth examples or intuition of the topic just covered, advanced extensions, or just some extra topic that you wouldn't have time to otherwise cover in your course.

Books are designed to contain material that is suitable for one course, and I'd assume lecturers want to teach the material they currently have in the course. So they would probably want to spend this 35 minutes going over the material they explained in the first 10 minutes, but in more detail. So this would be like the usual book lecture you described, just structured in a different way.

This way, you are both more efficient since you are not wasting time repeating stuff,

But repeating stuff is pretty much required for learning. Yes, you get repetition when you do exercises, but reading a book and listening to a lecture about the same things is another way of learning.

but you also take care of student questions and get some time to add clarifying remarks.

Are you saying that your lecturers don't allow student questions during the lecture? I have seen lecturers ranging from horrible to excellent, but I've never met one who does not enjoy when a student asks a question during the lecture.

"even the worst lectures...": I have seen many lectures where the lecturer just copied a text (sometimes a book, sometimes their lectures notes) on the blackboard, without explaining anything more or allowing questions.

@Udank I know I've been lucky with my teachers, so that's why I added the next paragraph; would you agree with that?

In my experience, (good) books about any subject cover much more than is remotely possible to cover in a typical course. The "use extra time to discuss what the book doesn't cover" is usually ludicrous.

You mean "they allow questions"? Most of the time yes, but sometimes no (nor not giving good answers).

@Udank No, I meant "And if the lecturer's quality of teaching is so low that they really just recite the book without adding anything, I don't think the problem is the structure of the lecture, it's their motivation, skills, or time constraints."

Oh, sorry, I did not read this part. My fault. I completely agree.

Because most students don't read the book, and in many cases can't read the book. Exact statistics vary somewhat by type of institution, of course.

In 2016, 28.1% of students at 2-year institutions, and 10.8% at 4-year institutions, required remedial English/reading courses (link, p. 15, Table 1).
As a more restricted example, at CUNY in 1997 61% of students at 2-year institutions, and 43% at 4-year institutions, failed entry reading exams and were placed in remedial courses (link, p. 51, Table 3). N.B.: Within the last year CUNY terminated testing and remediation in reading.
Books being read in high school now have an average 5th-grade reading level (link).
Books such as Help! My college Students Can't Read by Amelia Gamel are now somewhat in demand (link).

The trend of the so-called the "flipped classroom" does something like what the OP suggests; learn basics before class, and exercises further in the class -- of course, to my thinking, this is just "traditional classroom". Although the current trend expects watching video lectures, not reading, which bewilders me when high-quality textbooks are available. Anecdotally, from practitioners I've been told that they're hoping for a "critical mass" of students to do advance prep work before class and engage in discussions, which may at best be counted on one hand for a classroom of 30 students or so.

I have pondered on this a lot and my impression is that: The primary reason is to pace the students, although i really dislike this method. The temptation for student to think that they will read the book later is too high. What most likely happens is the student starts too late and tries to cram the information. So by going through the material teacher is making sure that when and if the student eventually reads the book or a comparable source they are recieving the information a second or third time. This then railroads you into doing things in the same order as the book.
So the purpose really is to span as much time as possible. Drip feeding information is the name of the game so as to give you maximal time to diggest the info. Sure all examinations could be just in the template read this book and take this test. But the teacher is tasked to also carry along weak students.
While reverse classroom is a really good way to do things. It does quite contrary to intuition require a massively  better prepared teacher. Also reverse classroom setups can fail to work for some semesters. The big problem of all the methods that rely on students to do the work outside of classrooms (that dont directly go into graded exercises) is that students have other time pressures. So you better reserve classroom time for students doing their own stuff.
So at the end of the day the talking head lecture is just the easy way out for the teacher! It sortof works, has been shown to  work for a thousand or so years. It minimizes the effor, show that its not just the teachers oppinion. And last but not least, it is not different from what others are doing so you will hardly be blamed for doing it this way.
It is also somewhat easier on the student as there is a comprehensive material to fall back on. If the material presented does not follow a book than it becomes really hard for students to cope with any things they didnt understand.

I'm going to answer this based upon my own experiences from collegiate level STEM: Some books are terrible.
Personally, I am a very visual and dynamic learner, meaning I learn best by seeing and doing something.
The most relevant example I can think of was when I was learning fluid mechanics and the followup course, hydraulics, they both used the same book. Almost all of the problems presented in the book are simply word problems, there are no pictures, and are written in such a manner that sort of assumes you have a solid understanding of everything they're talking about. The book is literally 250 pages of text with maybe 30 pictures in the whole thing.
This sucks for me. I can't focus on that well enough to learn it.
Whenever I would work my homework, I would try to draw something to illustrate to myself what the book was trying to convey. It was extremely time consuming and a lot of times, I wasn't completely correct (and thus am pretty much 100% wrong).
Because of this, I focused heavily upon attendance at lectures so that I could ask questions and force the professor to draw out their ideas. In doing so, I understood it better and I'm sure some of my classmates did as well.
In professional practice, I also make people draw things since that is so much more efficient for me than a lot of words.
In addition, I can also exemplify were we to do what you proposed, because that is what occurred with my Freshman chemistry classes. We had a lecture, we had homework from a chemistry book that relied upon reading the book and covered material not related to the lecture, and we had additional online homework that was related to additional material. On paper, Chemistry had only 1 lecture and 1 recitation period like my other classes, but it took up at least 25% more of my very limited time. I found that spreading myself so thin on so many subjects just meant I didn't learn any of them particularly well.
One last thing regarding the recommendation that 10 minutes be allotted for questions on the reading material. A lot of advanced topics cannot be adequately explained with only 10 minutes. A basic structural analysis for statically determinate structures usually requires 1-2 blackboards worth of algebra equations that aren't necessarily difficult, but very time consuming to demonstrate properly. The most useful thing from that class was the demonstration of how critical it was to be diligent at every step of a very long series of equations and it was far better demonstrated in the lecture than the book.

Because not everyone is exactly like you and not everyone learns by reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles

From your link: "Many educational psychologists have shown that there is little evidence for the efficacy of most learning style models, and furthermore, that the models often rest on dubious theoretical grounds. According to professor of education Steven Stahl, there has been an 'utter failure to find that assessing children's learning styles and matching to instructional methods has any effect on their learning.'"


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Applying for PhD programs after graduating from a small/unknown college
I have just entered my final year of Undergraduate degree in Computer Science and engineering from a rather unknown/not-popular college in India and I want to get admittance in a PhD program in Computer Science. I'm thinking of applying for colleges in the USA and I'm worried that graduating from an unknown college will affect how universities will perceive my application and I regret my decision of joining this college in the first place. I still have one year before I apply. I want to know what I need to do to maximize my chances of admission. And any general suggestions you'd give for a fourth year student who is looking to get into research programs.

Have previous students from your institution gone to PhD programs in the US? Talk to their advisors (or the students themselves).

Most of the students who have gone to US have gone to do their Masters (MS programs) and not PhD. There were a few students who have persued PhD but all of them tend to do it India. So I don't have many people in my contacts to ask about what to do

Things may not be as bad as you fear. I was in a similar situation long ago. One advantage you have is that, at a small place, you probably have good access to your professors and they know your work pretty well.
First, check to see what connections your own professors have to other schools. These could be places that they went to school, or personal contacts at conferences or co-authors of papers. Enlist the help of your profs in promoting your candidacy.
Second, find out if other students from your current place have gone to universities you would find interesting. Find out how they did. If someone before you has set a good example at another university it can work in your favor.
Failing that, write application materials stressing heavily what you can do, mostly by stressing what you have done. Ask your professors to analyze these to see how your projects and performance will be perceived.
And since you have a bit of time, do what you can to do interesting things that others might find impressive.
In general, though, the reputation of your current institution is only one thing among many that will be used in the selection process. I doubt that very many places sort candidates first by the prestige of the applicants undergraduate university.


text:
How is a tenure-track appointment in Sweden?
I have been offered a tenure-track position in Sweden starting this September. I am very excited. Due to both cultural and working system differences, many things are unclear to me. I do not want to ask them to reveal my over-excitement. Besides, some of my ideas as you can see below might be silly and premature.
Can you narrate a typical appointment procedure?
For example, I have these silly questions:

Is there any formal inauguration? Do I need academic gown?
Do I need to deliver a lecture about my previous works?
What documents should I give to the administration? Should I give my awards and other certificates of merit?
Should I teach a course right in September?
Will I immediately given a space to set up my lab?
When can I get graduate students to start research?

Sorry for the silly questions but you have no idea about the combination of over-excitement and chaos in my head right now.

I would say: 1) no, 2-6) it depends. At my department, you'd probably be encouraged to present some research at the weekly seminar series. You'd probably not start teaching immediately, but that also depends on staffing. I think these are legitimate questions to ask your potential employer.

No offense, but it rather questionable logic that you ask a forum about administrative details that are clearly case-by-case and often based on negotiation , and not the university just to hide your “excitement “.

Please post the answer based on your experience.


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I want to do a masters in Biology, but I hate lab work
I have one year left of my Biology degree in the UK, and I want to do a masters. I love biology and I enjoy learning, specifically in cellular and cancer biology. However, I do not enjoy labs, I find it very mundane and boring, and also not rewarding. Most of the research I have done shows that all masters courses are project-based, and thus require labs. I do not want to a bioinformatics masters. I was wondering if anyone had any information or experience that could help, or could point me in the right direction?

Related question: I don't want to kill any more mice, but my advisor insists that I must in order to get my PhD.

@StellaBiderman the OP specifically said that they do not enjoy labs - biology is more than just labs...

Don't forget that undergrad labs aren't really experiments: they're teaching you how to conduct practical experiments, but the outcome is known. Project work is interesting not for the lab parts, but because of what you're doing.

And what about bioinformatics and biostatistics. Furthermore, a lot of problems in other subfields of biology can be dealt with field work instead of lab work.

Although the answer to this question depends upon your personal preference, check out theoretical biology. Also, many (most?) PIs spend little time doing their own lab work.

If you don’t like the work part, only the random reading part why don’t you just read? Do you need a Master if you don’t intend to work in the given field?

@Stefan what you mean "appreciated"? Some people don't like it. But, there are also entire journals about theoretical biology, e.g., https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-theoretical-biology

@Stefan I would suggest asking that as a new question.

You want to do cancer/cell biology but you dont want to do lab work or simulation work (bioinformatics). You have really hemmed yourself in.
What it sounds like may be of interest to you is the field of science communication. There is a real need for individuals who have training/knowledge in a field and are strong communicators to the general public.
For example, I feel very comfortable communicating to an academic audience but I have found that I struggle to communicate to the lay audience. I had an instance recently where I assumed my audience knew a piece of what I thought was trivial information. This was a very poor assumption on my part and made the communication of my research impossible as I had used that "trivial information" for my analogy explaining my research.
I listened to a talk from one of the editors of Nature talking about science communication this past semester and how critical it was (and how it was an underdeveloped skill in academia). There really do need to be more people who understand the science and can communicate it to the lay person.

Thank you for your comment. Science communication does sound interesting! Do you know of any examples of masters or courses that would study/train in this? Or would it just be from job experience in the sector of science communication

For e.g.: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/science-communication/science-communication/

You didn't say why you want to do a masters.  Presumably it is because you enjoy learning.  If you successfully finish a bachelors degree, you should be able to keep learning on your own, without enrolling in a masters degree.
I discourage thinking of a masters or PhD as a way to continue what you enjoyed about your undergraduate studies.  If your undergraduate studies were successful, you should not need to continue them in a formal way.  A further degree should serve a different purpose.  That might be qualification for a particular career, or developing skills in a different area.  For example, a PhD teaches research skills for a narrow subject, not broad subject-matter.

I'm not a biologist, so can't offer specific guidance, but perhaps you should first explore the feasibility of your desires. It may be possible or not. But the way to learn that is to talk to actual MS level biology faculty from a variety of institutions and ask them whether what you want is even possible.
But, be prepared for a laugh or two, since your wish is unconventional, I think. Don't let the chuckles put you off, however, they will usually be just because your idea is unexpected, not bad.
But faculty will tell you both whether it is feasible at their own institution and perhaps be able to point you to someone with a theoretical program not dependent on lab science.
One of the great places to do this is at a convention at which educators and researchers are likely to have a major presence. Some of these are annual and national, and some are regional. Best if you are presenting something, even a poster session, but a good place to see the alternatives in any case.


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Less desirable graduate school vs. more undergrad
I finished my B.Sc. in physics 3 years ago, did a year of research, worked a year in tech, and have spent the last year off the grid living in the bush and running away from reality for a while. Now I'm going back for my master's or PhD, but I'm pretty rusty. I'm hoping someone out there might read this and have some good advice on the best way to do this.
My options are basically the following:

to do a master's in a field/at a school/with an advisor that are all
not ideal to me, because that's where I have experience and
connections
to spend a year or so doing a second degree in math and then going
    on to do a PhD after that.

My reasoning for the second option is that this will afford me better opportunities for better grad schools in fields I have more interest in. Simply put, I don't believe I have a strong enough application right now to get into the programs/schools/advisors that I want to get in with.
My undergraduate grades are fine (A-/A average), but not extraordinary enough to carry me by their weight alone. I have two publications and a dwindling number of connections who could write me strong recommendations. Maybe one or two at most, with two others who would write generically positive letters. I don't think this is enough to get me where I'd like to be.
Grad school seems like too big of a commitment to go somewhere/work with someone I'm not 100% on board with. Is this "greedy" to think this way? Am I being too picky/asking too much? Should I take what I can get now and not waste my time trying make things "perfect"? Every grad student I speak to has the same advice: "Unless you're 100% sure this is what you want to do, don't do it," so I'm kind of going by that.
Is it worth taking a year or so to pad my application with a second degree in math (new networks, fresh good grades, strong recommendations from professors if I can build relationships with them), so that I can get in where I actually want to go? Or should I just suck it up and do the master's that I don't care about, do it well, and then go where I want from there (keeping in mind that I'd be wanting to switch fields at this point)?
Thank you very much in advance to anyone who takes the time to read/respond!

Would math be the field you want to go into?

More specifically mathematical physics/applied math. But my experience and connections are in computational and medical fields of physics.

If you plan on going a more mathy direction, it does make some sense to pick up more background, and maybe gain a better idea of whether you want to do a PhD in that field. A masters you're not interested in sounds like a bad use of your time, however.

Doing a second undergraduate degree, especially from a renowned university, is incredibly expensive in the US. Based on your past few years, it seems unlikely you have much money saved up. Top state schools like UVA can cost you 30k in-state and 60k out-of-state. Private schools like Chicago can cost you 70k+. Do you live in a country where education is heavily subsidized, or do you have 100-500k lying around to pay for another bachelor's?

I live in Canada. Undergraduate education at the top universities here is around 10k a year, and second degree programs take 4 semesters.

Isn't 4 semesters = 2 years?

There's no restrictions on when the semesters take place, so I was intending to work straight through the summer semester as well (making it 16 months). While I'm not exactly time-limited, I am already well behind peers my age as far as education goes, so if I do go the undergrad route I'd like to just get it over with as quickly as possible.

@justadampaul what is the advantage of doing an undergraduate degree over a masters degree? I fear that two undergraduates in the same subject in the same country will make it look like you forgot what you had learned (which seems to be true, but looks really bad). Do you think you could warm-up to get to the point of a Master's program?

Although math and physics are of course related, they are far from the same subject. The second degree would be in math, and I would be focusing on math that I did not study during my physics degree. The only master's degrees I would be eligible for right now would be in computational physics, not mathematical, as I lack the math background. It's a fair point to wonder if I could just work on my own to get myself prepared for a more challenging master's though... Something to consider.

My reading of your question is that you already know your answer. You don't seem to be time or resource limited (as many others would be) and you express pretty strong preference for a second undergrad degree.
The only caveat I would have is whether you are feeling inadequate when it isn't called for (Imposter Syndrome).
An undergrad math degree (outside the US, at least) might not require you to repeat a lot of things as it is probably focused on just the Maths. So it wouldn't be backing up, really. Actually I don't know how similar the Canadian Educational System is to the US. Down here an UG degree requires a lot of things outside the major (Language, history, ....). Other places an undergrad degree is more specialized on one topic. Doing it in a year or so would depend on the university hosting it. Your original institution might be the best place for that.
Also, rusty is bad. You will want to somehow bring your work process and thinking process back up to speed. Any sort of study can help with that, but a grad program is typically more intense.

Thanks for your insight. Re-reading my question, it does seem heavily favourable towards more undergrad. Maybe I am just second-guessing myself and turning to the internet for reassurance.
The second degree program is laid out in such a way that I could do it in 1.5 years-ish if I took no breaks in the summer, which is why I say a year or so... I will reflect more on your advice, thanks again!

I'd say do the masters degree. Reasons:

You already have a background in physics. If you've not forgotten all your quantum mechanics, relativity, etc, you should have a relatively easier time applying to grad school in mathematical physics than in mathematics, where you might have to start from zero.
MS studies are more similar to PhD study than undergraduate degrees. The MS degree might give you a better idea whether or not you really want to do PhD study.
If you decide after completing the degree that you don't actually want to do PhD study, you can rejoin the workforce with a higher degree, which is usually more valuable than a second undergraduate degree.

You write that you might be forced to go to a "less desirable" graduate school on a topic you are less interested in. This need not be so. Googling for "masters in mathematical physics" turns up programs such as this one at the University of Edinburgh. You could apply. An A-/A average together with two strong recommendation letters should suffice to be accepted into at least some programs.

Thanks for the response! I've actually already been accepted into a specific master's program, which is more what I was referring to in the question. I suppose it's possible that I could try and get into something like what you're recommending here for Fall 2019. I just don't have anything lined up in the interim (job or schooling) between now and then -- basically my choices are between those listed above for this September. I suppose I could always do the math courses for a semester or two and apply for grad schools without needing to finish the second degree...
Anyway, thanks again!

I like your idea of getting back in and taking some math courses. This will help you towards a second degree, help you shake off some academic rust, and give you some time to make a more firm decision going forward. My opinion is that those who would review your academic background, would be very impressed with seeing extra levels of math study. If a second degree was not had, anyone seeing your extra math would view such as pure academics. It is always refreshing to see a person take a class in an effort to expand knowledge.


text:
Recognition of achievements over time
I am applying to a university in the US. In the online application, they've asked about:

Additional Educational Experiences; Which of the following have you had experiences in? (select all that apply).

In a sub-section, they've asked to explain:

Recognition of achievements over time.

What is it exactly? Many thanks.

Thanks @MorganRodgers for the comment, I edited the question.

How do we know your achievements?

Thanks @scaaahu for the comment. My question is about "Recognition of achievements over time". Should I just list my academic achievements in application or they are asking about other something else?

@MorganRodgers, that is probably the correct answer.


text:
Manuscript status changed from Review in progress to Ready for review
After two months the status of the manuscript under review changed from review in progres to ready for review. I dont understand is my paper yet to be reviewed? Dont know the workflow of River Valley Review.

Just a guess, but a reviewer may have backed out so they are back to square 1. Probably no reflection on the paper. It may also been that the editor wasn't satisfied with the review he/she got so started over. Reviewers get busy just like authors.
Another possibility is that the editor got back inconsistent reviews.
Be advised that dealing with publishers can be very frustrating. Not the finest aspect of the academic life.