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What do students mean by "makes the course harder than it needs to be"?
Something I hear from students about certain instructors is a complaint that the instructor "makes the course harder than it has to be" or some variation. I'm a postdoc and my students generally really like me. I hear them say this about other instructors and I'm just curious, what is going on? I read it on ratemyprofessor or reviews of other instructors, or overhead students saying this.
The easy explanation is "the student is lazy" but I don't buy this. I generally agree with the students that the instructors they dislike aren't great instructors.
It seems to be closer to saying "the instructor is unclear". What is an example of an instructor "making something harder than it needs to be"?

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Presumably what they mean is that the explanations of the course material are able to be understood, but they are harder to understand than alternative explanations or modes of teaching which would impart the same material in an easier way.  Asserting that a course is harder "than it needs to be" generally means that you think the same learning could be accomplished with less effort and difficulty if it were presented in a better way.

OR that this much learning would not benefit you in a meaningful way, teaching quantum chemistry to sociologists or sociology to chemists tends to result in the university version of "I won't need trigonometry in real life". A perception of "this course does not have to go this deep, just teach us the basics and give us a passing grade for the credits" is not that uncommon, at least in weaker programs.

Exactly, and to give an example: I myself have had many occasions where my professor's explanations seemed like - sorry to say - mumbo jumbo to me, compared to some YouTuber's that I watched afterwards. Oh how this one particular YT channel saved my theoretical computer science exam ...

I think it's worth adding that sometimes students are correct when they say that a lecturer makes something harder than it needs to be, but also sometimes they are incorrect - not about how hard the lecturer makes it, of course, but about how hard it needs to be. "I found an easier to understand explanation elsewhere" may mean the explanation elsewhere is wrong or incomplete. As a lecturer, when something feels like it should be easier than it really is, it may be worth explaining why the easier approach doesn't work, so the students can see the point in doing it the hard way.

@kaya3 It also sometimes means that a particular student learns better in a different way - sometimes the match between student and professor just isn't good, and it is through no fault of either party.

Could also be that they feel that not every topic taught is absolutely necessary, and maybe the professor chooses some of the harder versions of a topic when a basic version would suffice.

@Issel Or that when they did figure it out they thought the path taught to get there was needless circuitous with lots of fluff where as some basic important stuff was omitted.

One of the most important skills of a lecturer is to understand how students might misunderstand, and avoid it. These are often trivial confusions. At research-focused institutes, lecturers spend their time working with those who already well understand. They have little experience with traps for those new to material. This can make them poor lecturers. Sheepdogs spend most of their time and expertise on errant sheep: a dog trained on excellent sheep will be poor. Such lecturers are only capable of teaching good students, making the material hard due to trivial teaching-mistakes in material.

The fundamental reason is that the student is unhappy. But why they are unhappy could be one or more of the following, at least.

Instructor doesn't explain things clearly.

Instructor gives more detail than necessary.

Too much homework.

Homework not very useful.

Instructor won't take questions.

Instructor takes too much time with questions.

Instructor follows the book too closely.

Instructor doesn't seem to use the book.

Exams are too hard.

Exams are just wasting my time.

I hate group projects.

I hate solo projects.

You get the idea, I hope. Everyone that says this probably has a different reason. You can add your own. Stop when you get to 100, if you like.
Note that the statement about "harder than it needs to be" gives no information about why. That requires further exploration in the individual case or evidence from other student comments. If student comments have some consistency then they may have some validity.
Moreover, students aren't always the best judge of this in any case and their real meaning may just be "harder than I'd like it to be". Some things are hard. And in some fields (math, say) insight may only come through hard work.

This, one of my professor required the class to write a paper that has to published in a way that put him in First Author position, where most of the time students do their first published paper as their thesis. Nevertheless, the professor was reprimanded by the Lecturer Body...

100: I hate lists that go to 100. 101: I hate lists that don't stop at 100.

89: My professor used 89% confident/credible intervals which made my life harder

Made a case of 'toolset should not be used' before.

This is good advice about taking student evaluations with a large pinch of salt in general — but it’s not answering the specific question asked.  Student complaints may be wrong as often as they’re right, but they’re usually still expressing a specific kind of unhappiness the student is feeling, and it’s usually worth figuring out what that is.

@PLL, yes, I agree that the statement about "harder than it needs to be" gives no information about why. That requires further exploration in the individual case or evidence from other student comments. If student comments have some consistency then they may have some validity. Moreover, students aren't always the best judge of this in any case and their real meaning is "harder than I'd like it to be". Some things are hard. (added this to the answer)

To your list we can add "internet+Dr Fox effect" i.e. friendly, easy-seeming explanations about on the web. Students flock to them. More often than not, the easier explanation gets its victory by sweeping important details under the carpet. The student might conclude that the instructor made things harder than they needed to be.

I feel like this answer is correct and not complete. It’s unfortunate that most student evaluations are merely rants or praise correlated with the grade the student earned, but that doesn’t mean all of them are. The asker is trying to make an honest effort to take evaluations at face value and see if any useful feedback can be gleaned from them. This answer could possibly be summarized as saying "there’s no useful information in them", which might be usually true or true in a lot of specific cases, but I don’t feel like searching for meaning should be so quickly dismissed.

This can also relate to the scope of the course. During my bachelors, my school offered two versions of introductory statistics: one for math/applied math majors or anyone looking to take further statistics classes, and one intended as a capstone intro for majors who need to know practical statistics. However, for a period of about two years, the capstone course was taught by a professor who disagreed with this philosophy, and taught the capstone intro like it was the advanced intro. This introduced a lot of complex proofs and caused him to run out of time to cover all the practical statistical tests that were supposed to be covered.
This prompted widespread student complaints that he made the course "harder than it needed to be," because in this case the "need" was defined by the fact that this course was developed for a specific audience/scope which he ignored.

Sometimes this happens when a student has prior experience, and success, in a subject from a high school course. In the US, Advanced Placement courses are marketed as equivalent to introductory college courses, but college instructors covering the same syllabus will take quite a different approach than high school teachers.
As an example: in single-variable calculus we teach the concept of the derivative as a limit of difference quotients, use the limit to prove theorems about the derivative, and ask students exam questions requiring this conceptual understanding. In a high school class, there may be more class time spent on the literal "calculus" of derivatives with the power rule, product rule, quotient rule, etc.
A student may have succeeded in this high school class, thanks to the extra time spent with in class with the instructor, and the focus on mechanics over concepts. They may find that the college version, comparatively, spends "too much" time on ideas that they feel aren't relevant since they weren't relevant in the high school version. From their point of view, the college instructor transformed a subject they found easy in high school into one which they currently find hard. Hence, "harder than it needs to be."

This was EXACTLY the example I was thinking of as I was reading through the question, comments, and answers (my first visit to Academia today, U.S. time). I've often had students approach me after class meeting, in a U.S. Calculus 1 course when we spend one or two class meetings evaluating derivatives "the long way" (better is "by the definition as a limit") -- low degree polynomials, square root of 1st degree polys, quotients of 1st degree polys. They explain how their high school teacher had taught them an easier way to do these and would it be OK for them to use the easier way . . .

(continuation) Of course, this isn't a legitimate example where a teacher is making the subject too difficult, at least not unless the teacher harps on it way too long as would be appropriate for the course (and "appropriate" differs according as to whether it's calculus for biology/business majors, calculus for physical science majors, honors level calculus). That said, I've certainly encountered teachers who make a course more difficult than it needs to be, and this has sometimes included myself upon later reflection after my first time in teaching some topic.

@DaveLRenfro: That's what I was going for, an example where the professor's approach is fine for the level of the course, but the students think it's too hard because they're comparing to something else they know.

This was, more or less, what I was gearing up to say.  To offer an anecdote:  I once taught an intro calc class which included a physics major in his senior year who had gotten placed out of calc via AP testing (placement, but not credit).  He figured that the class was going to be an easy A, and he wanted to bring up his GPA. About three or four weeks in, after spending some time on limits, we get to the derivative, and I have them compute d/dx (x^n) for n=1,2,3,4.  (con't)

(con't) This is a somewhat tedious, but not terribly difficult computation.  About 10 minutes into it, this guy looks at me like I am an idiot, and says, "You know, there's a shortcut.  You just bring the exponent down and subtract one."  After some conversation, I told him that we couldn't just apply rules like this without first understanding them, and that we would get to the power rule in a week or two (after a quick discussion of induction).  I am sure that this student thought I was making the class far harder than it needed to be.

I'm not surprised many users have experienced this from the teaching side! I think it comes down to the student's misconception that the course's goals are primarily calculating. This is true for many math courses up to that point in their lives. So it helps to be clear about the goals, both on the first day and any time theory is being discussed.

I've had something like this where the instructor was teaching a course in his field of expertise to a group of students completely new to the subject. But due to his extensive expertise and knowledge of the area he didn't cover the fundamentals well and just glossed over them, because for him it was so obvious it didn't really need explaining. He also used a lot of jargon he was familiar with but we were unaware of, as a result a lot of students got lost at the very start as he jumped into the more difficult stuff too early. He made the course more difficult than it needed to be by not taking the time to understand the level of the students he was teaching and jumping into material that was more advanced too early, using unfamiliar jargon and not taking the time to cover the fundamentals properly.

"he didn't cover the fundamentals" Were there prerequisite courses that the students were supposed to take before taking this course?

It reminded me of "Applied Stochastic Processes with Applications in Finance" course @Nobody. Turned out not to be applied and full of measure theoretic stuff.

@Nobody yes there were and all students had to take it to progress to this course, the prerequisite course did not cover the material this instructor glossed over in any detail, other than mentioning that we'll be learning about these methods in the next course.

I've encountered this situation a lot with my at-home contract work. I'll have an online meeting about a certain software tool. It starts with a rapid succession of mouse clicks and menu selections that no one can follow. Then there's way too much time spent on the actual content-knowledge task I'm to do. When it comes time to do it myself, I find it's like not knowing how to open a door to a room, within which is a wall (that I don't know which) that has several shelves (I don't know which) . . . all the time was spent telling me what to do on that shelf, and I can't even get into the room.

This is the only answer that mentions jargon. I think every field has it's own jargon to puff itself up and seem more science-y. Excessive use of jargon in an introductory course would certainly make things more difficult than they needed to be.

Then there's way too much time spent on the actual content-knowledge task I'm to do. --- Looking at this the next day, I notice that more correct and more appropriate to my complaint would have been to say: "Then there's way too much time spent on the actual content-knowledge task that I already know how to do."

What is an example of an instructor "making something harder than it needs to be"?

I'll quote this example from personal experience, which is unfortunately not very understandable unless you are in physics.
Basically, when we study physics at high school level, we have parameters that we evolve forwards in time using known equations. For example, we could be asked to calculate a [force] that acts on [body] for [time] producing [acceleration].
Comparatively, in quantum mechanics, there are two basic approaches. The first is called the Schrödinger picture. You are given a physical state, which you evolve forwards using the Schrödinger equation. This is relatively similar to high school physics, since the operators never change, but the physical state does.
The other picture (and historically the one first discovered) is called the Heisenberg picture. In this picture, the physical state remains constant while the operators (corresponding to the things you want to measure, like position or momentum) change. There is still an analog of the Schrödinger equation, but it is for operators, not physical states.
Needless to say, for students brought up on high school physics, the Heisenberg formulation is significantly harder to grasp. It doesn't matter that the two formulations can be shown to be equivalent - the Schrödinger formulation is simply easier to understand on an intuitive level. A student who sees Heisenberg's equation of motion for the first time could legitimately go "what on Earth am I looking at? How can this possibly be a physics equation?".
When I first studied quantum mechanics, I had the misfortune of my professor using a Heisenberg picture textbook. I had all the prerequisites - linear algebra, matrix manipulations, strong elementary physics grades - and near the end of the course, I (like most other students) still had no idea what was going on. I had no physical intuition, no sense of what the math I was doing is supposed to represent. I still got an "A" for the course, but about the only thing I learned was that the professor's math is flawless.
If you teach quantum mechanics using the Heisenberg picture, I'd say you are making the course harder than it needs to be.
Edit: to add another example, consider this answer to a bridge question on Boardgames.SE (if you're not aware, bridge is a card game).
You don't need to be an expert on bridge to see why the author's teachers said not to let the author near novices. When the novice asks "what do I do with this hand?", the author is liable to respond with "well it depends on X, Y, Z, and more besides". Meanwhile the novice is looking for "the answer". With so many more things thrown on top, it rapidly becomes confusing for the novice, making the answer harder than it needs to be.
An analog in academia could be the student asking if X is true, and the teacher says "well it depends if Y, Y', Y'', Y''' are true, if none of them are true (and usually none of them are) then X is true".

I'm not sure about your example, and probably it's just a matter of personal preference. When I first studied QM, I was introduced to both pictures, we used one picture or another along the course, and I didn't find the Heisenberg's picture more ostile than the Schroedinger's.

@MassimoOrtolano good for you! As I wrote, me and most other students in my class encountered significant difficulties. I was actually rather lucky, because near the end of the semester I got my hands on a book that used the Schrodinger picture, and had more sense of what was going on as a result.

When I was an undergrad, professors that I thought "make the course harder than it needs to be" were brilliant people who weren't good at teaching. They didn't use appropriate textbooks, or they skipped their own office hours, or they provided no feedback on assignments, etc.
As an example, I had a math professor who spent every class period delivering his lecture while faced away from the class, writing on the chalkboard. He didn't assign a textbook. He never made his lecture notes available online. He would not let students take photos of the chalkboard. We spent our classes frantically transcribing his notes, scribbling down anything seemingly-important from his lecture, and occasionally asking for notation clarification—Excuse me, professor, is that a 1 or an i? We students coped by comparing our notes and swapping textbook and youtube channel recommendations and, on the whole, we learned the material. But it was so much harder than it needed to be.

I took a math class with a professor who did basically everything in this answer, and it immediately came to mind as a course that was "harder than it needed to be" (and pretty much the only course of that kind I could think of).

It could be because of the mismatch between reality and expectation, from my experience.
When I took Linear Algebra years ago, my classmates complained that they did not understand anything. However, it was not the fault of the instructor.
The instructor chose the axiomatic method of teaching Linear Algebra instead of the "cookbook" style. As for me, the course was indeed abstract and interesting, but not difficult. However, my friends did not think about it that way, blaming the instructor instead. They had friends from other universities, for example, who told them that Linear Algebra was easy like high school mathematics. Some of them had prior learning experience with "cookbook" linear algebra. That's why many of them expected that the course would be that easy.
All of our mathematics courses were taught in axiomatic style. Not just Linear Algebra. It is just an example.
Moreover, some people are not ready to embrace the axiomatization of mathematics. Some people don't even know about the existence of  axiomatic systems. Some even refuse it think about it.
Also, the seemingly, deceivingly simple nature of the real world makes some people believe that we are trying to overcomplicate things. That is not true.

What do you mean by axiomatic method of teaching Linear Algebra?

@AtilioA I assume it is just how to do things versus why things are the way they are. A regular math class which focuses on calculation vs math honours which focuses on proofs. I took a calculus honours course and a linear algebra course at the same time and the honours course let me understand everything but be able to calculate nothing while the linear algebra course let me calculate everything but understand nothing. Calculus would derive everything but do nothing with it while the linear algebra would throw random procedures and values (Eigen values, determinants) without explaining them

Interesting. Linear Algebra at my university is somewhat mixed between the two, maybe leaning towards proofs a bit. Calculus on the other hand is around 90% calculation/algorithms and you can pass with high scores without really understanding the underlying concepts. I have to say I prefer the former approach. It taught me to be more rigorous with mathematics.

@AtilioA: To me, the axiomatic method of teaching linear algebra suggests working with abstract vector spaces, rather than focusing exclusively on a few examples of vector spaces. You can find this approach in books like Curtis's Linear Algebra: An Introductory Approach and Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right.

@DKNguyen, the axiomatic method of teaching linear algebra suggests something different and more specific to me. See my comment above.

@Vectornaut Yeah I have Axle. I assume that's what teaching linear algebra based on proofs is like but I may be wrong since as you can see from my comment, I was never taught linear algebra like that.

@DKNguyen—Proof-based linear algebra courses do often take an axiomatic approach, in my experience, but those features are independent in principle. You could teach a proof-based course about a specific family of vector spaces, like the spaces R^n, the spaces (F_2)^n, or the spaces of arrows in Euclidean spaces. You could also take an axiomatic approach in a non-proof-based course—showing a wide variety of example vector spaces, explaining intuitively how they satisfy the axioms, and centering computational techniques rather than theorems and proofs.

@Vectornaut I would like one of those as a night course for adults.

Because teaching is hard, and people who are experts in a topic often aren't actually very good at passing that knowledge on.
In my experience, the biggest failing is usually due to not getting the level of detail right for the audience, and that comes down to two factors.

If you don't focus enough on the things which are the building blocks for everything else they need to learn, they'll struggle to learn. An expert instructor will often gloss over important information, because to them, it's so basic that they forget it needs to be said.

If you focus too much on the things which aren't fundamentals, they'll be confused and overloaded. An expert instructor will often elaborate on more advanced aspects of the field because they find it interesting, forgetting that their audience don't yet have the grounding to keep up.

Getting that balance right is one of the most critical skills for anyone doing teaching / training work.

agreed; and there is another facet to this. Even if the instructor correctly focuses on the indispensable building blocks, students may not yet see that yes, this will turn out to be the fulcrum for everything else, and thus feel that the instructor is wasting their time. One solution is to say regularly: this will become essential to our arguments in Lecture 6, but actually as a student I disliked this, I was like "I trust you, just get on with it"- but many of my fellow students were not like me in this regard.

Yeah, that doesn't help either... since not everyone learns effectively in the same way, some of them will find that the advanced stuff helps put the basics in context, while others will find it overwhelming.

I guess a concrete example is fine:
The definition and theory behind the derivative is considered tricky, and complicated, by students. The list of rules on how to compute the derivative is considered easy.
Students tend to prefer this is how you calculate, and solve problems on the final over this is the theoretical reason why we actually care.
Students are much happier with learning to be meat computers, rather than having an actual understanding of the theory.
I think this can explain the comments on the evaluation. So, one easy way out is to always follow up theory with a concrete example where this is used, and make sure this example is from some older final. Real-world examples are much more abstract than 'the final which is gonna be in 2 weeks from now'.

In a comment, @Garandy replied:
There's an art to teaching well that a lot of professors don't bother to learn or put into practice - making an effort to write clearly during presentations, having prepared slides when possible, utilizing real-world examples to illustrate theory, etc. Beyond that, though, there are professors that pride themselves on their class being "hard" and do nothing to make the content more accessible to students - often times because it was "hard" when they took it, and they can't fathom why their students couldn't all learn it as well as they did.

@Garandy feel free to post this on your own and I'll delete this community wiki.  Since it's an answer, it belongs in an answer box, and extended comment-answers have been moved or removed.  Just hoping to save your content.  Cheers.


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LOR from employer sent from unofficial email id as using official e-mail id is against the company policy
My senior is ready to write a LOR for me, but cannot use a company letterhead or official email id as it is against the company policy.
Company policy states use of official email id and letterhead for personal purpose is not allowed.
In that case if the senior uploads recommendation from personal email id will that be alright?

Is writing a LOR really a "personal purpose"? It doesn't seem very personal...

LOR expresses opinion and experience of the writer, not the position of the organisation they work for. In this regard, it is a personal communication from one person to a group addressee such as hiring committee or admissions team.

@Sursula-they- It's common in some places to have a company policy that the only thing the company will officially recognize is that "Yes, Luna Moon was employed by our company from date to date"; possibly including a job title. This is worthless as a recommendation letter for academic purposes, and the only alternative around the policy would be for a recommender to make it a personal recommendation.

It will probably be fine, but they should explain the situation in the mail if possible. They can also ask for a confirmation from the person at their company email address. That is a bit of a fudge on the regulation, but probably not enough to cause problems.
If they have some visibility at the company website then that might help also.
But, universities realize that these sorts of things happen and are likely to be fine with it since you have no control.
The senior can also check with HR about the proper interpretation of the policy. It might be easier than you think. It might require that the senior show the letter to HR before sending it with "official" resources.

I did ask HR about it, they said it is next to impossible to open these URLs (even if they're from educational institutions) as they are blocked.
However, I was hoping if unis are aware of such situations and not reject my application straightaway just because it's from a personal email.

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Continue my phd in another instution
I'm halfway through my PhD studying abroad and due to a series of problems with my current advisor and the way the university is handling these issues my mental health has been affected and I'd like to move my current research elsewhere. My question is that if my situation here doesn't improve, can I take my current progress and continue in another institution without starting over?
So far I haven't published anything and the only work submitted was as part of my internal evaluation, It's worth noting that I'm being funded.
Thanks in advance

This probably heavily depends on the regulations of the funding body.

You have not specified where you are doing your PhD. For example, in Australia, under RTP scholarship, it is not possible to quit your PhD program to do it at another institution while being benefitted from the same scholarship.

You have two issues to overcome here: securing a new spot (mostly contingent on the ability to find funding, it is usually fairly competitive) and making sure you do not break any rules taking your research with you.
I am a bit surprised Buffy did not mention that, perhaps due to the background: many - especially experimental - fields do not take too lightly to people quitting the lab and bringing their research with them. In some cases, it causes a relatively high-profile drama.
An obvious example would be data collected during an expedition or a field trip: you might be the one doing the work there, but a lot of lab's resources go into greasing the wheels. People quit relatively often, but there might be an expectation of them to turn the research over for someone else to work on it in that case, so that the lab still gets a return on the investment.
If your field is like that - and ultimately your contract terms determine what you can and can not do - you should be negotiating it with your current advisor. You do not want your actions to be perceived as inconsiderate or even treacherous, the word spreads like fire and it will bring you down.
On the other hand, it does not mean you should yield to abusive conditions. Do consider whether you are truly taking only your own work with you. Instructions/education received during your PhD program are also fine, of course - the advisor was compensated for it and if they had different expectations of you, it is their problem, not yours.

You are right. We mathematicians seldom have such "ownership" issues over our research.

I guess you need an upvote.

I'm guessing this will be very difficult unless you make compromises. Perhaps lots of compromises.
Certainly you can change institutions, provided you get accepted. That is the least of the problems, I'd guess.
Taking your research with you rather than starting over, however, depends on finding a supervisor at the new institution who is willing to advise you on this topic. That might be harder, depending on how "mainstream" your research is.
Taking the funding along may be harder still. It depends on lots of things, including the willingness of the current institution (since they charge overhead against most grants) and the funding agency. This might be the hardest part of all.
You might, however, be able to get some alternative funding, depending on your field.
But, also consider that you can work on mental health issues through a professional, perhaps at your current institution. That should be a first priority in any case. If you can manage that, the simplest option might just be to stay and finish.
But, depending on the mental health issue, starting over might not be the worst option.

I kept contact with an older supervisor that is researching a related field, so switching should be possible giving up on my current funding. My main issue would be if there's a clause forbidding me to use any materials developed during my first PhD. Thanks a lot for the suggestion, I'm already seeing a professional regarding my health.

It depends on the contracts you signed if such a clause exists.

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Should I ask a professor for a letter of recommendation if I haven't done too well in his class but have interacted with him a lot outside class
The title is a bit long but let me explain. I am a final year undergraduate student and am currently applying for a PhD in my field. All the universities I am applying to require three letters of recommendation (LoR). My supervisor for my Bachelors Thesis is writing me one letter and a Professor with whom I did a summer internship is writing me the other, so in total I have two research supervisors writing me a letter each.
Now for the third LoR I am a bit confused about whom to ask. Here are my options:

Professor A: I got an average grade (my grade was 7, and 10 is the highest you can get) in his class but I have had a lot of interactions with him since that class. Basically when I was looking for research groups to apply to (in his field), he guided me a lot and recommended many groups and put me in touch with one of his colleagues. I also approached him when I wanted to learn some advanced topics and he gave me some papers to read, and we will be having discussions on them.
Professor B: He is the faculty advisor of my class (as in he signs some of our official documents and things like that). I have done two courses with him, one of which I got a 9 grade (few people got a 9 or a 10 because the course was tough) and an 8 in the other. The first course had a project and my team was adjudged to have the best presentation in that class. I have also had some interactions with him but they were mostly unrelated to course material. He also did help me out a bit with figuring out how to apply to grad schools.
Professor C: I did very well in her course (10) and also did a course project with her. But that course was around two years ago and I don't know if she remembers me because I haven't interacted with her since then.

I was initially inclined to ask Professor A since I have a good rapport with him but I don't know if I should ask him because I hadn't done very well in his course, so I don't know if he would write me a strong LoR.
What should I do?

You may be able to ask your two research supervisors for advice on this matter.
In any case, you can ask professors A,B,C if they would be willing to write you a STRONG letter. If you ask them to be brutally honest, you'll be able to gain some very useful information. This is a situation where you would rather they be brutally honest up front, to avoid a situation where someone kindly agrees but writes you a less-strong letter because that's all they can honestly do.
In general, grades are not everything, so it IS possible to get a good letter that highlights your strong points from a professor whose class you did not ace.
Ultimately, you need to seek more detailed knowledge from your professors for your specific situation.

As someone who has written several letters for graduate and professional school admissions, and heard internal conversations about this type of thing, I would recommend against asking Professor A. Faculty writing letters of support need to be in the best position possible to give strong (in the case of the U.S., in particular, very strong) statements of support, with clear and convincing examples. As in the case you mention there likely won't be anything like this, I recommend against asking this person. However, there might be other ways for Professor A to help you, for example by leveraging Professor A's network, if that is a possibility.

You sound as if you are in quite a good situation actually, in that the professor (a) is a normal human being and (b) doesn’t hate you. This does not always happen in academe!
Given that - ask your professor the question you are asking us!
“Given my history, and our history together, advise me: is there a letter you could reasonably write, both telling the truth and helping me to move forward to the next stage in my career?”
You may or may not get a letter out of this. But at the very least (from the story you have told us) you will get some good advice. Plus a better relationship which may have positive effects at some time in the future.

Don't hesitate and ask to professor directly.

For US study, all of those three people seem like good choices for letter writers. In the case of the third person, make contact and remind them of who you are and what you did with them. A face to face visit is best as they are more likely to remember you. Tell them your plans and ask them if they remember you sufficiently well to write you a letter.
The first person seems like a winner as they have already tried to support you, no matter the grade.
You want people who can predict your success in grad study and beyond. The first person seems best (to me), but the others seem fine as long as they can honestly and sincerely make such a prediction.


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First meeting with potential PhD supervisor
I have meeting with my potential supervisor in a few days. He already told me that I should prepare talk about my previous research and steps that I took. Do you have any advices how to be precise and short? I don't need to go into details since it will be a short meeting, but i still want to impress him.

When I have a meeting with potential supervisors, I try to keep it short and simple, but here are what I usually mention:

Summary of past research experience and a notable project. I summarize what I do in that project; objective and outcome of the project.

(If it is asked) How familiar I am with the state of the art of the fields they are interested. How much I do like the topic. Relevant experience.

My self-study plan to cultivate necessary knowledge and skills before going to the graduate school.


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Protocol for Submitting Fellowship Application where I need to see my advisor's Recommendation Letter
I'm applying to a graduate fellowship program that has extremely strict rules about submission, and I must submit my application as one PDF, including my letter of recommendation from my advisor. He's written me several letters before that I haven't seen, but how am I supposed to ask for this letter?

Just ask.  Tell him the rules of the fellowship application (with a link so he can verify) and ask if he's comfortable writing a letter that you would be able to read.
If he's not (and this would be an entirely reasonable position), see if you can work out something else.  For instance, you might be able to send all your other materials to your advisor, or to some third party such as an administrative assistant, who would compile everything together with the letter and submit it on your behalf.  Or you (or better, the professor) could contact the fellowship funding organization and explain the situation, and ask if they can suggest any alternative methods of submission.
In the worst case, if there is no way to resolve the conflict, then you simply won't be able to apply for this fellowship.  Seek out others.

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


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Is there a difference between "in review" and "under review"
I recently submitted a paper to a Management journal, usually if the manuscript is in the review process, it shows "under review".
This time, once upon submission the status turned "in review". I wonder why it turned like this right away and anyone has any idea if there is actually a difference?

A wild guess, but since you just submitted it, maybe it means that the editor/staff is checking to see if the paper fits the theme of the journal.

From the perspective of English language and common usage, there's no significant difference between "in review" and "under review."
From your question, I'm not clear on whether your comparison is between two different papers or if you saw the status change from "in" to "under" on a single submission.

If the former, then ignore it, they're equivalent.
If the latter, then probably the paper has moved from one (of the many) internal stage in the paper processing chain to another.  I suspect the system was likely not supposed to make this evident, but has accidentally exposed state change information because the two states were accidentally labelled with the different equivalent statements.

Thanks, no I didnt see the status change in the same submission. I was talking from my previous experience with this journal that when I submit a paper it goes in the review process as "under review". What worries me is not really the difference, as it is the fact that once I submitted the paper it went automatically "in review".

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


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Building community in a college classroom
I am a TA for a class designed to bring a group of about 25 students together as a cohort starting their freshman year of college. They are in the same department so they will be mostly taking similar classes for awhile.
By the way this class meets weekly.
When I TAed this class last fall community building was a huge focus of mine. As such we did do an ice breaker and a scavenger hunt towards the beginning of the class but that was about it. I couldn't think of anything else to do. At the end of the quarter we did do a sort of "show and tell" for cool things students had done (sky diving, making rockets, baking, art etc).
The goal for me would have been that by the end of the quarter they would all know each-other decently well and would have a sense of solidarity. A stretch goal would be that they would feel comfortable hanging out with each-other outside of classes for studying or just exploring the area around campus.
None of this really happened with my class unfortunately. I think part of it is I just didn't do a lot to encourage this sort of thing to spring up. Additionally I was not in control of the curriculum/schedule so while things like the student showcase may have been more effective early on they were not so effective later in the quarter when I could control the class topic.
This year I am moderately in charge of the curriculum and I want to do something cool with it. The current plan is to roughly stick with the same schedule from last year but in my opinion it didn't work. Students didn't have a good chance to get to know each-other nor work together early on.
I have been looking for ideas of how to improve things here or stories of successful classes like this one but I am really having a difficult time finding good examples/resources. Everything I find seems to be geared for much younger kids or thinks ice breakers are actually the only/best way to get your class to interact with each-other.
Do you have any tips/ideas/resources I might be able to leverage to make this next year's class special?

Building community is a worthy goal, but it seems like a departmental goal, rather than a course-level goal. Can you move your efforts from your course to the department?

Certainly and I do try there and they do agree and do things like off campus after hours meetups for the students. However those dont feel like they are as effective at building community as suddenly we are talking about 300+ potential attendees. They have these sections specifically to break things down to a smaller group.

Find the most acknowledged coleague, meaning find the coleague who is the most liked, and try to have a conversation with him/her,
if you find oppenness, then try to leverage his group-social position for the better of the group outcome.
If your coleague is receptive, you can create a organizational structure, in wich all your coleagues should be involved,
Create exuberance ,use emotions, and use a group dialogue where the team should be in a conecction ring for the future.
Make the argument that all who want to achieve something, will have greater chances if part of a group of proffesionals, must attend this group effort, give a hand to the team, and all will win in the long run.


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What is the point of a cover letter in journal submission?
Many journals do specify that cover letters are optional. From my experience, most people write cover letters in journal submission, but I am also aware that articles can also be published without the cover letter. Therein arises the question: why are cover letters written if they are not necessary for the publication process?  My guess is that perhaps it helps to prevent the desk-reject from the editor.

Not the same question, but a related one I asked: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/82811/effect-of-bland-cover-letter-for-journal-submission-in-biology

Prior to online submission forms, cover letters let the authors communicate information to the editors. Information I have included in covers includes:

Why the manuscript fits into the journal (if i recall correctly, Ecological Indicators explicitly requires a statement of what "indictor" you are addressing in the manuscript)
Potential reviewers and blocked reviewers
A statement that the manuscript is not under review elsewhere
Other pertinent information for the editor such as why the manuscript is timely (for example, perhaps you are studying a species that is under consideration for listing as an endangered species, and the information may be public, but not widely known)
Responses to reviewer comments
How I am meeting the journal's open data/open code requirements

With current online journal submissions, all of this information can be captured in online forms. Hence some journals either no longer require cover letters or outright do not allow authors to upload them. Conversely, I have seen other journals that still require cover letters.
I suspect journals use of cover letters depend upon the history of the journal, their current online publishing system, and the culture of the editorial team and office.

This is the best answer to the question because it addresses the "historical" aspect of cover letters.

I am also aware that articles can also be published without the cover
  letter.

The cover letter is not intended for the reader.

Therein arises the question: why are cover letters written if they are
  not necessary for the publication process?

There is far more to the publication process than what sees print.
The point of a cover letter is to introduce your paper to the editor of the journal and (potentially) the reviewers. It helps to frame the paper - why you think it's interesting, why you think it's interesting to that journal, and if there's any relevant information that might weigh on the decision to publish, or how to go about publishing it - for example, in biomedicine one might occasionally make a request for expedited publication for information relevant to an ongoing outbreak, or attempt to coordinate a publication's release date with the presentation of the paper at a major conference.
Some journals also use cover letters as a place to put in some boilerplate assurances, like the paper not being under consideration elsewhere.

Cover letters can be used to specify information which is relevant for the editors, but doesn't belong into the title and abstract. For example, if the paper is submitted upon invitation for a contribution to a special issue, that goes into the cover letter.

There is no point in these letters per se.
I presume they are there because of historical reasons, where people were actually submitting the manuscript with a physical letter, so obviously, you would need, back then, to have a cover letter to explain what is the intention of the parcel. But now we can communicate the same information with an email or an electronic form, serving by itself as a cover letter, i.e., giving possible important information to the editor in charge.

Depending on the journal and/or field of research the title and abstract may not indicate clearly the topic or area of interest addressed by the submitted paper. Also consider that the editor may not be expert in the area that the paper addresses.
Are you submitting a paper to a journal that publishes a range of topics?
Are you submitting to a journal that publishes exclusively in one field?
Are you submitting to a journal that publishes exclusively in one area of one field?
Highly sought-after journals such as Nature and Science publish across a wide range of fields, so you would need to provide some specifics as to why you seek to be published in that journal. Also, why they should consider your submission (is it ground-breaking?).
You could submit to a journal that publishes exclusively for one field (physics, biology, chemistry, education...) but with so many areas of research in these fields you could not expect the editor to just know whether your paper is relevant, or which reviewers to assign.
So a cover letter can help define this for the editor - why you have selected that journal, the importance/relevance/originality/defining outcome of your paper, why they should publish/consider publishing your paper. It gives you a chance to give an outline with detail that may not be relevant in the abstract but goes towards background information so that they don't need to read some/all of the entire paper to make a decision.
Actually, if they need to read the whole paper first they may reject it without review, since at the least they may need to read title, abstract and introduction. A cover letter can save them time, which will be appreciated and help your chances of getting the paper reviewed.

I must say don't find this argument very convincing. If after reading my abstract the editor has no idea what I am writing about, there is a big problem either with the abstract or my choice of editor/journal.

@FedericoPoloni OP asks why are cover letters written... Your abstract is written for your peers, colleagues, researchers in your field and other interested readers - your audience. You cannot automatically assume the editor is in that circle but they do have to make the decision why to accept your paper over the (possibly) hundreds of similar submissions.

We must have very different contexts in mind, then. I am used to journals in which the editor is a "peer, colleague, researcher in my field". The editor is a good prototype of a "typical reader", at least for the journals I am used to.

@FedericoPoloni Fair enough. I would say the same about the editors where I have published. I tried to be broad in my answer since the OP didn't give specifics.


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How to get teaching evaluations for a course as a TA / Co-instructor
Some of the faculty-level academic jobs require teaching evaluations in the submission package, which gives rise to a need to acquire teaching evaluations.
My question is then, how can one obtain teaching evaluations for a course where one is either a co-instructor or a teaching assistant, but not the instructor? The setting is where there is no clear teaching evaluation mechanism for co-instructors / teaching assistants already in place.

With the instructor's consent, create your own evaluation form and hand it out to students on the last day of class. Make it similar to the one they are filling out for the instructor. If possible, ask the same person who  anonymizes the other evaluations do so for you. At a minimum, leave the room and provide an envelope for them to be submitted.

There's probably not very much you can do, other than ask for a letter of recommendation from the main instructor specifically about your performance as a TA/co-instructor. You should let the department -- whoever oversees the TA assignments and managements in your unit -- know that evaluations would be helpful. In my institutions, students evaluate each instructor separately, including the TA.


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What should I do about a bad professor?
My professor has not and will not hand out a syllabus (I have asked as well as others). I have a very vague idea about how grades will be calculated and no idea what the class schedule looks like (I don't believe the prof knows until the day before, either). He has also said that he has no office hours and will not answer email. I have no idea how to handle this because I have to have this course this semester and cannot drop it, but I also cannot that I will make a bad grade because of lack of preparedness on the prof's part.
Any suggestions?

I've been in a similar situation. Just don't panic. Stay focused. I would ask him/her for a textbook and every session, after the class, I'd ask what chapter of the book s/he taught. S/he might also tell you that there is no textbook and s/he gathers the lectures from different sources. That's OK. Just talk to your classmates and create a study group. In the group, you can have weekly meeting and help each other to review whatever he taught in that week. I think collaborating with others in learning is the most efficient way to solve the issue.

no idea what the class schedule looks like I think you do need to talk to the department about this. Not only you will have problem with this class, but also other classes as well. What if the schedule of this class conflicts with other classes you need to take?

@scaaahu OP can elaborate, but I take "no idea what the class schedule looks like" to mean that the course outline/topical coverage has not been relayed to the students.

Document. Document. Document. You will need documentation to make any sort of a formal grievance and have any chance of it succeeding.  Also, you should update to note what country you are in, because that will, I feel, change answers due to different cultural expectations. In many US universities, for instance, syllabi must be filed with the department before the start of the semester or soon thereafter.

Sometimes it helps to compare the teacher's notes with online materials on the topic and with standard books in the subject. I found more than often thusly how much percentage of materials is from where and by the end the situation was well enough to enable a sensible preparation for the finals.

US? In my state, syllabuses are required by law to be submitted to the university by a certain date and the university must post them to a website by a certain date after that. Several US states have such laws for public universities. You might ask someone in your department's administration what their policies are without mentioning your professor's name (yet).

Just to give you a french point of view. In my country, syllabus are more about just saying "this course will speak about electronics, Mems, and so. Examinations will be like that" end of it. So don't panic, just go to every course and you will succeed.

I agree, document your correspondence. Be sure to email and ask all these questions, sometimes this alone will prompt him/her to get themselves together. If your personal efforts don't work then bring in outside help by going to student services or department head

Thank you for the advice, everyone! I have been documenting and will take my concerns about the syllabus and the class schedule to the department secretary to begin with (along with other students who are also concerned) and do my best to study from a textbook on the subject. Also, Mad Jack, that was exactly what I meant.

suffer and slog through.

I suggest going to the department secretary. In every department I have been involved with, this is the person who handles the mechanics of things like getting profs to submit a syllabus, grading scheme, calendar, and so on. Simply ask

Do you have the [missing item] for [course] by [prof]?

If you thus receive what you want, mission accomplished. If the answer is "no, I understand [prof] was going to hand them out in class" or just "no" you can go on to

We didn't get them in class and I have emailed and asked for them but no reply.

Typically at this point the secretary will swing into action. I've seen profs called while students are standing there, I've seen heads visited, emails sent, all kinds of things. This is what this person does and the ones I know all do it very well indeed.
If the secretary just kind of stares at you in a "sucks to be you" way, you could try

Is this something I can raise with [head] because I have no idea what the class schedule looks like and only a very vague idea about how grades will be calculated.

You will now get a yes or a no, if it's yes the secretary will set you up an appointment, if it's no then you need to ask why, take notes, say thank you and leave. After you leave the office check to see if you have an Ombud or someone in Student Services who can help you. But I actually doubt it will come to that.

In my department, there is no secretary that would be involved with any of these things. (There is no central repository where these things would be deposited; but if there were, it would be submitted online rather than coordinated by a secretary.)

Thank you for this, I am a transient student at this school so I did not realize they had a department secretary but they do and I will make an appointment to talk with them and see if we can get something sorted out.

+1 Most department admins are awesome and highly organized people who are really good at knowing how to handle the eccentricities of their faculty.

Let's give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the professor you are talking about is in fact a "bad" professor. You have two choices, each of which will give you experience in claiming your rights as a paying customer (via a student loan or from your family paying the expenses).
Contact Student Services: First, you can go to the student service of your university, and ask for help. Don't drop all the information on them, just in general terms tell them that you are not happy with a professor and ask them who you should talk to. Then take it from there. They don't have the power to talk to the professor but they might point you in the right direction.
Contact the Head of Department: Many people here might not agree with this, as it might look like 0 to 60 for no reason. However, I beg to differ. If people like you didn't pay for the courses, no one at the university would have a job. So, you can send a polite email to the head of department or his/her secretary and ask for a meeting. Then, go there and express your feelings about the professor in the question. You can also ask for a solution as well, like changing or dropping the course.

Assuming he has to pay: is this the US the OP is talking about, or some other fee-based uni?

I agree, although I imagine it's redundant to ask student services when they will likely just guide you to the head. I am uncertain as to why you have to give OP the "benefit of the doubt" when they are laying out what makes him a "bad professor": refusing to give out a syllabus, communicate with his students, or make time for them. Do you believe they're creating excuses to cover up bad performance and lying about what materials they actually have?

Thank you for the advice (although, like Sergio commented I don't know what the combative "benefit of the doubt" addition was about, especially since this is the first two weeks of class and I haven't had any assessments to do badly on and am simply worried about his lack of preparedness for this course). I may try contacting the head -I am a US student who is paying but I doubt I will make any headway through student services - if I do not have luck with the secretary, which was recommended by another user.


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Including Results in Dissertation Before Publication in a Journal
I am in the final phase of my Ph.D. research. I need to defend my thesis before my fellowship funding runs out in a few months.
I won't have time to carefully prepare and polish my results for journal papers before I defend. I need to include some preliminary, unpublished results in my thesis, as per the work I agreed to do in my thesis proposal.
But is submitting results (to a journal) that are already "published" in my Ph.D. thesis an issue? One issue I'm wondering about: journals run a "plagiarism" check, and I wonder if "self-plagiarism" will be an issue.

The short answer is no, your thesis definitely does not count as published. Otherwise the vast majority of students would be in trouble.

Good question! No, your thesis does not count as published (yay). Self-plagiarism is definitely not an issue here. Good on you for clarifying though!

Most institutions will allow you to embargo your thesis publication for a period of time (in my university, up to 2 years) if there are grounds for commercial sensitivity or if you have a publication pending. This facility exists precisely for this reason, it's likely your university will let you do it. When I requested it, it was an option on the final thesis submission form, I ticked a box and that was it.
Even if you can't do this (and virtually all universities will let you), you'll probably be fine. Embargoing is really for if you've got some super sensitive results (e.g. if you're a known researcher in a hot field and you're afraid someone is going to gazump your work) or if there are IP issues with your work (e.g. you're starting a business based on your results).
This shouldn't affect your award date in any way. In my case I asked for 6 months to write up a paper, that time hasn't elapsed yet, but I've got my bit of paper already.


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Should I ignore or reply an external colleague insisting in sharing methods in potentially COI project?
I (scientist X working at lab A) have received several e-mails from one specific colleague (scientist Y working at lab B) regarding engaging in some specific project led by Y. Some of the ideas I could share are based on recent papers and one specific major work of mine, informally discussed between labs A and B. In general, both labs actively collaborate on some other projects.
I have declined both in-person and also via e-mail for this specific collaboration due to a lack of alignment/priorities. My general assessment is that sharing more knowledge minimizes the efforts and results of my own project. However, scientist Y has written multiple follow-up e-mails to me i) cc’ing multiple supervisors, which I consider unnecessary, and ii) asking for multiple technical/sharing points that I have already declined.
I consider the behavior from Y a bit off. Professionally, I consider it sufficient to accept/decline collaborations and ignore additional points directed to a single person, especially in group e-mails, after declining. I also cannot reveal additional know-how through those, due to COI. As an academic, I reply to most e-mails and share knowledge, but in this case, it is a bit of a predatory request.

Have you discussed the options with your direct supervisor? If yes, and they are supportive of your position, and agree to the following, feel free to either ignore further emails, or reply to one cc'ing your supervisor and deferring further discussion to them.

I don't understand the conflict of interest angle here, can you explain?

@JonCuster My supervisor fully aligns with me and is supportive of my position.

@Stierlitz - OK, then I as the supervisor would contact Y's direct supervisor and request that there be no further emails on the topic. My job is to protect my people, and attempts at bullying by others is just not OK.

@BryanKrause regarding COI, Y can benefit from me sharing specific ideas/software, but I have to invest time in generating results and know-how of my features with them. This is a sub-packaging of the current academic release/licensing strategy that I have planned for my project.

@Stierlitz A "conflict of interest" is when one person has different interests that conflict, especially a personal benefit versus some ethical duty; for example, if your child is a student in your class, there is a conflict between wanting your child to do well and a duty to assess all students fairly. If you have a financial interest in a certain experimental result and work for a university, there is a conflict between your financial gains and your academic duty to represent research results accurately and without bias. Not a conflict between people.

@BryanKrause Thanks. I am using the COI concept to define a conflict between two in-parallel competing projects, run independently by labs A and B, and in which lab members cannot officially work for both projects at the same time due to contract and lab assignment. I think the COI concept fits or there is a better term for it?

@Stierlitz I would only describe it as a conflict of interest if someone has an interest separately in each project. Otherwise, you just have some interpersonal conflicts. Overall, this arrangement seems strange to me - are you developing for some outside commercial interest? Normally there is no legal/official boundary between academic labs with different funding sources collaborating on the same projects. There may be practical ones surrounding making sure people get credit for work they do and avoiding situation where overlap makes one person's project moot.

My suggestion is, go have a quiet talk with your supervisor. Be sure to be in a calm mood when you do. Do the "go to your happy place" thing before. Explain the situation and ask for help.
I feel for you on the COI aspects. Congrats on being aware of it. In this office we are required to re-take the COI training at least once per year. Tedious! There are many aspects to it that are not instantly obvious until somebody points them out. The natural thing for an academic of wanting to talk about the work can turn around and bite you hard if there are paying clients involved. Or if there is intellectual property that has a monetary value. Even different departments of the same client may not be entitled to unrestricted access to the information.
Also, the aspect that this person is continuing to press and even escalating, that is worrisome. If they wanted to escalate after you said "no" then the thing they should have done is gone through the "command chain." They should have asked the "brass" in their lab to contact the corresponding people in your lab. They should not have continued to badger you.
Try not to make enemies. Try not to burn bridges. Either in your lab or the other lab. It is conceivable there is a way for the two labs to collaborate to everybody's benefit. It just may require some careful negotiation.
On the other hand, don't let yourself get crowded into violating COI. Or other ethical concerns. That can be really hard on your prospects.


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How to respond to professor if he wants me but I need responses from other professors?
I just started my PhD application. I read some papers and wrote letters to professors that I want to work with. I started getting some feedback from different professors. Many of them will schedule a meeting with me. My first question is what is the most appropriate response if some professors(first or second professors that scheduled a meeting for me) would like to have me in their group after the meeting but I still want to wait for other professors' interview and their responses?
My second question is that how do I know the professor is a good advisor? I wrote some letters to their PhD students but what other aspects should I focus on? Some students told me that the PhD students may not make a subjective answer since they don't want to get into trouble. I think the personality and how the professor organizes his research group are very important because I need to stay with him for a long time. The second question is related to the first since I don't want to make casual decisions for the professor.

As a sidenote, if you ask a PhD student how happy they are with their advisor and they say "I better not say anything, I don't want to get into trouble", that's already an orange-to-red sign that things aren't exactly great.

What country? In the US, even if you get a positive response, there are still a lot of steps between now and making a decision.

For the first question: the best you can do is be honest and say at the interviews that you are exploring several options. If you get proposed a position straight away, just answer that you need some time to consider the offer and explore all your possibilities (do not ghost people, though). This applies to a PhD position as well as any other position, inside or outside academia. If a professor gets offended by you asking for some time to think it through ("you should be honored to work with me"-kind of reasoning) well, maybe you don't want to work with them.
For the second question: you don't know. Asking PhD students how they like working with their professor is actually a good idea - in my experience they would answer honestly. Maybe they won't say their professor is terrible, but normally you can read between the lines. You write "I don't want to make casual decisions for the professor". The problem is that any professor has a different style of supervising graduate students. My advisor would see me once every one/two months because he believed that graduate students should carry on their own research independently. In those meetings, he would steer me in the direction he believed to be the right one, without forcing me to take a specific path. I liked this approach, and at the end of my PhD studies I became a more-or-less independent researcher. Other colleagues (few of them) did not and would have preferred to have weekly or biweekly meetings, which other professors do. I would have hated it and would have felt babysitted, micromanaged.
You have to understand what style would suit you best, and ask maybe in the interviews how the professor organizes meetings, how involved they get into technical details.


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reapply without recommendation from current advisor
I'm a new PhD student in a middle-ranked university. I decided to accept my professor's offer because his publication matches my interests and has a reputable reputation from my research(like asking some PhD students who know him).
I figured out I was wrong after I worked for him. Last year, 4 students quit our lab(I didn't know that). All PhD students in the group don't like him. He doesn't respect the students. He told his peer that student A was bad and A's paper ended up in a no-name conference when introducing A to his peer or saying bad words to students when talking with other lab members. They no longer hand on projects but they like to command students in some field that they have little knowledge of. Personally. I wish an advisor could do research together with students or let students explore the fields and give some guidance. I'll also respect my professor if he really wants me to do some topic but he should let me follow some related projects to learn before giving me something that I have zero knowledge. However, my professor satisfies none of them. There are many other reasons but let's get straight to the point.
I recently decided to quit and reapply. But I don't think my professor will write me a recommendation letter if I quit based on my knowledge of him. Is the lack of the current advisor's recommendation a huge disadvantage if I reapply? I'm also worried that he will say some bad words about me if he agrees.


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What content should be on a CV vs. LinkedIn when applying to graduate school?
I tried asking this elsewhere and got answers from people who do not know the difference between a resume and a CV. I figured academics would.
I ask this question because my LinkedIn is pretty detailed. It has a lot of the same content as my CV, except in the terrible organization enforced by LinkedIn. I figure it might be more effective to use my LinkedIn more like a resume with the highlights, pointing to my CV (which is linked) for extra details. But I'm not sure how to go about it.
For context, I am an undergraduate applying to graduate school. I have many research presentations, awards, and experiences so it is a lot of content to shove on a LinkedIn. I only included content relevant to my research or related technical experience, but it is still a lot to read.

While I understand that LinkedIn is currently on the decline amongst the research community, I think it's still fairly well used. I graduated from my PhD 2 years ago, and many of people graduating in the same year use LinkedIn as one of their professional profiles, as do some of the "seniors" I know. Things are shifting to websites (like ResearchGate or similar) specifically targeting academics which mostly show to list and organize publications.
That said, I keep everything in my LinkedIn profile. I never took anything out - stuff like presenting my faculty at the University day in my BSc. is still there. And I don't provide a link to it with my applications - my name, plus basic info from my CV (current/last position) is always enough to find and correctly identify me on LinkedIn if anybody wants to look it up.
In the CV, the things I would typically include:

past education and experience
technologies / tools used or learned per project / study programme / job
publications (+ best paper awards)
student exchanges/internships
grants
languages

If you are applying to a graduate school, and in general in early career, I'd include the list of all of the above, exhaustively. As a rule of thumb, it should not be longer than 2 letter pages (so if even printed, fits on one sheet of paper) and have just pure "facts" (a short statement of purpose of 2-4 sentences is lately encouraged).
As you grow more senior you remove things (my BSc and MSc internships will go soon, PhD internships a bit later, any pre-PhD honors and awards are gone, a selected publication list instead of a full one happens as you publish more), while still keeping it at 2-3 pages long at most.
The one document I would expect to find with an application that you don't seem to mention is a cover letter (referred to in some languages as literally "motivation letter"). This is the place to:

elaborate on the points of your CV especially relevant to your application
draw conclusions and connections between your experience, research and the position you are applying for
state your motivations, why you think you will be a good fit and why you think the institution / position will be a good fit for you
mention any cool things that can not go on a formal CV, e.g. ongoing collaborations

So to summarize: think of a CV and cover letter as a unit. One does facts in a concise list or bullet point form, and the other one relates those facts to your experiences and makes them relevant to the application. LinkedIn is just an additional, professional profile, which people can find you based on your name and where they can look up more detailed info if they like, like links to and summaries of past projects and publications which are too clunky for a CV.

I'd say the question is quite specific to the stage of one's academic career. For example, technologies and tools might matter, if you apply for a PhD position, but not really, I'd say. if you apply for a full professorship.

@NajibIdrissi It might be specific, but what I've seen was consistent coming from eastern Europe (pre-PhD) and through two different countries in central Europe. And a big majority of my LinkedIn contacts (80%+) are researchers all all career stages (up to and including full permanent professors, tho obviously I have more early-career contacts such as myself) originating and working in different European countries. I don't know how the situation is in different American countries, Australia or different Asian countries.

@OlegLobachev The question was made from the point of applying for graduate school. But note my sentence As you grow more senior you remove things while keeping it at 2-3 pages long at most. I wouldn't include LaTeX or C++ applying for a full professorship, but if there's a relevant (e.g. new, popular, topic-specific) technology or even technique that I have experience with, I'd include that.

Academics don't use LinkedIn, so it doesn't really matter what you've put there.

That is not entirely true. I noticed an uptick in visits on my LinkedIn profile after I applied for academic positions. My intuition is that people check it out, but it isn't as important as the submitted documentation (cv, cover letter, etc)

I got my LinkedIn profile checked specifically by my future supervisors both after submitting my PhD application and my postdoc application. Admittedly, the situation might have been different 5 years ago when I was applying for my PhD, but I still know some people from my generation that continued in academia, as well as our seniors that keep their profiles up to date. Actually, I think there's even an Image Processing (or similar) LinkedIn group where, at the time, I noticed people publishing PhD and postdoc offers. So this is just wrong.

I think this statement is a bit broad. I know many academics who have a profile. I think my conclusion would be the same as yours (it doesn't matter).

@NajibIdrissi Ok, might be a bit biased because I also have a link to LinkedIn on my CV (I forgot about that, sorry). It was rather smallish, 3-4 more visits per week. I get about 10 per 90 days, so noticeable. Some of them would be from direct search, not the links, but I don't have premium, so I have no idea.

Like most generalizations, this answer is patently false.

Academics don't actively use it or they don't have it at all? If anyone HAS a LinkedIn, it ought to be set up properly else you are not presenting yourself consistently across profiles. Not to mention... Who is this directed at? "Senior" academics or young academics? This generalization fails to acknowledge the breadth of people using LinkedIn who would be useful connections for anyone that is early career or working with industry.

In my experience (math, US), early career academics who are seriously considering industry jobs typically have a LinkedIn profile in order to network for industry jobs.  Academics who have never looked for industry jobs typically do not have a linkedin account.  Without an account you can't even look at most of the info on an applicants LinkedIn page even if you wanted to (which people mostly don't, there's already the application material).  LinkedIn is not used for networking for academic jobs.


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The department I will be getting my degree from and my research area have very little in common
I am a PhD student whose main research focus is in robotics: I work on computer vision, mapping and planning algorithms for robots. I recently switched universities along with my advisor, and hence had to move from a 'Systems Engineering' concentration to a 'Mechanical Engineering' one, because my professor joined the mechanical engineering department.
So in the end, I will be getting a degree in mechanical engineering, whereas I personally do zero work in the conventional mechanical engineering areas. It's hard to categorize robotics as a research field but I guess it's closer to computer science. Is this even a big deal? If yes, how should I handle it in the future, say, in terms of my resume and prospective employers?


text:
Changing Figure Colors in Final Proof of Accepted Paper
I am currently reviewing the proof of an accepted paper for its publication. I have noticed there is a figure whose colors I have chosen very poorly: one of them is yellow and cannot be seen very clearly and when printing the paper in gray scale it is invisible. Also, there is a Figure in which the order of the legend is not the best possible.
Can I change these two figures without the paper going back to the editor? I would of course only modify the colors of the Figure and the order in which legend appears.

If you want to change it, there is no harm in asking for this in the proof response (make sure you supply the new figure you want to update it with).  The change might be considered to be merely stylistic, in which case the copy-editor could approve it without needing further guidance from the higher editor/referees.  While editors don't usually like changes in the proofing stage, if it improves the readability of the paper then they might actually be glad you raised it.  In any case, you won't know if you can change it if you don't ask.

Please correct me if I'm wrong: As far as I know, by default the paper does not go with the editor again unless some substantial change is made.

It depends what you mean by "editor" and it also depends on the journal.  Usually it would stay with a copy-editor only.  Sometimes if a proof correction goes beyond what the copy-editor is comfortable with, and which they consider might be a substantive change, they might query with the article editor for approval.  At least, that's my understanding of the practice of some journals.

@Ben It might be a good idea to edit your answer to replace "editor" with "copy-editor" and "referees" with "editor and/or referees", then.

Nowadays there are less and less printed papers.
A potential reader of your paper will most likely go through the electornic version of your paper.
Then, if the reader decides to print the paper it would be to read the text, readability of the figure will surely have an impact, the reader will curse you and the journal copy-editors for not spotting the issue and he will read the paper, trying to access the figure electronically.
So I would say "ask if you can, but don't bother yourself too much".
Said all this, I hope you learned your lesson (and that your lesson is learned also by others) about readability of plots.
Final remark: colormap jet is crap, damned shall be Matlab and Matplotlib for making it the default colormap for almost 15 years
https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/10/16/how-bad-is-your-colormap/

Papers are still often printed out though!


text:
Should we capitalize the initials of an acronym in scientific papers?
Suppose we define an acronym in a scientific paper.
Should we do it like this?

(...) We call this approach the First Output Once (FOO) (...)

Or like this?

(...) We call this approach the first output once (FOO) (...)

Check with the journal. Some will have formal style guides. Otherwise, be consistent. The worst that will likely happen is that the copy editor will change your formatting.

I really hope you don't have a BAR acronym in the same paper...

@RichardErickson: The last time a copy editor did something on acronyms in one of my papers, they insisted that I spell out CPU and RAM at first usage, so I wouldn’t rely too much on them.

@Wrzlprmft I've had journals require I spell out those term, but they were biology journals where a reader may not know those term. Also, it's a style question, which are often specific to the journal.

As a side note, when mentioning a name, I would either quote or italicize: We call this approach "first output once" (FOO), to make it clear you are assigning a name. Some journals reserve italics for domain-specific things (i.e. foreign words, species names, etc) so I prefer quotes.

Related question on English Stack Overflow: Acronyms and Initialisms- Uppercase, Lowercase, or either, particularly for style rules used by US publishers in general.

It doesn't really matter. Pick the option you prefer, and then the important thing is to be consistent throughout the whole paper.

Capitalisation where you wouldn’t expect it orthographically is irritating and breaks the reading flow, so I would avoid it whenever possible.
Rarely, it can be helpful to clarify where your acronym comes from by typographically emphasising the respective letters, but capitalisation is no common emphasis (except for all caps, but that doesn’t work here). Rather I would use boldface. It is clearly emphasising without breaking any spelling rules or similar:

We call this approach first output once (FOO).

This has the advantage that it also works if your acronym contains lowercase letters, stands for proper names, other acronyms, and similar.
For example:

We call this directed asynchronous Monte Carlo lesson (DAMoCLes)

(Note that I would opt for no emphasis at all in either example, but then they are obviously just examples.)

Well, yes, except the emphasis is unnecessary and distracting in the first example, and maybe even more so in the second.  Just use lower case followed by the (capitalized as appropriate) acronym.

@BobBrown: Mind that the example from the question is clearly chosen to have an example, not because it’s the actual acronym the asker wants to introduce, but also see my edit.

If really necessary, I personally would prefer underscores to boldface, as it introduces a smaller change. But I would also simply provide the acronym without explanation (and if that is unintelligible, maybe it isn't a good acronym).

Boldface where you wouldn’t expect it is irritating and breaks the reading flow, so I would avoid it whenever possible...

@NotThatGuy: You never expect boldface (except in titles and similar). But whenever you encounter it, you know exactly what it’s supposed to do: emphasise. So, it may be surprising, but only irritating if there is no clear reason for it. By contrast capitalisation has many other orthographical roles. When you encounter capitalisation used for emphasis, you will usually first go through all the normal options (proper name, start of sentence, acronym, …) before you may realise it’s emphasis. This is irritating.

@Wrzlprmft Boldface breaks reading flow for me much more than capitalisation does. Conservative use of continuous bold sections typically isn't a problem, but if there are short disjoint bold bits (as shown here), this causes my eyes to get stuck on those and it takes me like 10 times longer to read it. YMMV.

As mentioned by others, there is no definitive rule (except if defined by the journal). However, let me give you a reason for and against capitalization.
On the one hand, capitalization makes it clearer and easier to see what the acronym stands for. Especially if the acronym is long or uses multiple letters from the same word, capitalization can be useful.
However, I have seen referees see capitalization as "condescending" to the reader, in the sense that it implies that the reader could not have figured out what the acronym stands for without it.

You capitalize the initial letters of a proper noun. There is no rule that you would capitalize letters merely because you want to make an initialism out of them. You may be getting confused because long proper nouns are often turned into initialisms. It is only proper nouns that are capitalized.

Agreed. Just because a phrase has an acronym, it doesn't excuse incorrect capitalization.

Actually Breandán, Xerxes, both acronyms and initialisms very often do excuse "incorrect" capitalization.
CAD and CAT scanning, MAD and MCP show where the traditional rule fails. NASA and NATO do get their capitals from their correct, full-out forms… but any number of modern journals think they're better off breaking both rules at the same time with eg, Nasa or Nato…


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Sources to understand dissertation process, methods?
I am a first-year psychology doctoral student (PsyD) and am forming my dissertation topic. I am having trouble finding a really good book or article that outlines the guts of what makes a good dissertation. Really understanding the core purpose of this requirement for my degree is important to me (instead of just ping-ponging through the process until it's done) because I am creative and have some unorthodox ideas that I'd like to fit into the dissertation framework. So knowing the limits will help me be creative within them. The faculty in my program are great but I am a bit of an anomaly with my goals and need to gather all the resources I can.
FWIW, right now I am looking at an integral lit review between Murray Bowen's "emotional system" in Family Systems Theory and the core Buddhist teachings of Vipassana. The goal will be to show that they were "proposing" the same core construct of human functioning. Should be very challenging.
Thank you!

Hi patrickkidd, for future reference: if your question is off topic on the first SE site you try, you should either delete it before posting it on another SE site, or flag for a moderator to migrate it for you. Cross-posting is generally against the rules.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that, thank you. Does that mean I should delete this one now?

No, the version on Cog Sci was deleted, so now there's just one copy, here.

I can easily suggest you some articles, which enlighten me a lot about puuting my ideas into theoretical framework which is one of the most important part to create outline for dissertation.

Cynthia Grant, Azadeh Osanloo (2014). Understanding, Selecting, And
Integrating a Theoretical Framework in Dissertation Research:
Creating the Bluepring for your "House".
Mariltn K. Simon, Jim Goes
(2011). Developing a Theoretical Framework

If you wish to dig in more, those articles will be great startpoint for you, "Research Methodology" is one of the most important issue you have to understand deeply, in order to develop your research perfectly from beginning. So for this point, I can suggest you "reverse engineering" minded approach, do critique for your own research, here is an amazint article guideline for critiquing research in both quantitative and qualitative research approaches:

Michael Coughlan, Patricia Cronin, Frances Ryan (2007). Step-by-step
quife to critiquing research. Part 1: quantitative research.
Michael
Coughlan, Patricia Cronin, Frances Ryan (2007). Step-by-step quife to
critiquing research. Part 2: qualitative research.

I'm sure they'll give you a lot idea about how to develop your framework and what details you should consider. Additionally, try to look for a Research Methodology course from your university or over internet!

Thanks for the focus about methodology. When I asked the question I assumed I could think more in general about doctoral dissertations, but your information helps narrow it down a little more.

The goal will be to show that they were "proposing" the same core
  construct of human functioning.

You should consider starting with a question, rather than a preselected answer. For example, consider the goal of

Analyze the similarities and differences between the constructs of
  human functioning proposed by Murray Bowen's "emotional system" in
  Family Systems Theory and the core Buddhist teachings of Vipassana.

The difference lies in how you will view anything that suggests differences. With your current goal you could be tempted to ignore or downplay differences. With a more open-minded goal you will be more able to give balanced treatment to everything you find out during your research.

The two approaches seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum; the first is an ungrounded answer, while the second amounts to "let's collect some data". The best middle ground is, IMO, to ask a more or less specific question (form a hypothesis), then decide what kind of data will prove or disprove the hypothesis, then go ahead with collecting the data. Of course, things quickly get more complicated along the line.

So long as we are being anally retentive, the question was about sources describing dissertation rather than helping to form a question. But I suppose it's a good practice to always be wording things correctly regardless of formality. At any rate I am marking the other response the correct answer as it suggests information as asked for in the question.

If on a first year you know what your thesis' title would be, you could either be hallucinating or you are genius and a postgraduate degree is pretty easy for you. Kidding aside couple of things:
Put a Title On a Work That is Done: Ok, I have a thesis with the title: "Internet 4.0, Where Digital Horses are Running Wild". Does this mean, I did any of that? Absolutely not! So you see put a title that it represents your work; the one that you already achieved. This brings me to the second point.
Writing is Challenging: Writing of a thesis is a challenging process, and not everything will come full circle, so sometimes you will need drop things, which means your thesis' title needs to be modified. More than that, you might start in one domain and you realize you were wrong for the last N months. Yes I know the supervisor need to monitor you through your path, but not all the time they come through.
Narrow Things Down Over Time: You choose a domain, and as you go along, you should narrow things down. Don't be so sure at first, keep working at it and see where your contribution will be. Then when you are done, put a title on it. The whole idea is flexibility and not pinning yourself down from the start.

We'll find out! I've been rolling this one around in my mind for about 6 years so I already have some momentum.


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What are "advance articles" and how to cite them?
I noticed some journals are publishing advance articles that are not part of a published volume (i.e. https://academic.oup.com/isr/advance-articles).
I am a bit confused in regards to what is the status of these publications. Will advance articles be part of future volumes or will they remain standalone? Also, how would you cite them in Chicago 17 given the lack of issue and volume numbers?
Thank you.

Some journals publish preliminary versions of articles. The final version will appear in a published volume, the preliminary version might not, since changes may be made.
You can cite a preliminary version, just like you would cite any manuscript. You cannot list issue/volume numbers, because they don't exist. You could label such manuscripts as "preliminary" or "to appear" or "advance article" or "advance article, final version to appear" ...


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Is it appropriate to suggest to a professor how to communicate more clearly?
I've recently began working as a research assistant (in the humanities), mainly helping a professor with a book she is editing and with lecture notes for a future course.
The problem is that it is sometimes very unclear to me what she wants me to do. For example, when communicating by mail (which we do often), instead of saying "Please do X" (which I realize only after asking for further clarifications), she might say "We will do X" or "There is some importance to doing X"...
It is quite obvious that she has very little experience in this kind of work relations. I, on the other hand, have some experience in managing people (i.e. in telling people what to do), and I think she could use a few pointers.
The question is, is it appropriate (and if so, how) that I give her some specific suggestions (such as the above) in order to communicate with me more clearly?
I'm on good terms with her and she will possibly be my advisor quite soon, and I don't want to ruin this.

Suggestions? No. Clarifying questions? Yes.

This is not an answer, but if you're male and she's mainly worked with females in the past, this communication issue might be in part due to issues Deborah Tannen writes about in her book You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.

"You may want to do this" sounds more polite than "Do this! Now, first thing!" Dutch and German people like direct statements, most other people I know don't. You have to translate yourself, it is not a good idea to ask others to translate into your language, it is less costly and risky to understand their style.

I think the advisor is simply polite and gentle. Being bossy is not a positive trait (in my values), and so I would not advise on telling her how to boss you. Of course, this is only my opinion.

For now, I would suggest with responding to statements such as "We will do X" or "It is important to do X" with something along the lines of "Agreed. Shall I start working on that now?" Perhaps she'll take the hint and start communicating more clearly, in which case the problem is solved. In any case, over time, you'll probably get better at understanding which of these statements are general statements about the future and which are implicit requests for action.
If asking for more clarity doesn't work, have a chat with her and explain that you find it hard to tell when she's asking you to do something and when she isn't and asking her to be a bit clearer. I'm sure she won't be offended and, if she is, that's a huge sign that you need to find another advisor!

At some point, once you gain expertise in the type of work and its scope, you may even come to like her management style. It sounds as if she has more experience  working with people who prefer a bit of freedom deciding how to best achieve various outcomes.

Which is the better way to communicate depends on your cultural norms and personal style. Many people find "please do X" too direct - even outright rude - in many circumstances. Women who use such a direct style also risk being viewed as bossy or abrasive.
She might also be choosing this style because she wants you to interact with her as an equal: even if she has final say, you can contribute to the discussion and planning about how to do the work. (Though "we will do X" sounds like a pretty direct final decision to me!).
Nonetheless, if you are having trouble understanding what she wants you to do, that is a problem. Feedback is likely to be better received if you frame it as being about communication with you rather than her communication style in general. Say, for instance, "We have different communication styles and I sometimes don't realise that you are asking me to do something: can you please be more direct with me and give me clear action items?" She might be able to generalise the lesson if she has been experiencing the same problem in her communications with other people.

Good answer. But I wouldn't say "we have different communication styles". It sounds slightly patronizing. You can simply say: "I sometimes don't realize ...".