text:
Balancing empathy and deferring to the syllabus in teaching responsibilities
Questions of similar topics have been asked here for the situation of instructing a course and here and here for the situation of 'no late work' policies. Additional questions about balancing teaching responsibilities here.
Background
I am a new graduate student, and part of my funding comes from TA responsibilities. For the current particular course, I am responsible for teaching lab sessions, grading homework, responding to student emails/questions, and other common duties. So far, I have not had too much trouble balancing the responsibilities of being a teaching assistant with other commitments.
Situation
Homework assignments are always released two weeks ahead of time and are due 9am on Monday mornings. For whatever reason - length of the homework, difficulty of a specific problem, etc. - this homework has caused several last-minute (example: midnight last night, 2am, and 6am) requests for extensions.
Question/problem
The situation of late homework requests is confounding to my daily practice of empathy. I feel like I am at a split in the road or forced to choose which devil to listen to. For example, one of the requests is legitimate from a student who has been experiencing medical issues the entire semester. Another is from a student who has explicitly articulated they need a good grade to get a luxury car from their parents. I have a personal rule to actively practice empathy in my day-to-day life, but my rule completely falls apart in this situation.
In @Paul Hiemstra's answer on another post, the use suggested:
If people have a legitimate reason for wanting an extension of the deadline, I would simply give them the extension. If they cannot provide a good reason, i.e. they simply procrastinated too much, they have to take responsibility for their behavior, and they do not get the extension.
But what is 'legitimate'? Additionally, I am concerned that individually evaluating the reasoning of each student - explicitly stated or not - may lead to personal inconsistencies in who I give an extension to and eventually consume large amounts of time.
I've spoken with the course instructor, but he has left it up to me. My university and department have no centralized policy. How can a TA balance empathy and deferring to the syllabus in teaching responsibilities?

Not directly related to your question but having homework due on Monday morning seems inconvenient to me. In practise it will mean students try to do it on the weekend before when they have no possibility to contact a teacher, no matter whether they are just stuck or have a genuine problem causing a delay. I would do the exact opposite and have homework due on Friday afternoon.

@quarague this is a good point I didn't think about. Perhaps making the homework due Friday would help prevent this behavior and encourage more interaction at office hours

@quarague: Also having it due on Friday (or Thursday, for Tues/Thur classes) gives you a chance to grade it during mostly free days where you don't have to teach, prepare for classes (there's often some things that need to be done just before class, regardless of your earlier preparations), meet with students having difficulty, etc. In my case, I tried to avoid dealing with graded homework (I gave frequent short in-class quizzes instead), but I did often try to schedule major tests towards the end of the week so I'd have the weekend to grade them.

It sounds to me like you are allowing yourself to be emotionally manipulated by your students, particularly the one (who sounds super obnoxious) who told you about the promise for a luxury car from their parents. It’s indeed important to have empathy, and I find your conscious insistence on practicing empathy every day incredibly noble and admirable — if only more people did that the world would be a better place — but at the same time, sometimes a person has a job to do and needs to put the larger interests of the mission he or she serves ahead of the emotional need to “be nice”. Indeed, being nice to people who are undeserving is often harmful to those people. You would not be doing any favors to the immature, manipulative student who wants to get a luxury car by giving them unfairly favorable treatment out of pity or “empathy”. (The student with medical problems is a completely different story, where the request sounds a lot more reasonable.)
In any case, empathy is about how you relate to people and not about the decision you make on their petition. Even on occasions when I’ve had to turn down a desperate student’s request for a grade change, and knowing that that’s the only decision I could possibly make in good conscience, I would like to think that I explained my decision to the crying student with empathy - I certainly tried my best, even if the students in that moment sometimes only seemed to care about having their request denied and might well have thought me to be a cruel, heartless person.
So what is a good way in practice to solve the dilemma? The answer you quoted in your post has it exactly right. You give an extension to the people who have a legitimate reason to need it, and refuse it to those who don’t. That’s all there is to it. “But what is 'legitimate'?” Exactly what you judge to be legitimate — after first pausing to take ten deep breaths, counting down to zero from one hundred, writing an email draft answering the request and saving it in your drafts folder, going on a walk or a coffee break, and finally coming back and looking at the question with fresh eyes. If at that point you still think the need is legitimate and can say with certainty, or least with reasonable confidence, that you are not falling victim to emotional manipulation from an unscrupulous student, by all means grant the request.
And whether or not you‘ve decided to grant the request at that point, be content to know that you have been true to your principles of practicing empathy, and that you are doing your small part to help make the world a better place.

"Empathy is about how you relate to people and not about the decision you make on their petition."  Yeah, I can feel your pain at not getting a new luxury car from daddy, but that's not going to stop me from laughing at you and saying "no".

Also, validate. I can't count how often students who claimed a very valid reasons for delays turned out to just have forgotten when I started to look into their case in more detail.

@xLeitix good point!

I had a student explain they had to miss class due to a court date -- I was of course sympathetic.  Due to a car accident.  ok, I'm still on board.  That they caused by drinking and driving on a suspended license.  Hmmmm.....   Since I was teaching Writing, I have used that example for future classes about  thinking about the Audience -- how much information is necessary.  Most of the time (illness, family issues), less is more.  Pre-excused ones typically need more detail ("As we discussed, work is sending me to XYZ, so I will miss next Tuesday's class...what can I do...?")

@April--SlanderMonica--: Did they come forward to you with the reason of the car accident? For what it's worth, I would hope that in civilized countries, a court date is a reason to not to have to come to work, regardless of the person is guilty or not. This should also hold for universities.

@RonJohn: Why do you even feel pain if a student cannot get a luxury car due to his/her own lousy time management? I feel utter disgust...

@user21820 I tend to use DFW's ideas around empathy: the point is not to feel literal pain for the student, but to remove ourself from the center of the conversation and understand that at that moment, the most important thing for the student is acquiring the car. I think this question has prompted the larger realization, brought about by Dan Romik, xLeitix, and RonJohn, that you can still do the practice of empathy and validation while encouraging good study habits and learning.

@user21820 it's sarcasm.  And a reference to Bill Clinton.

@RonJohn: Oh sorry I didn't realize those italics meant sarcasm. =)

@user21820 it's more a reference to the Clinton meme.

You talk about empathy towards those asking for extensions, what about those who didn’t?
Many students work their butt off to make deadlines and never think of asking for an extension. By granting extensions to some students who don’t have a valid reason (in my book that’d be medical or death/severe illness of human loved one, but your policy can differ), you’re basically telling those silent hard working ones that their time is worth less than that of others. That’s not empathy in my opinion.
In fact, this is exactly what I tell students who ask for extensions: I can’t grant you one because it’s unfair to other students taking the class. They usually understand where I’m coming from and take it better than outright refusal.
EDIT: perhaps to drive the point home here - you may be inadvertently discriminating against students who feel less empowered in a university setting. Unfortunately, these students often enough tend to be from certain socioeconomic/minority/gender groups - think about the potential implications of this practice!

I've definitely considered this, especially around the dynamics of those who feel more comfortable (or empowered) asking versus those who do not. I think next semester we will need more clarity in the syllabus for this.

I only have my own experience to draw on, but I see certain... trends in the types of students who tend to ask for extensions. I suggest that if you grant someone an extension, you should consider granting it to everyone.

When I was an undergrad I saw this several times, where a minority of students asked for an extension (for various reasons), so the entire assignment was pushed back a day or so, or a clause added to the grading scheme that would drop the lowest graded assignment from factoring into the final grade.

What I saw a few times as a student was: You can hand in your assignment up to 48h late but get only 2/3 of the points for it. I always found this to be a fair solution. You won't fail the whole course if you have a legitimate reason to hand in late but still it's not unfair to other students who plan good enough to make it. But for all assignments we always had at least one week time and none of them took more than at most maybe 10h of actual work.

My thinking on this issue has changed dramatically over the years, and I now give extensions much more frequently than I used to. (I'm not saying this is necessarily the right course of action, though.)
I would advise you to consider some guiding principles at play here:
1) Consider the reason that there's a deadline in the first place, and ponder the possible harm done if it is violated. To be clear, this is not a rhetorical point. As an undergrad, I had a course where all homework assignments were due in the last week of class; suffice it to say that the three weeks leading up to that were not fun for me. Deadlines are good, because they require students to maintain pace with the course and avoid a huge backlog at the end; additionally, work in a class is often iterative, and in those cases it's imperative to stay on top of it.
Here are some examples of what I'd regard to be very good reasons to keep a hard deadline in place without extension:

You need to post a key for the benefit of the rest of the students, which would render the assignment pointless for a student completing the work late.
The work represents some fundamental concept that will be built upon in class, and it's genuinely important that the student have the work completed on a particular schedule.
You're planning to grade the assignments right after they're turned in, and it may take you more time overall to extend the assignment -- either because you need to get yourself back into a grading mindset somehow, or you have to reopen something on your computer, or whatever else. Your own time is valuable, and it's well within your right to fight for it. But this logic ought to apply to everyone. If this is your reason, I'd advise you to drop the lowest X homeworks or have some similar policy that allows some flexibility for truly exigent circumstances, and to apply the policy uniformly to all students.

Personally, I find it often the case that there is no pressing reason to keep a specific hard deadline in practice, but rather that the general concept of deadlines should be maintained so students don't fall far behind. For that reason, I tend to freely give extensions. When a student asks for several, I have a conversation with them about it.
2) It is probably better that students complete homework late than that they don't complete it at all. Of course, this must be weighed against your responses to 1) above. Like I said, there are very good reasons to be strict about deadlines, and those reasons may well win the argument.
3) Remember that if all that's needed to get an extension is a good reason, it's very easy to lie about those reasons. If you adopt a policy in which "My grandmother died" is a good enough reason that warrants an extensions, and "I made a bad choice and binge watched Game of Thrones" isn't, then you're implicitly putting yourself on the hook for documentation of the good reasons. In the long run, if you differentiate between reasons but don't demand documentation, you are likely to develop a reputation that will result in some students who binge-watched Game of Thrones instead reporting to you that their grandmother died. And in fact, in this scenario, the only students who won't receive an untoward benefit are precisely the ones who compelled to be honest about their reason. That seems bad.
4) Make a choice that you'd be willing to defend to a supervisor. If you're going to treat students differently, imagine sitting in a room with both of them and an administrator and justifying your decision. If you can't easily do that, you're probably making a mistake. And if you're unsure what you could defend to a supervisor, then go find a supervisor and talk to them about the situation immediately.
5) When unsure, defer to empathy in all cases. I know that you're trying to do that here, and I think your heart is in the right place. Empathy is helpful for so many reasons; it's beneficial to the students' education, it's easy to defend politically, and you'll probably sleep better at night. If a student is irresponsible or taking some sort of shortcut, you're very likely to detect that in other places (such as tests). Going out of your way to enforce various "good behaviors" (such as deadlines) is, in my experience, an unsustainable career choice.
Final thought: I have never once regretted giving a student leeway, but I've regretted behaving strictly.

Thanks for the detailed response, given me a lot to think about

Actually deadlines are useful so that students can move along to new ideas as the course progresses. They can be a bit loose, but many students need guidance in pacing their own work to the course. Otherwise many get jammed up at the end. Your number 2 is very important and useful, of course.

@Buffy I agree; I was attempting to capture that exact spirit right below the bold text on 1).

Right. I guess I was skimming, sorry that I missed it. I need to be careful when letting students repeat old work, in fact, that rework doesn't interfere with the new. But an initial hard deadline with the possibility of getting most of the points a bit later seemed to work for me. The initial 10% penalty for missing the deadline could mostly erased if the work came in soon.

@Buffy That plan seems reasonable to me! Points are a powerful tool for incentivizing behavior.

This is a well-written post. The sub-bullets under #1 are critical and should be a part of the best answer. However, I'm in the other direction with your conclusion: I have regretted many (most?) instances of giving leeway, and I can't recall any such example of being strict about deadlines.

"It is probably better that students complete homework late than that they don't complete it at all." These are the words of a wise teacher. (+1)

tl;dr: Change your 'deadlines' system, to make both your students' and your life easier.

For what it's worth, I fully agree with Aaron's answer here.
However, I think both his answer and the currently accepted one, fail to address the underlying issue, which is the fact that it "feels" like a valid choice for the student, since there is no realistic alternative. Most 'deadline' systems tend to be very badly designed, typically consisting of a single, contrived, non-negotiable binary event, completely ignoring the interdependence other courses have on each other's deadlines, etc.
This means that, a student who struggled for an extra couple of days on an assignment for one course, has no option but to try and juggle the rest. I think talking about "fairness" and empathy, or even manipulation, is missing the point here. The point is, the current system makes coming to you to ask for one an option in the first place, and, more to the point, with no other recourse for alternative choices (better or otherwise). Therefore, you  have people coming to you for extensions.
It should not be up to you to decide to take responsibility for extending, it should be up to the student, in a way that allows them to weigh the consequences, as a responsible adult!
But, equally, this is only meaningful if there is a system in place which is flexible enough to allow them to do that, without it having to be an automatic life-or-death decision.
When I was studying for my Masters, my department had the best submissions policy I have seen so far, and I felt very supported by it:

Every submission had an automatic three day extension. No questions asked, but you had to submit a reason (for the record).
For any day beyond the three-day extension, an automatic penalty was applied (by percentage) on their mark (e.g. 10% the first day, 20% the second etc).

Yes, many students treated the official deadline as a 'fake' one, but this means they took responsibility for doing so. Many people also went beyond and accepted the penalty. But for the most part, people felt supported, because it meant if the deadlines for two courses clashed, they had enough flexibility to decide by themselves how to prioritise things and why.
Obviously, in the event of very serious mitigating circumstances, it was possible to negotiate the penalties, especially if given advanced notice (i.e. given before the formal deadline). However, psychologically, the student now has to justify why they need a fourth day or more, and not an extension in general.
With this system in place, very few students had a reason to book an appointment and ask for such an extension in the first place, and it worked very well both for both the students and the academics involved.

I encourage you to get creative, while simultaneously work hard to make the same rules for everybody in order to avoid succumbing to confirmational bias.
Simply put, if the president of the preprofessional club comes to you and asks you for an extension, the tie dye wearing hippy deserves exactly the same answer in a similar situation.  It's too easy to create a narrative in one's head where one deserves the extension and the other doesn't.  That narrative may well align with unperceived biases.
For this reason, my policy is to allow all students to drop their lowest homework grade, and I simply don't accept late homeworks, barring some serious documented medical reason.
For all other assignments, my policy is to list all the due dates in the syllabus, make reasonable grade penalties for late submissions known in advance in the syllabus, and (barring serious documented medical reasons or real disasters like death of a close family member) stick to the rules.
I wasn't always here.  I got here after some training from Cook Ross on unconscious and confirmational bias that my institution contracted for leaders.
As an added bonus, one of the things we'd like to train our students in is planning and how to use their time.  A very liberal late work policy isn't the most effective message.

Actually, it is the professor in the course who should be making the rules. But you can certainly inform them of the need for it and make suggestions as to what they might be to make your world simpler and saner.

As the course repeats next semester I will definitely incorporate my experience into the teaching plan and try to find a way that can overcome this issue.

There are many very good reasons for keeping strict deadlines. For example, the sub-bullets in Aaron Montgomery's answer are extremely important. Everyone should consider those carefully.
That said: For me, the time budget of the instructor is paramount. You have many varied tasks as an academic, and it's common for faculty to have great difficulty keeping a good work/life balance, juggling research and service, responding to emails in a timely fashion, etc. Presumably you've made yourself available to help via email and office hours, etc. At some point that budgeted time is finished and you need to move on to other tasks, and not have grading/feedback tasks lingering because of late students.
I have tacked on my wall a list of time-management principles published a decade ago in the NEA Higher Education Advocate, from the article "Overload Epidemic!?!". Here they are:

Principle 1: Be able to be efficient in all things.
Principle 2: Express your values in how you use your time.
Principle 3: Don’t hoard responsibility, share it.
Principle 4: For every aspect of your life, find a time and place befitting it.
Principle 5: Be short with many so that you may be long with a few.

I think if you reflect on them, all of these principles point in the direction of not accepting late assignments. It's most efficient (#1 and #4) to do all the grading for an assignment in a batch longitudinally, so you should have them all in one place at a time, and not do mental-switching later to get in and out of the task. Sharing responsibility (#3) suggests that students should take that burden, not just you. Being short with many (#5) further suggests that you not cycle indefinitely with late students. Etc., etc.
Returning to Aaron's list, I feel that I have dedicated a lot of time and energy to my students and their coursework. I personally grade and give quite a bit of feedback on every assignment and exam. I have no TA's or graders. I commit to having assignments and exams returned with feedback the day after they've been submitted (usually requires being up to about 2 AM late Sunday nights). I don't want to delay giving/discussing answers to the whole class because one student was late. When the scheduled time for that is over, it's over, and we're moving on to the next thing. I think it would be irresponsible to spend extra mental energy on a lagging student, when I could instead prepare a presentation that would benefit the entire class.
The OP's second link has a pretty great answer inspecting the granularity of assignments. In my case, there are a lot of assignments, one every week, and the deadlines are strict (via the online learning management system), with one dropped from the grade per semester. I think this allows a tight feedback/learning opportunity about the process of the work. If there were a small number of big projects, then I would consider modifying this policy.
But keep in mind that if you burn yourself out with these nonstop moral dilemmas about assessing the legitimacy of student excuses, then you'll be in no state to help other people as you intend. Make sure to defend your time and health (both mental and physical) first and foremost. Other considerations are secondary.

Have a policy and stick to it.
Here are two extremes:

"Barring medical issues, due dates are strictly enforced"
"Due dates are recommendations only; homework will be accepted for full credit at any time before the final exam"

Both of these are fine, though the latter can lead to a lot of work for you. What is not fine is having a policy but allowing exceptions to some students and not to others who have equally good reasons.
Make your policy clear-cut to avoid angst. Something like "extensions will be granted at the TA's discretion" requires you to judge the student, their excuse, and your own plans (e.g., do you have time to grade late work this week?). This also leads to second-guessing from students, and can be unfair to those who adjusted other plans to meet your deadlines.
FWIW, my own preferred policy was "I'll take late work for no penalty if you get it to me before I finish grading (otherwise, no late work without a doctor's note)." This balances empathy (no point imposing a penalty when there is no harm done) with justice (there is always the risk that I would pick it up promptly, go home, and grade it -- which indeed I occasionally did).

RE last paragraph: ...over the years I gradually began to take up the homework in class when it was due, but still accept homework delivered to my mailbox or slid under my office door. I established a absolute due time, which typically was that it should be there before I get to my office and check mail the next morning. I warned them that I sometimes got to work very early (5:00 a.m. or earlier), and sometimes not until after 7:00 a.m., so to not take any chances, they should essentially regard the absolute deadline as the night before.

It seems to me the issue with requiring doctors notes is that it really doesn't prove anything other than the student was willing to spend $xxx to see a doctor, or have connections to a doctor that will write one regardless of what is actually wrong. Also a simple doctor's visit could be prohibitively expensive to some students, particularly when all the doctor is going to do is send you home with a note. I'm not really going anywhere with this, it just seems like there's problems with both requiring and not requiring a note.

Agree, but in my experience, universities mandate accepting doctor's notes, so "no excuse without a doctor's note" is as strict as is possible. Many universities do have "student health" that provides free exams for students, so hopefully getting a doctor's note is not too much of a burden. It's something OP should consider though.

And note that accepting any exception is "allowing exceptions to some students and not to others who have equally good reasons", because there are a lot of students who wouldn't ask for an extension. If you accept an exception from anyone who asks for it** you are discriminating against all the students who didn't ask**

In principle, I am relatively strict, as I found that students respect not only the lecturer, but themselves more when they are taken seriously and the requirements imposed on them are taken seriously, too.
However, if there is a legitimate concern that this particular coursework caused extra difficulties, was particularly challenging, that students may have put in the extra mile to get this done, it may be appropriate to actually honour the commitment of the students to succeeding in the challenge by giving them - as a one off - extra time.
Note that I do not talk about empathy. Your goal as a TA is their best possible education, and they will not get that if extensions are given out freely, no more than it would help a society if money were printed freely, but if you can assume that they have done their best to achieve the goal, you may consider it using your "joker" of an extension to reward them for committed work.
Why do I talk about the educational goal and not empathy? Think of a surgeon - his empathy notwithstanding, he will actively injure you and cause  pain to you for the purpose of helping you. Him acting on immediate empathic impulse will be harmful to you in the long (or short) term.
As for the case who has medical issues, that should be resolved by the school by specifying which extra accommodation they should receive. You as a TA should not be the person making these decisions overall.
And as for the guy who will get a luxury car if he gets a good grade - I am almost at a loss what to say: this is a horrible example of external motivation. Probably, you could tell him that he puts you under terrible pressure and he should not do that. To be frank, he simply transfers the pressure to you that his parents have put him under.
It is very sad that you are expected to buffer this appalling incentivization, but there is a clear lack of empathy on the side of his parents - imagine if you let this guide you: students that do not have parents that can invoke such incentives to push them towards good grades (assuming this would make the difference) would then be disadvantaged. This is where you have to apply empathy with your whole set of students, not just the ones that ask for special treatment. Empathy and fairness are not identical, but they are siblings.

Perhaps we agree that it is useful to appear to be strict to our students while actually being just a bit less strict in practice. As a student we talked about "pud" courses. Easy to pass. The teachers got little respect. But it was different to have a tough instructor who was also understanding when necessary. They got more than respect. They got emulated later when we started our own careers.

Treat their studies, including homework, as their job. If they also work in addition to studying, well... many people work two or more jobs.
If they are sick for one day, it should not greatly impact their work, unless they are leaving everything until the last minute. If they are sick for longer they should see a doctor and get a medical certificate/note/reference, which (to me) is an automatic extension for the length of time the doctor certifies them as "unfit for work".
I usually tell students as part of the introduction to the class/course that if they need more time and ask for an extension, that asking days before the deadline with an explanation of why they need/want said extension is far more likely to be granted than asking by email at 2am (barring emergencies, which is then also likely that their homework is the last thing on their mind).
Then, when/if a student should ask for an extension two days before the deadline because they are finding it very difficult, it is possible to poll the class and gives the option to offer a blanket extension.
If a student should have another reason (e.g. personal emergency) it is possibly as likely to occur at 2 am on the day the homework is due as it is to occur three days before the deadline. But I don't personally know anyone who would email me from a hospital (for example) to ask for an extension. An extension for such an emergency is always an exception.
I would sometimes respond with, "Send me your draft and then we can discuss an extension." If they have had a number of weeks to complete it then I would expect they have made some progress towards completion. That is, I try to also teach some time management.
Building in some form of time-management training also helps those with reward/incentive schemes in place for good performance. Granting extensions to help with students obtaining external rewards isn't helping them in the long term (in my opinion).


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Why does general education occur in high school in the UK, but in undergrad in the US?
Alexandra Lyons of Cambridge University writes:

For starters, undergraduate education [UG] in the UK is a bit different than what you have probably seen in North America, where 4-year liberal arts degrees are common. In the UK, undergraduate students choose 1 subject to study at university, which they study intensively for 3  years.

In the UK, law is a direct-entry 3-year UG that admits high schoolers directly. Medicine is also direct-entry but > 3 years.
Buffy answered:

Note that a US undergraduate degree is very different from a UK degree. The latter is much more specialized. In UK it is assumed that the general education occurs before the university level.
But in the US, the degree is quite general. Students of, say pre-law also study things like history, philosophy, foreign language, etc. It isn't that different from a History major. The "major subject" in the US accounts for half (more or less) of the total credits required. Even a math major will study all those things in the US.

To wit, why does  UK UG already specialize, but not the US?

That is a question of long history, tradition, and evolution of educational systems. 200+ years ago the systems were similar. Now neither is similar to that era.

Actually for other northamerican countries, it is also assumed general education happened before university. That also happens for the rest of America given that most latin countries are quite similar in educational models. USA is the weird one.

US high schools also have general education. You seem to either ignore that factor or assume it doesn't exist at that level.

Related, possible duplicate: Why do American universities have so many general education courses?

@VrindaRao The level of general education in most of the American schools is lower than in Europe, and the gap is considerable. Also, a lot of the American school students' time is spent for sports, extracurriculars, etc. As a result of this, an additional year in college is spent to partially cover this gap.

Academia varies more than you think.  Your question oversimplifies the issue.
To give a US perspective on the question, there are differences in values and capabilities.
In the US, universities value the breadth of skills their students posses.  Graduates are expected to be able to teach themselves to excel in any field.  Therefore education extends beyond a particular specialty.  On the other hand, US high schools vary in capability; many are unable to provide students with basic skills everyone needs.  In some cases universities try to fix this problem.

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Do single-author papers actually further scientific progress?
I have just submitted revisions for my first single-author paper, and it was awful (pronounced with all the exaggerated fervor of a whiny millenial).  Nothing triggers feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt more than making your own decisions about what should be included in the greater body of science.  (Perhaps it triggers feelings of empowerment in others-- good for you!)
Since more eyes means catching more mistakes, better word choices for a wider readership, and overall more awareness of what's a good idea, I'm wondering if it is even good for science to publish solo-author work.
In question form: do single-author papers benefit scientific research as a whole?  Or mostly just the individual's personal development as an author and independent researcher?  It would be great if you could endorse your answer with some kind of study.

Maybe the key here is that it is your first such paper.

This is essentially https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11765/ive-somehow-convinced-everyone-that-im-actually-good-at-this-how-to-effect

Huh, I didn't think the intro would be that distracting.  I'm not looking for encouragement.  I was just trying to explain how I arrived at the question.

At the downvoters: what's up?

This article in Nature reinforces the anecdotal answers, although it doesn't focus on single authors precisely: "Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology."  I guess the best a single author could hope for is to introduce "disruptive" innovation, like Shannon, Einstein, Nash, etc.

This paper by C. E. Shannon in 1948 was the founding work of the whole field of information theory, which deals with the ultimate limits on reliable communication over arbitrary channels and which today still occupies thousands of people worldwide.
That said, the average number of authors per paper has steadily increased from about 1.5 in 1940 to about 5.4 in 2013, according to this study. The study mentions the increasing complexity of science and the increased difficulty to get funding as possible reasons for the trend.
This means that single-author papers (and therefore highly-influential single-author papers) are much rarer now than they were in 1940. If we measure the impact in number of citations (which has its own caveats), there are still a few highly influential recent papers with a single author, such as this one (2007) with 71588 citations or this one (2002) with 14348 citations.
Though they are rarer nowadays, single-author papers can advance scientific progress in the same way as multiple-author papers. They still go through peer review, and ultimately what is important is the content. If you have some results that would be interesting to the scientific community, the number of authors should not be a factor in deciding whether to publish it or not.

You provide an good example, but it might be worth citing something more recent. The average number of authors on a scientific paper in 1948 was below 1.5, so it was still an era of individual scientific contribution - over half of papers were single-author at that time. The average number of authors today is over 5, and single-author papers are relatively rare. You rightly answer that single author papers have indeed furthered scientific process, but it's quite rare for them to do so nowadays. Single author studies today are rarer, less likely to be published, and less likely to be cited.

@NuclearWang you are completely right, see updated answer. Though I did find a couple of highly cited, single-author recent papers, single-author papers are much rarer nowadays.

do single-author papers benefit scientific research as a whole?

Well, yes.
Albert Einstein had several single-author papers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Publications
John Nash wrote the most influential paper in game theory on his own:
https://www.pnas.org/content/36/1/48
So, if the question is "are there examples of influential single-author papers" I think the answer is demonstrably yes. At least, if you think Albert Einstein and John Nash are good scientists (I do!).
If the question is "do single-author papers advance science more than multi-author papers?", then I think that the answer is probably no. Research is, at the end of the day, a collaborative endeavor. It is much easier (and fun in my opinion) to work with others rather than alone.

So the answer is "yes" if those single-author papers are authored by geniuses... what about if you're just some average bloke?

How do you know you’re not a genius? I’m sure neither of them knew it at the time!

The vast majority of published research papers don't advance research or only very marginally, whether from single or multiple authors.
The only recognized way to evaluate the quality of a research paper, i.e. to evaluate its potential for advancing research in general, is the peer-review process. Since the peer-review process does not care at all about the number of authors, one can only assume that the number of authors is not an indicator of quality in any way.

Working solo or with a team is not a matter of quality of the outcome in general, it's a matter of:

research topic: some topics require a diversity of skills or an amount of work which cannot be carried out by a single person. On the other hand some topics require a deep thought process which is more likely to happen in a single brain.
personal preferences and finding the right collaborators: in research like in many other things, things often happen in this way or that way just because of circumstances.

Since more eyes means catching more mistakes, better word choices for a wider readership, and overall more awareness of what's a good idea, I'm wondering if it is even good for science to publish solo-author work.

I think you are confusing two issues here.
One is the writing -- mistakes, word choices, formatting, organization, etc. As you say "more eyes" is better: you have made good arguments for why there should be many editors. Even excellent authors are often "too close" to the work to see the bigger picture and explain it coherently (and most authors are not excellent - a lot of published papers, even in good journals, have substandard writing in all areas, including simple English language mistakes). Even beyond the language, a scientific editor should be able to identify weaknesses and mistakes in the paper as a whole.
The other is the authorship. An author makes an intellectual contribution. The requirement to be an author has been discussed ad nauseum here. Adding more authors does not always make the paper better (in fact, "too many cooks" often makes it worse), and language editors would not meet the bar for authorship. The advantages of multiple authors means that the work can be divided, and different areas of expertise can be brought to bear on a related problem. Sometimes this makes sense, sometimes it doesn't.

Assume that you are not a genius (Einstein, Nash, as mentioned in other answer).

If you can able to write the whole paper, in particular a decent paper (starting from ideas, implementation, analysis, and discussion) by your own, excellent, you can survive in this world, in fact, you have a good time ahead.
Once you wrote this paper as a single author, unless and otherwise, you have some job requirements, it is a better choice to have some co-authors (either experts or who is actively involved in the same research as yours) to improve the quality. Apart from the choice of words (what you mentioned), you will really get benefits from the technical qualities from others. Finally, based on their contribution, you can decide to put them in either acknowledgment part or co-author list.
At last, your single author work will get more chance to be extended or validated if your co-authors are happy to collaborate. Shannon is the father of capacity theorem in communications, there are a huge number of scientists who are spending time to reach Shannon capacity or beyond that, and these scientists/researchers are working together. Who knows, one day, my assumption at the beginning will be invalid for your case.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Applying to schools in the US - Theoretical fundamental physics
I am a theoretical physics masters student, currently on the process of applying to universities. I find it incredibly hard to gauge which universities I'm most likely to be accepted in. All the professors I asked, suggested me the top universities in the US.
With my grades being a first class in my undergrad(standard for theory?), and my physics GREs being about 670(kinda bad..) I find it really unlikely for me to be accepted in these schools(Princeton, Harvard, etc.)
Since I already have taken modules in advanced theoretical subjects, that might give me extra credit, but I don't have much research experience(at least in theoretical physics).
What kind of schools would be a more suitable choice for me?

I doubt anyone can give you a good answer without more intimate knowledge of your profile. Try talking to your recommendation writers, or failing which, with a professional graduate school advisor.

Acceptance to a doctoral program in the US requires a broadly positive background and evidence that  you will succeed in the program you apply to. It is unlikely to hinge on any single thing. But letters of recommendation are very important, especially if they come from established researchers, preferably well known.
But the US has about 130 top research universities (R1). Some of them have larger programs and others are small. Relatively speaking Harvard and Princeton are small in any given discipline. State funded universities tend to be larger.
No one can predict what will happen based on such limited information. I suggest that you apply to several places, some at the top, as you have been advised and some others that are still excellent.
You can also do a bit of research on the places you might apply to. Figure out who is on the faculty and what their specialties are. Look at a paper or two from some of them to see if you are still interested. Note that a "top" university may not be "top" in every field. Look closely but cast a wide net.

Thanks, I completely agree with you! What I would like to know is which schools are right below the top ones. My interests are in AdS/CFT, early cosmology, non-perturbative qfts and generally almost all fundamental theoretical physics except condensed matter theory and QCD/standard model I guess.

Sorry, but it's not my field. Some magazines rate universities on general criteria. But they aren't especially reliable. Who publishes good papers in your field? The internet is your friend here.


text:
Where to Address Issues With Bad Class Formats
A little background info: So I'm in my second year of studies at a state university in the town I live in. I'm specifically going to school for computer science. As I said, I'm in my second year, but I've been programming since I was 14 and was recently accepted into a research group (not trying to brag, this will be relevant...).
The school I attend uses the flipped class format for its computer science courses. Every computer science course I've taken has used this format and in all cases the classes have been terrible. In my first year, it really didn't stand out to me as much since these were intro classes, and as a result were really easy for me. But this past semester, I'm taking two classes, one that's almost entirely new for me (Logic and Algorithms), and one that's new in places, but I was really looking forward to (Operating Systems and Networks).
In the logic class, there is no material except a terrible interactive ebook; I understand very little, and one of my friends said the same until he went and found materials from another university that actually explained well. In the OS class, the only material are pre-recorded lectures (which are very high level, whereas the tests and exercises are much more in depth). The only way I've been able to understand the OS class is by buying a text book (which is labeled as optional). Even though I love computer science and do well at it, because of these flipped classes, I'm doing the worst gradewise in these two. For perspective, I'm also taking Linear Algebra, and I'm very close to an A in this course; math has always been one of my worst subjects, and this class is taught in a traditional format.
I have friends and know people in these and other comp sci courses, and we've all been saying the same things (some of which brought it up before I even mentioned it). I have one friend of similar skill level in basically the same situation, and another completely new to computer science whose taking the first introductory course (which states that it assumes you are entering it without prior knowledge), and she says nothing makes sense from this course because the material (and lack thereof) is so bad. On top of that, me and many of my friends commute an hour one way to school (and some of us work part time jobs, myself included), and its really frustrating to basically drive an hour to do homework on material that doesn't make sense during a period that could be spent explaining it. Flipped classes really do net out to more time spent than traditional classes.
I apologize if this comes across as a rant, but I really would like to know if this is worth addressing, and with whom. I feel like it will be like talking to a wall, but I would like to at least say something. I feel bad because I have such a terrible attitude toward my studies at this point because I'm so frustrated. Course evaluations came out last week, and I absolutely ripped these classes, but I would like to maybe send a letter to someone or something.

How big are these classes? Around 30, less, more, much more?

Over 100 each, I think around 120 give or take a few.

Have you considered transferring? I think the odds that things will improve in the next year or two are very small. Particularly if you are paying for these terrible classes, it does not seem like a good value proposition for you.

I would totally transfer but the money makes it prohibitive; I'm planning on transferring for graduate school though. I totally agree with you though, that's something that crossed my mind more than once.

TL;DR: you could write a letter to your program director. However, success may be elusive, since the situation may be constrained by forces outside of the control of you and your lecturers.

It is worth addressing. The official course evaluations are the appropriate place for this, so you have taken the right approach. However, depending on the situation at your university, it may be the case that nothing you can do will make an impact on the situation. This is because the situation may be forced upon the lecturers through circumstances beyond their and your control.
Consider the following example. I am the responsible lecturer for a data mining course at my university. Teaching is 30% of my job, with 50% dedicated to research and 20% to project management. I am teaching this course in the traditional format, which I would prefer to keep doing. Last year, 134 students followed my course, and I survived (with positive student evaluations). This year, 312 students showed up, and I am barely hanging on (with student evaluations pending). Purely trying to keep up with the barrage of student questions in my inbox is eating up all my time. If I keep the course format the way it was, there will be absolute zero time for me to fulfill the non-teaching 70% of my responsibilities.
At my university, I am forced to write a formal reply to the outcome of the official student course evaluation, explaining how I will address the comments in next year's edition of the course. Hence, these evaluations matter at least a little. However, if I decide to refer to videolectures instead of ever teaching a plenary lecture again, the following will happen. My student evaluation grade will go down. The extra time I free up by eschewing lecture preparation, I will dedicate to writing another grant proposal. If the proposal gets the funding I request, I will get tenure. If I don't get that funding but my student evaluation grade remains high, I might get tenure. My situation simply does not provide me with any incentives to keep students satisfied; in fact, if I were to keep students satisfied, I actively reduce my tenure probability.
If your lecturers have mixed responsibilities like I have, it may be the case that their job parameters are set up such that student evaluations are not relevant enough to them. If not, then your success still depends on what value your university attaches to course evaluations. No success is guaranteed.
So what can you do?

definitely keep filling out those course evaluations. This builds up to a paper trail of things being wrong in your programme at large, rather than being a problem of individual courses;
ensure that you get the education you desire. If the course doesn't provide you with the education, you should use your time at university to get it yourself. Form a study group with your friends, acquire the books or other materials to teach yourself the subject. It is of course far from ideal to have to do this yourself, but if your university does not develop your skill set, you can still develop your skill set. Acquiring this optional text book you talk about, for instance, is a good move;
if you have a set of coherent complaints, showing consistent shortcomings across multiple courses and lecturers, and these complaints are shared between a substantial number of students, bring the complaints to your program director, as a group. The program director should address problems with your program as a whole, that span beyond a single course.

I'm accepting your answer because I appreciate how you explained it from the opposite perspective, which I'm try to understand and keep in mind; I'll definitely explore your suggestions.

It may well be that you are just at the wrong place. If your description is even close to accurate then your complaints will be impossible to act on effectively as the other students are likely not where you are. Large classes with a diversity of skills are very difficult to manage in the best case. But, it is possible to do that if the administration is willing to look at the issue. Scaling up in education is one of my least favorite things, since I see education as a relationship between a teacher and a learner (see Plato). You can't use the same techniques with 20 that you use with 120.
But, aside from leaving, there is something you might try. It is a fact that you will learn more about a subject by trying to teach it. If you are comfortable with it, tell the teacher that you already know and have experience with much/most/all of the material in the course and that you are bored. You could either suggest more and different material for learning from the prof, or, the more interesting case, offer to help those who struggle with the material to come up to speed. You will get a deeper understanding with either method if you can get buy-in from the prof. A flipped classroom makes this last solution fairly easy to do. You become a TA-lite, so to speak, wandering around and helping people get over blocks.
But, for a more systemic solution, you and the others in a similar situation might try to meet with the department head and maybe a few faculty and ask for a solution to your joint problem. One solution is to allow testing out of some of the early courses. Another is to have a single "honors" section that people could test in to and which might cover material from several of the early courses in a single course. This would put the students into advanced courses earlier than otherwise, but would take some faculty resources. But if the honors course was also "seminar-like" where the students prepare and present material it would be valuable for all and require less of a load on the faculty.
But, I think that complaining isn't going to get you far. Pointing out a problem and asking for a solution is much better, especially, but not necessarily, if you can provide suggestions for the outline of the solution. And collective action here is more likely to be successful than acting on your own.
I'll also suggest that you prof may be just as frustrated as you are. I know I would be and would be searching for solutions.


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Keeping job application secret

Is it reasonable to request keeping my application to a tenure-track position secret in the cover letter?
Would search committee likely to respect such a request?
If at all possible, how long can such secret be kept?

The motivation for keeping an application secret is to not create any problem with the current department.

It is absolutely resonable. If it works out depends on the department.

A stupid question, but how can you do this? Your publications will reveal who you are.

@luchonacho: I think they mean that the department should not reveal the fact that they applied to the outside (eg not posting it on the Internet).

There are no guarantees, but most places will respect your wishes for a while. But they may want to contact your references, for example.
They might also have to make a public statement if you are offered a job, depending on various rules.
A complicating factor is whether every committee member gets the word. And if they explore your candidacy with other colleagues (not always allowed) your wishes might not get communicated or respected by everyone. So, you assume some risk, but it is likely small.
And your situation isn't unique in any way. Lots of people need to do this, so most committee members are probably aware of it and have seen it before.

Let me re-order your questions so my answers can build upon each other:

Would search committee likely to respect such a request?

I have worked at multiple universities where we have handled job applications that we were requested to keep private. These job applications have been at multiple levels (from professor to upper administration). So, in my experience it is possible that search committees will respect these requests.

Is it reasonable to request keeping my application to a tenure-track position secret in the cover letter?

Given that it is possible, whether it is reasonable depends on your reasons for keeping your application private. The most common reason I have seen is because it would adversely impact a current position. But, there is extra work required for this, and sometimes it reduces the transparency of the application process. As many academics value transparency, there will be a need to balance the transparency of the interview process with your need for anonymity.

If at all possible, how long can such secret be kept?

There is no guarantee that a secret can be kept -- for most faculty positions you give a public talk which has to be announced. Someone might infer from this that you are applying for a position. If a faculty is large, someone might accidentally say that you are applying. (Since your name has to be announced to faculty so they can sign up to meet with you.) So, it is hard to put a precise bound on this.

Even if you don't write anything your application will stay mostly secret apart from reasons where it cannot be secret in order to be evaluated. Any place you apply to might contact your reference letter writers. If you get to the interview stage, this often includes an at least somewhat public lecture. If they want to evaluate your application these steps are mandatory.
Other than that your application is fairly secret by general procedure. The information you send in your application does not count as public so it will not be treated as such.


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Dear PIs: How can a new hire politely probe you for details?
How can a new postdoc joining a lab probe their PIs for more information concerning the project they are going to be working on, what skills they need to acquire to prepare for the job, ...

Just ask, actually. But a good way would be to ask for a list of publications of the group and a list of colleagues you would be working with. You could then introduce yourself to one or more of them and ask for information so that you don't need to ask too much of the PI.
Some groups will have already made some or all of this available on a web site associated with the institution or the project. You could get started there if it exists.
I'm assuming that you already have been offered a position, rather than just being in the application stage.
You could even consider visiting the lab and meeting a few people if that is an option. Speaking with other postdocs might be especially valuable.


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In North America, why Medicine not an undergrad degree high schoolers can apply to directly?
My kid showed me this New York Times article. Why don't Canada and US offer medicine as undergrad?
Australia does.

If you want to go to medical school in Australia, you need to sit the UCAT in your final year of high school.

UK does.

In the UK, it can take either 5 or 6 years for the undergraduate degree, then enrol on a 2 year foundation programme, during which they must complete work placements according to their specialisation, before applying to Medical Specialty Training. In total, then, medical studies in the UK can take up to 8 years.
In Canada, medical study is only available at graduate level, so you must take 4 years of a pre-med undergraduate degree (although some institutions will accept only 2 years of this or offer a fast-track option), with the graduate medical studies taking another 4 years. After this, you must complete a residency training programme, which can take between 3 and 8 years, depending on your specialisation. Medical studies in Canada, then, take a minimum of 11 years.
This is because the UK undergraduate qualification is equivalent to the combination of undergraduate and graduate degrees in Canada.

This is a rant, not a question.

This is a fine, on-topic question, except for the ranty bits. I removed the parts that were rude, but I encourage you to expand on what whats in the NYT article, and on other details (what's a UCAT?)

Short answer is that the USA is not the UK or Australia. The educational systems are different, that’s all, having diverged over a few hundred years of time. Why should one country be the same as another?

In Canada a medical degree is not a graduate degree; it's an undergraduate degree that requires university education. You can see on the university of Ottawa's site it's called "undergraduate medical education" https://med.uottawa.ca/undergraduate/

Does an undergraduate pre-med degree count?

I live in a country where you can go directly. and that being said, I honestly think US system is better!who can know with 17,18,19 that MD is for them

Traditionally in the UK the first 3 years of a medical degree is science mostly based at the University science departments with the last 2 years being clinical.  Newer medical schools intergrate the learning more.

Aren't the secondary education systems of the Commonwealth countries different from the typical secondary education system in the US? Subjected to the sorting hat at age 11 or 14 or 16 or whenever? Multiple types of secondary education, academic vs general vs vocational?

In Canada medicine is offered as an undergraduate degree, but graduates cannot practice until they have completed additional requirements (usually a residency, that can last between 2 to 6 years).  There is no BSc or HBSc in medicine that I know of.
Although it is often touted as a doctoral degree and the graduates can use the title Doctor, the full title is Doctor of Medicine or MD and it is not a doctoral degree in the sense of a PhD (or similar) in other disciplines.  Several other health-related professions can also use the title of Doctor (optometrists, veterinarians), although again they do not necessarily hold PhDs (some do).
In Canada education is a provincial jurisdiction so requirements for admissions vary from one province to the next.  The common factor to all programs is the huge demand: there is often 10 or more applicants for every admission slot.
In Quebec you can apply straight out of usual 2-year pre-university (CEGEP) studies required for admission to most university undergraduate programs.   In Ontario your odds of getting in are next to none unless you have completed 3 full years of an undergraduate university degree, often in a cognate field: this is a simple way of cutting down on the number of applications.  It may well be that some schools require an undergraduate degree for application but that would only be for weeding purposes.
These days, given the extremely high demand in some provinces, an increasing number  of candidates are accepted after an advanced MSc degree: even an outstanding full undergraduate degree is no longer a guarantee of getting in.

In the US there are accelerated BA/MD programs that combine a BA degree with medical school and that give a graduating high school senior admission (conditional on surviving the accelerated BA program) into medical school.  In some of these programs, the preparatory BA phase is as short as two years.

Perhaps you could link to some?

https://hsc.unm.edu/school-of-medicine/education/md/bamd/index.html

https://admissions.rpi.edu/undergraduate-admissions/accelerated-combined-programs

In the UK, students specialise much earlier than in the US. For example, I studied no history or geography beyond the age of 14, and only studied physics, maths and music from 16 to 18. My undergraduate degree was in physics, and only contained physics courses.
In contrast, in the USA, you can take courses outside your subject even as a graduate student. This difference in specialisation time is what enables UK students to study medicine as undergraduates, as they will have likely been studying only sciences for at least the previous two years.


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TA position in different discipline?
I was recently notified of an opportunity for a TA position.
The same email went to the whole department.
The position would be helping/teaching a class in a different
discipline than mine.
I only wanted to ask other people's thoughts about applying
because the message specified the only requirements to apply were to be a
PGR student in the department.
I would ask the faculty in charge of hiring but don't want to look
more stupid than I have to.
I would think that it wouldn't make any sense for me to apply
since my background is in what would appear to be an entirely different
field. But maybe I'm wrong??
Shouldn't they have also specified that it's open only to
PGR students in that field? My common sense says that they would expect
interested applicants to be able to understand that it's implied to be
for applicants studying or researching in that field.
But maybe there's something about TA positions I'm not aware of?

How related is your field to the field that you would be teaching?

Sometimes TAs are hired from other departments as long as they are qualified to TA the course. Just ask.

I don't know of any universal unwritten rules in this regard.  If you want the job and feel that you are qualified, then it should be fine to apply, or at least to inquire about applying.  It's probably likely that students in the same research area would get preference, all other things equal, but who knows if any of them are interested or are otherwise good candidates.  You might get some more specific answers if you state your country or your university.

What is PGR? Is the course an entry-level course or something more advanced?

PGR may mean Post Graduate Research, @cag51, (from the acronym finder)

How unrelated are we talking? Like math and English?

I am TA in the Chemistry department. The research I do is biophysics. I have a bachelor's degree in chemistry and biochemistry. Anyway, serving as a chem TA is how I make money.

Some departments need a lot of TAs. Math, for example, since there are a lot of people taking elementary courses. If there aren't enough graduate students in the department to cover the need they might need to look elsewhere, but probably within the same institution.
But this would vary a lot between institutions. I don't find it to be odd, but neither do I think it is common. If you are qualified to assist, or even teach, an elementary course then the position might be open to you. Note that it is probably also true that some departments have unmet financial needs for graduate students and this gives them a way to provide support.


text:
How to publish in a think tank?
I have written a blog post about an International event that I would like to publish in a think tank (I have three DC/London-based think tanks in mind), but none of them have submission section, and they haven't responded to my emails yet. Any advice? Or experience with think tanks? Thanks in advance!

Aren’t you invited to join a think tank? That may be why they don’t have submission sections...

I have friends who published opinion pieces for Carnegie and others. I guess it depends on your connections? Maybe? They usually have a blog/opinion section.

Think tanks are not academic endeavors. There is no submission process. There is no peer review. The "editorial board" is not made of researchers. Think tanks are essentially lobbies, but for ideas rather than corporations/industries. They work like any other lobby: they pay a lot of money to recognized researchers/politicians/journalists/cultural figures/... so that they can write the conclusion that is asked of them, in order to lend credit to the idea in question. Sending them an article seems like a pointless exercise. They are not interested in your ideas, they are interested in their ideas, and how you can help promote them.

Yeah, I do not know how to use a website. Srsly! I asked for help...


text:
Going for a PhD after being unhappy in industry
After finishing my studies, I worked as a researcher for a few months in the field of my master thesis, but was not quite satisfied with the field.
So, I tried to transition to industry. In my first job I was working in R&D as junior engineer and I quite liked it. Later on, I moved to pure software engineering and I hated it. Even though I was receiving a good salary for my experience. I couldn't stand the lack of innovation, I wasn't even good enough in my job (this is my personal opinion), I was always bored and after a while the dissatisfaction from my job made me unhappy for my life as a whole. I couldn't imagine myself doing this for the next 40 years. I quit my job and this is my last week, after that I have nothing scheduled regarding my career.
I am really very confused about my next steps and I have been thinking about finally doing a PhD. The reasons behind this is that I want to feel that I can really make contributions, bring my ideas, solve problems and not just write code lines.  I would prefer intellectual and time flexibility, as I believe that I am functioning better this way. I had never thought of following an academic career before, now it may not be my ultimate goal, but I could consider it. I know that becoming a professor is very hard, and I am not targeting such a position, but I really want to do research and not just software engineering. I would be mostly interested in doing an R&D job later, either at a company or at a research center.
I have been reading here that a PhD can be a waste of time for people that do not seek a purely academic position. I have already applied a couple of times for research positions in companies and research centers without success. Thus, I thought that a PhD could make the difference here. What is your opinion regarding my case? Is it a good idea to go for a PhD or can it be a burnout after some bad career decisions until now?

If you find research fun and engaging, it can be far more rewarding than to work with something you don't enjoy. As with any studies, you'll learn a lot and develop new skills. Also, depending on where you do your PhD, you can get paid to do it, and thus still have a liveable income while furthering yourself mentally.

Could you clarify which country you are in?

@mar93 sounds like a bargain! :-)

The question was first asked more than a year ago, what kind of job you have been doing? Software Engineering? In what domain? e-commerce? web design? Or something else?

I would strongly recommend against pursuing a PhD. You should only pursue a PhD if you are 100% sure that's what you want. Not because you hate something else, and PhD seems like an OK option.
It is especially hard to go from an industry position to a PhD student. Because you'll be getting paid 5-10 times less even though you'll be working at least twice as hard. And PhD is a 5-year commitment, with no guarantee of an academic job at the end of all this.
Do not pursue a PhD. It will be the biggest mistake of your life.

This is too subjective in one direction (negative). Remove the statements of what you feel and replace them with objective statements that speak to the disadvantages of the transition. You may have a kernel of truth, but it is buried in a slew of emotion-driven retorts.

PhD duration is location-dependent, and he already has a Masters, so it might be more like 3 years than 5.

I strongly disagree with user117219. When I started my PhD, I was not 100% sure that that was what I wanted; the PhD seemed like an OK option to me at the time. Now I'm an assistant professor, loving my job. Your mileage may vary, and it might not. No way of knowing in advance.
If your personal finances can take the salary hit that comes with transitioning from an industry job to PhD research, it can be the right move to make. You indicate that your primary goal is to do intellectually stimulating research, and a PhD is definitely one way to achieve that.

I was not 100% sure: What percentage sure (roughly) were you?

@user2768 that's a very good question, to which the answer, I'm afraid, will have to be that I do not remember it very accurately, since the event happened a decade ago. I think it may probably have been somewhere around the 75/80% level. Midway through my first year it sank to about 30/40%, and only at the end of my first year it had shot up to 100%.

As a matter of interpretation, I don't believe anyone can be absolutely sure (in this context), so I suspect "100% sure" is probably a metaphor for "around the 75/80% level." I don't think strong disagreement with user117219 is merited, but maybe they really did mean absolutely sure.

@user2768 ah, but it's not only the "100%" that informs my "strongly disagree". Look at the certainty in their final sentence. Look at the certainty in the first half of the same sentence from which the "100%" bit came: "You should only". There is no way of knowing the answer with anywhere near the written degree of certainty. You interpret that they probably mean this as a metaphor, but I say that in that case they could have used words to more accurately represent their viewpoints. So no, I still strongly disagree with that answer.

It would be interesting if user117219 clarified a more precise level of certainty!

I have been reading here that a PhD can be a waste of time for people that do not seek a purely academic position.

I doubt this is entirely true, and I suspect it is dependent on the field. What about research positions in industry or research centers? Here you have made a start ...

I have already applied a couple of times for research positions in companies and research centers without success. Thus, I thought that a PhD could make the difference here.

Presumably the positions you applied for did not require a PhD. Perhaps you might do some preliminary research on-line to see the availabilities of PhD-level research positions in the direction of your interest.

What is your opinion regarding my case? Is it a good idea to go for a PhD or can it be a burnout after some bad career decisions until now?

I would advise to follow your passions with a well-structured Plan B in your back pocket.
I sense that you may not yet have a clear grasp of your passions and perhaps not a sense of the need for a Plan A and Plan B. So ...
Define the problem (bored/unchallenged by my current career path), gather information (what other options exist, where do they lead), and outline the demands for the various options (SWOT, pros/cons, timeline, resources, manpower).
Visit your previous advisor and solicit some insights. Look again for research positions that require a PhD. Talk to your previous boss where you were a junior engineer and solicit some insights.
Also, in the short term ... the transition to a PhD may not happen immediately. Graduate schools have defined schedules to review applications and admit students. Should your PhD dreams fall flat, you may also need to keep yourself open to working so that you do not loose continuity in your employment history in the process.
In this latter regard, perhaps you might even search for a position that will pay you to get a PhD. Such positions are ... few and far between. To be successful, such positions require special arrangements between the industry and university. So, they will not necessarily be up front or immediately in your neighborhood. Are you ready to move locations too?
Finally, when done right, a PhD is an award that you earn by some hard work and sweat equity, it is not a return given for a minimum level of work input. You acknowledge and embrace the joy of having your individual flexibility to learn. That may be the thread that becomes the rope to pull you through the next steps.

"The transition to a PhD will not happen immediately. You are posting this at the start of the Christmas holiday and all graduate schools are about done with their applications. Your next best opening to start a PhD will not be until the coming Fall" Depends on location. In places like Australia, he'd be starting at the beginning of the year - though he might have already missed the deadlines for funding.

I've modified the paragraph about jobs and PhD review schedules accordingly.

I seem to be in quite a similar position to you myself. I have been working as a Mechanical Engineer in industry for over 10 years since I graduated and I have found myself becoming increasingly disillusioned by the repetitive nature of the work and lack of challenge. I feel like I am not really using my true abilities and not realizing my potential. Therefore, I have decided to do a PhD and I have been applying to graduate schools in the current cycle (to start in 2020).
I don't think anyone else can tell you whether or not doing a PhD is the right choice for you. It's something you will need to decide for yourself, based on your life/career plans and what you find interesting and motivating. It might also depend to some extent on your financial circumstances (and PhD funding might vary quite a bit between different countries).
If you dislike your current job, it might be possible to find a different job in industry that you find more rewarding. Just because you hate one job doesn't mean you would necessarily hate them all, and you mention that you quite liked the previous R&D job that you had.
However, doing a PhD would certainly be challenging and stimulating, although it is a big commitment and I hear it can be a tough path (especially in the US, where a PhD tends to take 4-5 years). For me, the thing that really made it clear that a PhD is the right path for me was the realization that I'm disillusioned with Engineering in industry in general, not just my current job. I have found jobseeking over the past year and a half to be a fruitless and very frustrating experience, which has only strengthened my desire to go back into academia.
Also, there are definitely jobs out there in industry that do require a PhD. Many of the more advanced technical jobs that I was applying for said they wanted someone with a PhD. So, I don't agree with the statement that a PhD is irrelevant for jobs in industry. It might not necessarily get you a higher salary and/or pay back on the (opportunity cost) investment financially, but I think it would probably give you access to more challenging and motivating research-based technical positions.
I hope this helps you to find the right path and good luck if you decide to apply!

@mar93 it seems to me to be part of a general pattern of 'qualification creep'. Qualifications now are seen more as a means of proving you are 'better' than competing candidates, not because you actually need that knowledge to do a particular job. A Master's degree from a well-respected university is no longer enough to be considered for a top technical job in industry.

That's true. If they have too many qualified applicants with master, why not request something above that?


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How much time do I have to spend for NSF panel?
The field is mathematics/computer science.  If one were to be selected to serve on an NSF panel, how much time/effort, realistically, will one be expected to spend?  Especially for someone with no prior experience in this role.

Here's my typical calculation: It takes me ~4 hours to read a proposal (applied math/computational science, but I assume it's the same in other areas) and write a meaningful review. You'll get 8-10 proposals to review for a panel, so plan on a full week of work before you even travel to Alexandria. Then you'll spend 1.5 to 2 completely full days there. Expect to read more proposals on the evening of the first day.
If you have no prior experience, make sure you have a mentor in your department with whom you can talk about expectations for reviews. I see a lot of reviews, in particular from younger and less experienced reviewers, that are really just 3 or 4 short sentences for each of the 3 categories (intellectual merit, broader impact, summary), but these are really not very useful to either the program manager nor the applicant. Be the person you want your reviewers to be and write long, meaningful reviews. You're doing the right thing to your profession, and your program manager will like you too -- which is probably a thing worth striving for anyways. My reviews are typically 1-2 pages long. That takes time, but I think it's time well spent.

You'll also be asked to spend some time going through training videos on how to review proposals before you actually start to review- this stuff is important.  During the panel meeting, you'll probably be asked to draft panel summaries, which is something that you typically do at night after getting back to your hotel room.

Indeed. Don't make any plans for the night of the first day :-)


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How to overcome seminar boredom
I find I am frequently uninterested in the weekly seminars in my faculty, which consists of applied mathematics, fluid dynamics, and computer science.  My niche is a small sliver between applied maths and CS.
I know it's valuable to hear talks on things completely unrelated to what you do-- you never know what you'll learn-- but mostly what happens is that I see the first few slides, get bored and/or overwhelmed by too many foreign ideas, and then tune out and work on my own research.  In theory, I know that asking questions helps with engagement, but when a topic is too foreign, I would need to ask questions every slide to properly follow, and that would just be disruptive.  I then wonder why I bother attending at all, but the church-like culture surrounding the weekly seminars (i.e., "you have to go because someone with more power strongly suggests it") keep me there.
How can I get more out of these seminars that I'm obligated to attend?  (Note that responses like "Suck it up" or "Get over it, we all go through this" are not welcome-- I've found that this kind of approach just leads to acrimony.)

@Coder I didn't see that question when I posted, but yeah, lots of good tips there.  I would argue the focus of my question is different-- I assume in good faith that the speaker is doing the best they can, and the problem is largely me getting bored and bitter.  I would otherwise delete the question, but since it has answers, I will probably have to accept another shameful "close"...

I don't think anyone in this community can counsel you to feel good during presentation. You have to build interest in the presentation. That's all.

@Coder Well, the question wasn't asking for counseling to "feel good" during a presentation.  As most questions here, it was asking for practical tips.

I sympathise with your predicament, and I certainly would not suggest that you need to "suck it up".  In fact, I would probably go even further --- your persistence to the contrary notwithstanding, the vast majority of math presentations at university ---particularly those delivered by students--- are barely watchable, and they are quite often a waste of their audience's valuable time.*  If you find that you are bored and/or overwhelmed in the first few slides, this suggests to me that the presenter is doing a bad job motivating interest in their topic, and keeping audience context in mind.  That is entirely consistent with my experience viewing mathematical presentations in university seminars; by and large, the quality of these presentations is abysmally low, and fundamental presentation problems are ubiquitous.
One of the most common problems I have observed with mathematical presentations is that they often tend to cram in too much material, and then overwhelm the audience by going too fast through specialist material that is unfamiliar to the audience.  It is common to observe "flashers" who put up walls of definitions, equations, derivations, etc., and then rush over them to try to make their talk fit into the allocated time.  Often the presenter makes no effort to motivate interest in their topic, and just assumes that the mere presence of an audience vitiates any obligation to be interesting.  In these cases, the audience gets lost after the first few slides, or bored, and then simply tunes out.  That is not the fault of the audience member --- it happens because the presentation is a steaming pile of shit.  If you attended a rock concert, or a comedy night, the presenters would know that it is their job to make you interested, and make sure the audience can follow along with the material.  Mathematics presenters often have not learned this lesson.
So, my advice: if you are compelled to go and see crappy presentations that fail to motivate your interest, and lose you within the first few slides, use that boredom as motivation to improve your own presentations, and make sure you are not subjecting others to the same boredom and bewilderment that you are being forced to endure.  Scrutinise each presentation with a critical eye and note the things that the presenter is doing wrong.  (Here is a related answer with some suggestions for how to give a good presentation.)  Did the presenter motivate your interest in the topic?  Is he/she enthusiastic about the material?  Has the presenter provided a "hook" that caught your interest?  Did the presenter explain the material to you nice and slowly so that you could follow along?  Did the presenter limit their definitions and notation to what you can reasonable remember as you follow along, or did they overwhelm you with definitions and notation?  Did the presenter rush through something you didn't understand?  Did the presenter flash up a "wall of algebra" for a microsecond and then move on to the next slide?
One final note on this issue is your mention of the fact that your own specialty area is quite narrow, and you have trouble following along with presentations on foreign areas.  That is very common, and again, it is generally the fault of the presenter.  For that reason, when you come to give your own presentation, make sure you put yourself in the shoes of someone who has no knowledge of your specialty topic, and no interest in it.  Realise that it is your job to motivate their interest in what you are saying --- start strongly and make them (internally) say "wow!" and make sure your presentation gets them paying attention.  Simplify your problem and obey the crow epistemology (people can remember three things).  Take your audience on a nice slow journey through your topic, that is interesting, and so simple that they think your work is trivial.  Good luck!

...except to the extent that they are practice for the students.  Often we hold seminars of student presentations to give students practice delivering presentations, and asking questions of speakers.  We expect them to be bad at it, which is why they are students.

Focusing on how much the presentation sucks is definitely not helpful and usually leads to bitterness in my experience.  I'm well aware there are bad talks, but my question was about how to manage my own boredom in spite of it all.

During graduate school we had weekly, compulsory seminars. I also struggled with boredom. Often I found the presenter was presenting a set of slides designed for an academic conference rather a weekly seminar primarily to graduates.   My solution was not to go to all (no one bothered despite the compulsory nature) of them but just go to the ones directly relevant to me, that sounded particularly interesting or I knew the speaker was good. If you can get away with it may be worth a try; you can't be expected to find everything useful.
Another tip I employed was never to take my laptop, just a pen and paper. Don't give yourself a chance to be distracted by e-mails / work and it will help in a small way.

Not going is not an option-- I've already been chastised for missing some.


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My grade was penalized because of a technical problem. Who can I contact?
Last year, I did an exchange semester at a foreign university as part of my master degree. I was lagging behind on homework in one of my exchange courses, and wouldn't have been able to get a good grade. Since this university allows students who fail courses to attempt them again in the next term, and I expect this grade to be important in a future application, I chose to not pass the course last year, and enrolled in its next round, which is now.
I cannot attend lectures since I am in my home country, so I depend entirely on the university's online course tracking system to follow the course and assignments. From the beginning of the term, I visited regularly the course's page, to make sure I could start working on assignments early. Since I didn't see this year's assignments appear, I assumed that they had not yet been given, and focused on my schoolwork at home.
I have discovered today that the system did not show me any of the assignments or announcements from this semester, even though I have registered correctly to this year's course round. I was only informed by a student I kept contact with on social media that there was in fact an assignment to be handed in, and that the deadline has passed a few days ago. This means that, whatever I do, I won't be able to get more than a passing grade. I still don't even have access to the course material, announcements, discussions or assignments published for this year's course round.
I contacted the teacher, who said that they could not account for technical problems, and would not grade me higher than a passing grade if I handed in this assignment now, as for the other students.
I feel that I am getting penalized for technical problems outside of my control. Since the teacher used the term "cannot", I assume that there is a rule outside of their control that prevents them from making an exception. I suppose that there is someone in the university who can make these exceptions, and would like to contact them and explain my problem.
The problem is that I don't know who this person might be, or if it would be wise to send them an email. The IT support can probably fix my problem with the tracking system, but has no control over grading. The international relations office usually directs this kind of inquiries to the course's professors. Contacting someone high-ranked such as the dean seems ridiculous to me, and I would expect no answer at best. There are various offices such as the "office of student affairs", and several contacts listed on the department's web page, but I don't know which one to choose.
At large universities, what office or person typically deals with this kind of complaints? Is it worth trying to contact them and get an exceptional deadline extension?

Since you were doing the course for the second time then, when the assignments did not appear, why did you not contact someone earlier? That seems to be a big error on your part. Any technical issue could have been corrected so much earlier.

@SolarMike I agree, but I remembered the assignments to have started quite late in the semester the first time. I obviously waited too long to think of this. Still, I don't think it was unreasonable on my part to assume that the tracking system was accurate, and it seems that I missed the start of the assignment by a week or two at most (the universities' calendars are so different that I have a hard time being more precise).

You're reading an awful lot into the word "cannot" there.  It's likely that the instructor has the authority to make these decisions (possibly even the sole authority), but has decided not to grant you an exception for whatever reason.

I fail to see how a teacher could give you what you want, while remaining fair with respect to all other students.
I taught a course where I made clear from the start to everyone that late submissions would not be graded and would not receive any points. Around one deadline, one student decided to take a holiday in Portugal, which is located one time zone to the west of most of Europe. They submitted their homework three minutes before midnight in the Portuguese time zone, which was 57 minutes late in our time zone.
If I now stretch up the rules for this student, why would any other student ever take my red lines seriously anymore? Moreover, other students who remained in the central European timezone may have missed the deadline by, say, ten minutes, and just decide not to submit given that I had been clear that late submissions would not be graded. If a professor writes down a hard, clear rule, they cannot make technical exceptions for that rule without un-leveling the playing field. It would be unfair to other students, to make an exception for you.
It would be different, if the university's online course tracking system to which you allude, has a formal role in the examination regulations. If there are university or department regulations that stipulates that the system administrates, then you might be in your rights. But barring that, the teacher sets the rules, and is responsible for upholding them in an objectively fair manner. Objectively fair would be to not grant you the technical exemption that other students would also not be granted.


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Graduate school needs my masters grade but I have no grades yet!
I've started my graduate school applications for the next year. When I try to provide my university information I fill in a form with my grades. Since I am doing an Msc course this year I have not yet received any grades. I can't follow through the application without them though. Should I just insert 0 and explain that later?

Can you insert text? E.g. 'not available yet'?

Every university will have its own policy. Look at the admissions pages or contact their admissions staff to see what you should do.

The best way to do this would be to insert "n/a" into the field for your grades, or simply write "not available yet" as CaptainEmacs suggested. In the event that you cannot write a non-numerical answer (as was the case when I applied to grad school), a "0" should suffice that it is not your actual grade. Your application will likely require preliminary transcripts (and eventually official transcripts), so I would not worry about not being able to report your official grade, especially since this is a common problem.
I would avoid writing this issue into your statement of purpose, since your SoP should be relatively short and to the point, focusing on your research and other accomplishments. While I would definitely include your MSc course in your statement, I would not mention anything relating to the application itself. Often universities have a graduate coordinator for any given department, so I suggest reaching out to them if you have questions about your application.

You should definitely explain your situation in your personal letter/CV that you are currently taking a master's course, and provide some details on what classes you're taking. This helps giving some insight into what you're doing even though you don't have any grades yet. Sometimes universities can ask for preliminary grades, so it is best to contact the graduate admissions officer and ask for details, especially since it can vary between universities.

Thanks! I actually just insert 0 and explain it in my SoP.

I think the safest and most reasonable thing that you could do is to make a phone call to the department that you are applying to as soon as possible and inform them of your situation. They will tend to have an answer because of the volume of applications they have taken in over the years, odds are, they've come across "you" more than a handful of times.


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Can I submit my paper somewhere else during rebuttal period?
During a rebuttal period, with reviews that show a strong indication of overall reject, can I submit the paper to another venue (without violating concurrent submission rules)? The submission deadline in the other venue is before the final response of the current venue.

The unedited question opened with "If the rebuttal responses show a strong indication of overall reject," which doesn't seem right. I presume the OP mean "reviews" rather than "rebuttal responses," so I edited. @seq: Please revise if you meant something else

It's a paper from a presentation at a conference intended for the published proceedings? It concerns me the conference might have some proprietary interest in the paper, especially if there was any financial support given to the presentation. It might not even be acceptable to withdraw and then submit elsewhere. Though I am by no means confident of this point.

Can I submit my paper somewhere else during rebuttal period?

No: Your paper is under review, submitting elsewhere would be a parallel submission. You could withdraw your paper and then submit elsewhere. Albeit, withdrawal seems unethical at this late stage.

You may also consider "decline to revise" (if available) prior to notifying the editor of the withdrawal.

@user3024069 decline to revise surely isn't available during a rebuttal period, since authors are being asked to respond to reviews, so there's nothing to decline. I suppose authors could decline to respond, but the paper remains under review.

"withdrawal seems unethical at this late stage." Why, though? If they liked to see the paper at the conference, they shouldn't have given it an assessment that is clearly leaning towards rejection.

After all, the overall review period would probably be shorter if they didn't have a rebuttal phase. In that sense, not allowing that papers with a clearly negative evaluation are withdrawn (by deeming it unethical) feels like "taking the papers hostage".

Re. "withdrawal seems unethical at this late stage" - withdrawing a submission after negative reviews isn't uncommon, from what I've seen, nor is it considered unethical. Indeed, some conferences (e.g. ICLR) have a formal withdrawal policy (see https://iclr.cc/Conferences/2020/CallForPapers), which suggests it's perfectly normal and not frowned upon. As they say, "Authors have the right to withdraw papers from consideration at any time until paper notification." Many authors have exercised that right this year: https://openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.cc/2020/Conference#withdrawn-submissions

#Stuart Golodetz of course one can withdraw its own work, but doing so after starting A REBUTTAL does not seem logical neither correct. Rebuttal isn't addressing the referee comment, is refusal of those very comment at first. It is quite a drastic solution which involves the editor time and assessment more than usual. As an editor I would be very disappointed if someone started a rebuttal then withdraw the paper.

@Alchimista: I think 'rebuttal' may mean different things in our respective contexts. In my field (computer vision), many conferences have a rebuttal period (of usually around a week) once the initial reviews for a paper are released to the authors, during which time the authors are invited to respond to the reviewers ("rebut" their comments). It's quite normal for authors to decide to withdraw their submission after the rebuttal period has started, as a result of receiving negative reviews (indeed, they only see the negative reviews at that point). How does your field work?

If you want to submit elsewhere, the proper course is to formally withdraw your paper. Send a note to the editor. Then you are free to submit elsewhere. Don't make assumptions.