11 ms·

Things you are allowed to do, academic edition

157 points by Topolomancer 5y ago

tsumnia 5y ago
It's been a crazy surprise during my time as a PhD Student that I can just email or book time to chat with notable experts because I've had questions for my own research. I wouldn't say people don't because they're scared, but more they just don't realize they can.
j7ake 5y ago
Are there any success stories of people becoming a mentor to someone because of a cold email? That sounds like a lot to ask for considering how much time it takes to mentor.
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  I am mentoring at least one researcher because they reached out to me like this. But it's a good point; I'm not sure how successful the strategy is overall
- ISL 5y ago
  If you're an undergraduate at a research institution, the odds are extremely high (>>20%). Similar if you're a graduate student/postdoc. Almost every undergraduate I've taken on has been the result of a cold email with clear intent/interest. If you're coming in from outside academia, be prepared to have useful skills/knowledge to bring to the collaboration and a clear ability to commit enough time to be valuable. Expect a much lower conversion-rate. Most people that academics encounter with cold emails (at least in physics) from the outside are insufficiently prepared or advancing a pet (usually demonstrably-incorrect) theory. If you email the right person with, "Hi, ISL! I'm j7ake, and have a ton of experience with X (link to resume) and am really interested in learning more about experimental gravitational physics. I've read several of your papers [1,2,3], and your work is really interesting. It looks like you might be able to use X to improve your results with Y -- might you have a little time to answer some questions about your group's work and see if there's a way I might be able to help you put X to good use? Thank you! j7ake" you'll get replies.
  - dorchadas 5y ago
    I hope. I'm waiting for replies from two professors I emailed asking about advice for a PhD and how to pursue it. I even included my proposal and how I'd go about it. One of them, at least, mentioned taking PhD students and the other is at the school that'd be best for it (due to proximity to where I'd be doing field work). Both mentioned a research interest in the topic too. I even emailed from another university in the country's account. I've also emailed another academic over a month ago about an article he wrote abiut a type of non-profit I'd love to set up, and haven't heard back. Though when I emailed him last year it did take 6 weeks to respond. I just wrote this to say I feel it's very hit or miss, depending on the academic in question.
  - decsser 5y ago
    This correlates with my experience. I hustled my way into a only paid undergrad research assistant role that didn't previously exist at a top-tier infosec lab doing IPS/IDS work and helping grad students fix their code. It was necessary as there were too many applicants for too few menial campus jobs.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    Any chance without an undergraduate degree?
    - ISL 5y ago
      The sample approach above was really intended for anyone coming in to academia from the outside (young students need not necessarily have any skill to offer and only need to show clear intent/interest/competence). If you can bring value to the relationship (sometimes interest is enough, but not always), that will make a big difference. An HN-specific skill that might provide a mutually-beneficial "in": An ambitious experimental collaboration run by some of my physics colleagues once engaged some CS students to overhaul the collaboration's web-page. The result was one of the nicest research webpages in the (large) department. Offering something like, "I'd really love to learn a lot more about your research -- I've built out a number of sites [1,2,3]. Could I work with you to improve your research group's page in return for helping me understand the subject-matter better as I go?" may get some replies. Make sure the relationship is mutually-beneficial and not exploitative :) (at a minimum, it can go on your resume).
- JackOfCrows 5y ago
  I haven't been formally mentored but at work and in school I have had a lot of luck with "what you do sounds interesting and I would love to know more about it," including with the Dean of my department who (I assume) is pretty busy. I imagine there are jerks out there but honestly for a lot of people this is something they have poured a lot of themselves into (especially in academia) and its nice when someone is new but actually really interested.
- Cd00d 5y ago
  8 months after graduating college, I realized I missed solving physics problems. I drove to the nearest university, walked into the physics department office, and asked to speak to the chair. The chair was busy, but the vice-chair was more than happy to chat for 20 minutes. The vice-chair then took me to a researcher's office, and we chatted for half an hour. That researcher then introduced me to a group professor, who offered my an unpaid-technician job a few days a week. After a couple months happily toiling in the lab, often alongside the PI, I was asked to change to a full-time paid position. A year into that the PI asked me to join the graduate college. I earned a PhD from the group 6 years later. It all worked very nicely for me, and every person was lovely and encouraging through the whole process - regardless of my audacity in asking for the chair!
- walleeee 5y ago
  Worked for me. Cold emailed a prof asking for advice on how to enter a particular field I had never seriously studied before. He hired me as a staff programmer, helped orient me to self-study the topic, and encouraged me to apply for grad school in the same program. He is now my advisor. I think a lot of PIs in less popular fields struggle to find computationally proficient candidates. There is a massive glut of software talent in certain hot-button domains and a huge shortage in others
jarenmf 5y ago
I've had great luck with cold emailing scientists with interesting questions or asking for code, I almost always got interesting and lengthy answers even from famous scientists in the field whom you'd expect to be super busy.
- staticautomatic 5y ago
  I once emailed the cognitive linguist and author George Lakoff out of the blue to ask him what he thought about this obnoxious rhetorical convention of putting things into “buckets” and he replied, attaching a paper he’d written about buckets being an arbitrary metaphor. It was thrilling and very educational!
- decsser 5y ago
  This is often the case but I would never expect a response. I used to work with some PhD CS / MD / IITians / TED speakers. By-and-large, top people tend to skew towards celebrity-like personalities: bifurcating into highly-socialized or misanthropic. Most are highly-socialized as it's academia. My general rule-set is "impose as least as possible, ask something only they would know, and don't waste anyone's time."
- newsbinator 5y ago
  > even from famous scientists in the field whom you'd expect to be super busy. On a given Tuesday, are famous scientists in the field super-busy? I honestly have no guess and would believe either answer.
  - radus 5y ago
    Yes. Writing/editing papers, grants, grant renewals, dealing with graduate students (mentoring, defenses/other events), post-docs (mentoring, job applications), meetings (with lab, department), consulting, occasional lecturing -- and that's only scratching the surface..
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    My rule of thumb is that anyone who is near the top of any field of human endeavor is going to be super-busy at all times. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be where they are.
bachmeier 5y ago
> Ask someone for a potential collaboration. I have received many cold emails asking for this over the years (many more after becoming an editor for obvious reasons). Given my schedule and my research backlog, I'm unlikely to accept such an offer. What I find odd is that the requests almost always involve topics nowhere near my research expertise. The worst ones include something like, "After going through your publication record, I see that you are an expert on this topic...". You should not expect a response. I create a new email filter to be sure I never spend time on your messages again.
- iamcreasy 5y ago
  What's good way to ask for help? I am a graduate student and sometimes I stumble on problems that I think could be solved by talking to an senior researcher for about 30 minutes. But I don't know how to approach.
  - mellavora 5y ago
    <former academic> I've found it helpful to write the letter to the senior researcher. Be prepared to make 4-8 drafts of the letter. The first draft is to just dump your thoughts, typically at this point mine are unorganized and incomplete. That gets fixed in the drafts/revisions. The key point is to express my problem/question in the framework which I think the senior researcher uses. And I usually find (? 3 times out of 4?) that by the time I complete this process, I have found the answer to my question. If not, I'll send the email. If they see you've put effort into thinking about it, they almost always respond positively.
- mmmmpancakes 5y ago
  This matches my experience. Collaboration is a serious undertaking and commitment. It is very unlikely that a collaboration formed out of thin air will be productive enough to justify the investment of time and effort.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  > The worst ones include something like, "After going through your publication record, I see that you are an expert on this topic...". You should not expect a response. I create a new email filter to be sure I never spend time on your messages again. Hah! That sounds like the "I came across your LinkedIn profile and was impressed by your experience" of academia. Of all the stock phrases recruiters use in their cold emails, that's got to be one of the more annoying ones. I can see why you'd block those people.
btrettel 5y ago
I recall once that I emailed someone who wrote a paper I liked very much congratulating them on the excellent paper. I didn't get a response until probably around a month later. They thanked me, said that my email made them very happy, and apologized for the delay, saying something along the lines of "Your email was so positive that I didn't know what to say in response."
- dhosek 5y ago
  I make a point of sending complimentary emails whenever I read a story or poem I really enjoy. As a writer of fiction and poetry, I know that most of the time, there's no indication that anybody ever reads our stuff, so it's always nice to find out that someone does.
  - jay3ss 5y ago
    What genre of fiction do you typically write? Anything publicly available?
    - dhosek 5y ago
      Pretty much realistic fiction. Most of it is online. A complete list is available (with links when possible) at https://www.dahosek.com/publications/ https://www.dahosek.com/publications/ One of the stories, “Bartholomew L. Bartholomew” even made it to the front page of HN.
      - jay3ss 5y ago
        Thanks for sharing. I used to enjoy writing but could never find the motivation to put pen to paper and instead read other's stories. I look forward to reading some of your work
  - Agentlien 5y ago
    I do the same whenever I read an article or blog I really enjoy. I often get responses indicating that it's appreciated. There's one excellent blog I used to follow when it was active a few years ago. It has a few posts I keep sending people links to. I realised a few months ago that I had missed the last post. Turns out it was very relevant to my current job and that the author and I now work in the same niche (graphics performance for Nintendo Switch). So I sent him a mail thanking him for the blog and saying how much I appreciate it. He replied and we had a nice back and forth.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tkgally 5y ago
After supervising graduate students for about ten years (in a field in the social sciences), I’ve started giving new M.A. students a similar bit of advice: attend research conferences, both to hear the presentations and to meet other researchers, and join academic societies. It took me a while to notice this, but I gradually came to see that students who eventually succeeded in academia—finishing their Ph.D.s on time, publishing papers, getting jobs—had usually gotten involved early in the broader academic community, while many who stumbled had had trouble breaking out of the undergraduate mentality of just taking classes and studying in the library by themselves.
srvmshr 5y ago
This is my true story: Back in 2012, I was a grad student. My advisor, for some reason, cut me loose. Most probably because he was getting a cushy administrative position elsewhere. He asked me to wrap up or leave within the semester. I was working on x-ray fluorescence. My project was far from completion, so it was not ready to be built into a thesis. Heck, my codes were not working as they should. So, I was faced with the dilemma of either changing advisors, finishing up within 2 months, or just dropping out of the program. The first is really hard given it was end of a semester. As an international student, I had financial burdens. So, the third was really not an option. I mailed a professor at Stanford, whose papers I had read. It was a blind shot. A leap of faith. A lot depended on how and if he could extend his helping hands. I explained him my situation over email, and asked him any help that he could give at that point. He not only sent me his simulation codes, but also walked me through on how to make them run or modify them. I could successfully make changes and design experiments based on those codes, to completion. As a mark of gratitude, I not only referenced him on subsequent papers on that topic, but also acknowledged him in my thesis and invited him for my oral defense. I firmly believe that most academics are nice people and they're willing to help the most they can in bailing out others and alleviating their situation. I could not have crossed that milestone without the help of Dr. Guillem Pratx.
- enriquto 5y ago
  > He asked me to wrap up or leave within the semester. That's a really shitty thing to do. Of course he could take another job, but that's no reason to abandon you! He certainly should have kept seeing you regularly, a two-hour meeting per week doesn't kill anybody. Or if that was really not possible, at least he could have arranged to co-advise your thesis with another professor. I'm happy that it turned out good for you in the end. Did your original advisor end up signing your thesis after all?
  - srvmshr 5y ago
    Some more facts: Although I am not entirely certain, he maybe did hold a grudge. His two other students knew about the move since June, but never shared. This news was broken to me on Nov 5th, 2012. This was not about performance. I had published a journal paper in my doctoral second year, wrapping up a VR project in 2012 (in a decent journal) and was 3.8+ in grad school. As you could imagine, it was terribly ill-timed for me. I could not transfer to another school. Good schools within the same standing all had deadlines between Dec 1 & Dec 15. GRE applications can take up to 6 weeks to be forwarded. I was dirt poor. My semester fee would have been $11,000 for Spring. I couldn't have paid it. No professor in a niche area as computational imaging, would take you at such a short notice. If I am unenrolled, I was effectively out to the starting line. By this timing, I have a feeling he set me up to fail in the end & crash out. He did sign the thesis (that would have had been a red flag to the department). He however withdrew financial support immediately effective that day, and didn't accept to be co-author in my journal paper[1] - just me and my pair-coding partner. [1] https://doi.org/10.1166/jmihi.2014.1307 https://doi.org/10.1166/jmihi.2014.1307

157 points by Topolomancer 5y ago

It's been a crazy surprise during my time as a PhD Student that I can just email or book time to chat with notable experts because I've had questions for my own research. I wouldn't say people don't because they're scared, but more they just don't realize they can.

j7ake 5y ago

Are there any success stories of people becoming a mentor to someone because of a cold email? That sounds like a lot to ask for considering how much time it takes to mentor.

Topolomancer 5y ago
I am mentoring at least one researcher because they reached out to me like this. But it's a good point; I'm not sure how successful the strategy is overall
ISL 5y ago
If you're an undergraduate at a research institution, the odds are extremely high (>>20%). Similar if you're a graduate student/postdoc. Almost every undergraduate I've taken on has been the result of a cold email with clear intent/interest. If you're coming in from outside academia, be prepared to have useful skills/knowledge to bring to the collaboration and a clear ability to commit enough time to be valuable. Expect a much lower conversion-rate. Most people that academics encounter with cold emails (at least in physics) from the outside are insufficiently prepared or advancing a pet (usually demonstrably-incorrect) theory. If you email the right person with, "Hi, ISL! I'm j7ake, and have a ton of experience with X (link to resume) and am really interested in learning more about experimental gravitational physics. I've read several of your papers [1,2,3], and your work is really interesting. It looks like you might be able to use X to improve your results with Y -- might you have a little time to answer some questions about your group's work and see if there's a way I might be able to help you put X to good use? Thank you! j7ake" you'll get replies.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  I hope. I'm waiting for replies from two professors I emailed asking about advice for a PhD and how to pursue it. I even included my proposal and how I'd go about it. One of them, at least, mentioned taking PhD students and the other is at the school that'd be best for it (due to proximity to where I'd be doing field work). Both mentioned a research interest in the topic too. I even emailed from another university in the country's account. I've also emailed another academic over a month ago about an article he wrote abiut a type of non-profit I'd love to set up, and haven't heard back. Though when I emailed him last year it did take 6 weeks to respond. I just wrote this to say I feel it's very hit or miss, depending on the academic in question.
- decsser 5y ago
  This correlates with my experience. I hustled my way into a only paid undergrad research assistant role that didn't previously exist at a top-tier infosec lab doing IPS/IDS work and helping grad students fix their code. It was necessary as there were too many applicants for too few menial campus jobs.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Any chance without an undergraduate degree?
  - ISL 5y ago
    The sample approach above was really intended for anyone coming in to academia from the outside (young students need not necessarily have any skill to offer and only need to show clear intent/interest/competence). If you can bring value to the relationship (sometimes interest is enough, but not always), that will make a big difference. An HN-specific skill that might provide a mutually-beneficial "in": An ambitious experimental collaboration run by some of my physics colleagues once engaged some CS students to overhaul the collaboration's web-page. The result was one of the nicest research webpages in the (large) department. Offering something like, "I'd really love to learn a lot more about your research -- I've built out a number of sites [1,2,3]. Could I work with you to improve your research group's page in return for helping me understand the subject-matter better as I go?" may get some replies. Make sure the relationship is mutually-beneficial and not exploitative :) (at a minimum, it can go on your resume).
JackOfCrows 5y ago
I haven't been formally mentored but at work and in school I have had a lot of luck with "what you do sounds interesting and I would love to know more about it," including with the Dean of my department who (I assume) is pretty busy. I imagine there are jerks out there but honestly for a lot of people this is something they have poured a lot of themselves into (especially in academia) and its nice when someone is new but actually really interested.
Cd00d 5y ago
8 months after graduating college, I realized I missed solving physics problems. I drove to the nearest university, walked into the physics department office, and asked to speak to the chair. The chair was busy, but the vice-chair was more than happy to chat for 20 minutes. The vice-chair then took me to a researcher's office, and we chatted for half an hour. That researcher then introduced me to a group professor, who offered my an unpaid-technician job a few days a week. After a couple months happily toiling in the lab, often alongside the PI, I was asked to change to a full-time paid position. A year into that the PI asked me to join the graduate college. I earned a PhD from the group 6 years later. It all worked very nicely for me, and every person was lovely and encouraging through the whole process - regardless of my audacity in asking for the chair!
walleeee 5y ago
Worked for me. Cold emailed a prof asking for advice on how to enter a particular field I had never seriously studied before. He hired me as a staff programmer, helped orient me to self-study the topic, and encouraged me to apply for grad school in the same program. He is now my advisor. I think a lot of PIs in less popular fields struggle to find computationally proficient candidates. There is a massive glut of software talent in certain hot-button domains and a huge shortage in others

jarenmf 5y ago

I've had great luck with cold emailing scientists with interesting questions or asking for code, I almost always got interesting and lengthy answers even from famous scientists in the field whom you'd expect to be super busy.

staticautomatic 5y ago
I once emailed the cognitive linguist and author George Lakoff out of the blue to ask him what he thought about this obnoxious rhetorical convention of putting things into “buckets” and he replied, attaching a paper he’d written about buckets being an arbitrary metaphor. It was thrilling and very educational!
decsser 5y ago
This is often the case but I would never expect a response. I used to work with some PhD CS / MD / IITians / TED speakers. By-and-large, top people tend to skew towards celebrity-like personalities: bifurcating into highly-socialized or misanthropic. Most are highly-socialized as it's academia. My general rule-set is "impose as least as possible, ask something only they would know, and don't waste anyone's time."
newsbinator 5y ago
> even from famous scientists in the field whom you'd expect to be super busy. On a given Tuesday, are famous scientists in the field super-busy? I honestly have no guess and would believe either answer.
- radus 5y ago
  Yes. Writing/editing papers, grants, grant renewals, dealing with graduate students (mentoring, defenses/other events), post-docs (mentoring, job applications), meetings (with lab, department), consulting, occasional lecturing -- and that's only scratching the surface..
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  My rule of thumb is that anyone who is near the top of any field of human endeavor is going to be super-busy at all times. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be where they are.

bachmeier 5y ago

> Ask someone for a potential collaboration. I have received many cold emails asking for this over the years (many more after becoming an editor for obvious reasons). Given my schedule and my research backlog, I'm unlikely to accept such an offer. What I find odd is that the requests almost always involve topics nowhere near my research expertise. The worst ones include something like, "After going through your publication record, I see that you are an expert on this topic...". You should not expect a response. I create a new email filter to be sure I never spend time on your messages again.

iamcreasy 5y ago
What's good way to ask for help? I am a graduate student and sometimes I stumble on problems that I think could be solved by talking to an senior researcher for about 30 minutes. But I don't know how to approach.
- mellavora 5y ago
  <former academic> I've found it helpful to write the letter to the senior researcher. Be prepared to make 4-8 drafts of the letter. The first draft is to just dump your thoughts, typically at this point mine are unorganized and incomplete. That gets fixed in the drafts/revisions. The key point is to express my problem/question in the framework which I think the senior researcher uses. And I usually find (? 3 times out of 4?) that by the time I complete this process, I have found the answer to my question. If not, I'll send the email. If they see you've put effort into thinking about it, they almost always respond positively.
mmmmpancakes 5y ago
This matches my experience. Collaboration is a serious undertaking and commitment. It is very unlikely that a collaboration formed out of thin air will be productive enough to justify the investment of time and effort.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
> The worst ones include something like, "After going through your publication record, I see that you are an expert on this topic...". You should not expect a response. I create a new email filter to be sure I never spend time on your messages again. Hah! That sounds like the "I came across your LinkedIn profile and was impressed by your experience" of academia. Of all the stock phrases recruiters use in their cold emails, that's got to be one of the more annoying ones. I can see why you'd block those people.

btrettel 5y ago

I recall once that I emailed someone who wrote a paper I liked very much congratulating them on the excellent paper. I didn't get a response until probably around a month later. They thanked me, said that my email made them very happy, and apologized for the delay, saying something along the lines of "Your email was so positive that I didn't know what to say in response."

dhosek 5y ago
I make a point of sending complimentary emails whenever I read a story or poem I really enjoy. As a writer of fiction and poetry, I know that most of the time, there's no indication that anybody ever reads our stuff, so it's always nice to find out that someone does.
- jay3ss 5y ago
  What genre of fiction do you typically write? Anything publicly available?
  - dhosek 5y ago
    Pretty much realistic fiction. Most of it is online. A complete list is available (with links when possible) at https://www.dahosek.com/publications/ https://www.dahosek.com/publications/ One of the stories, “Bartholomew L. Bartholomew” even made it to the front page of HN.
    - jay3ss 5y ago
      Thanks for sharing. I used to enjoy writing but could never find the motivation to put pen to paper and instead read other's stories. I look forward to reading some of your work
- Agentlien 5y ago
  I do the same whenever I read an article or blog I really enjoy. I often get responses indicating that it's appreciated. There's one excellent blog I used to follow when it was active a few years ago. It has a few posts I keep sending people links to. I realised a few months ago that I had missed the last post. Turns out it was very relevant to my current job and that the author and I now work in the same niche (graphics performance for Nintendo Switch). So I sent him a mail thanking him for the blog and saying how much I appreciate it. He replied and we had a nice back and forth.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tkgally 5y ago

After supervising graduate students for about ten years (in a field in the social sciences), I’ve started giving new M.A. students a similar bit of advice: attend research conferences, both to hear the presentations and to meet other researchers, and join academic societies. It took me a while to notice this, but I gradually came to see that students who eventually succeeded in academia—finishing their Ph.D.s on time, publishing papers, getting jobs—had usually gotten involved early in the broader academic community, while many who stumbled had had trouble breaking out of the undergraduate mentality of just taking classes and studying in the library by themselves.

srvmshr 5y ago

This is my true story: Back in 2012, I was a grad student. My advisor, for some reason, cut me loose. Most probably because he was getting a cushy administrative position elsewhere. He asked me to wrap up or leave within the semester. I was working on x-ray fluorescence. My project was far from completion, so it was not ready to be built into a thesis. Heck, my codes were not working as they should. So, I was faced with the dilemma of either changing advisors, finishing up within 2 months, or just dropping out of the program. The first is really hard given it was end of a semester. As an international student, I had financial burdens. So, the third was really not an option. I mailed a professor at Stanford, whose papers I had read. It was a blind shot. A leap of faith. A lot depended on how and if he could extend his helping hands. I explained him my situation over email, and asked him any help that he could give at that point. He not only sent me his simulation codes, but also walked me through on how to make them run or modify them. I could successfully make changes and design experiments based on those codes, to completion. As a mark of gratitude, I not only referenced him on subsequent papers on that topic, but also acknowledged him in my thesis and invited him for my oral defense. I firmly believe that most academics are nice people and they're willing to help the most they can in bailing out others and alleviating their situation. I could not have crossed that milestone without the help of Dr. Guillem Pratx.

enriquto 5y ago
> He asked me to wrap up or leave within the semester. That's a really shitty thing to do. Of course he could take another job, but that's no reason to abandon you! He certainly should have kept seeing you regularly, a two-hour meeting per week doesn't kill anybody. Or if that was really not possible, at least he could have arranged to co-advise your thesis with another professor. I'm happy that it turned out good for you in the end. Did your original advisor end up signing your thesis after all?
- srvmshr 5y ago
  Some more facts: Although I am not entirely certain, he maybe did hold a grudge. His two other students knew about the move since June, but never shared. This news was broken to me on Nov 5th, 2012. This was not about performance. I had published a journal paper in my doctoral second year, wrapping up a VR project in 2012 (in a decent journal) and was 3.8+ in grad school. As you could imagine, it was terribly ill-timed for me. I could not transfer to another school. Good schools within the same standing all had deadlines between Dec 1 & Dec 15. GRE applications can take up to 6 weeks to be forwarded. I was dirt poor. My semester fee would have been $11,000 for Spring. I couldn't have paid it. No professor in a niche area as computational imaging, would take you at such a short notice. If I am unenrolled, I was effectively out to the starting line. By this timing, I have a feeling he set me up to fail in the end & crash out. He did sign the thesis (that would have had been a red flag to the department). He however withdrew financial support immediately effective that day, and didn't accept to be co-author in my journal paper[1] - just me and my pair-coding partner. [1] https://doi.org/10.1166/jmihi.2014.1307 https://doi.org/10.1166/jmihi.2014.1307