I often say to grad students: a reasonable thing to aim for in grad school is ~2-3 essentially complete and posted papers, alongside your JMP. This often looks like your JMP, plus your 2nd-yr paper, a paper from RA'ing for a faculty, or from working with classmates

Of course, some people get top jobs with only one very, very good paper. This is very risky though - you don't know ex-ante whether your paper will be very good! Most schools care about productivity, so having a couple of completed papers helps

Even if the papers are not change-the-world papers. Also, it exercises your paper-writing muscle. Not everyone comes into grad school ready to write ECMA's!

One "mistake" I sometimes see is some students don't take the 2nd year paper seriously enough. That's basically your only big milestone other than your JMP, so if all the time you put into the 2nd year paper doesn't produce a draft, that's a pretty big time sink

Another mistake, ironically, is taking field class paper requirements too seriously. If you take 3 field classes a quarter, 3 quarters, that's 12 papers! There's no way you can write a different one for each class

⭐ I’m a frontend dev. I work mainly w/HTML, CSS, & JS

last year I built stuff that doesn’t sound like frontend work:

- custom APIs and DBs (both GraphQL & REST)
- user dashboards
- video manipulation

but it all *felt* comfortable & within my skillset

how? a thread: 🧵

I do all sorts of demos and "hello world" projects, but I want to focus on real-world apps only in this thread. specifically, I'll talk about this production project:

✨ Jamstack Explorers 👩‍🚀

this is a load-bearing app that a lot of people depend on

to build Jamstack Explorers, we needed:

🗄 a custom database to track mission progress
📝 a content management system
🔐 user authentication
🎬 video manipulation

we were a small team of frontend devs and we needed to ship quickly — this was a daunting todo list 😅

🗄 custom database

using @HasuraHQ Cloud, we were able to create a new DB, configure it, and test the API all from a web interface — no config files or server setup required

we got it running in a day & I never felt like I was in over my head, even though DBs make me nervous!

📝 content management

we chose @sanity_io as a CMS. we used their CLI + JSON schema to set it up for Markdown + @mdx_js, exposed through a GraphQL API

the docs were great — it still felt like I was well within my frontend wheelhouse while we set this up

APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOL, POST #18: INTERVIEWS (PART 4)

You've finished your interview(s) and you're tired, but it's not over quite yet! What should you do after interviews?

@OpenAcademics @PhDVoice #AcademicChatter #AcademicTwitter #phdchat #gradschool #firstgen #nontraditional

Firstly, congratulate yourself for making it through the interview! Take some time to relax and reflect on your experience, especially if you have forthcoming interviews for other programs. Take note of questions and positive and negative moments that stuck out to you.

*Huge note: PLEASE try not to beat yourself up too much if you didn't know the answer to every question in the interview. Depending on the type of interview (and interviewer) you had, there might have been many difficult questions presented to you, specifically for the purpose...

of not only seeing how much you know, but also seeing how you think and process problems when you *don't* know the answers. If you can, reason your way through the question and explain yourself as well as you can, so that they can see your way of thinking, but if you truly...

have no idea, it's perfectly fine to just say that you don't know, as opposed to rambling nonsensically and hopelessly.

That was all to say, try to make notes of tough questions so that you can be prepared for similar questions in the future, but don't beat yourself up if you...

Many of us are about to begin a new semester of online teaching. The learning curve for moving my lecture units last semester was STEEP, so I compiled some sort of hand over notes to people approaching this for the first time. I hope it's useful for someone somewhere.

Reduction in the amount of content was important. What used to be 2 x 1 hr in-person lectures/week had to be condensed down into 6 x 10 minute prerecorded videos (aka aynchronounous content) with 1 x hr live zoom session (synchronous). Even that was too much.

For the sake of yourself and your students, SLASH. Slash your content down. This doesn't mean having to lose important stuff, but keeping it short and sweet.

10 minute video chunks was just about short enough to hold attention. Have you tried watching an online lecture? It is HARD to maintain focus. The shorter the better.

Importantly, each 10 minute video had an explicit Intended Learning Objective given at the end and in the associated text, so that everyone knew what the point was (and how this might relate to assessment later).

Dear postgraduate students

Everyone says selecting your supervisor(s) will make or break obtaining your degree with a sound mind. This is true. So here are a few of my own tips on just how to do that. I hope it helps.

(Thread)

1. Know what you need from the get-go. As people, and as students, we need different things to succeed. Ensure you know what this is for you and make your search and eventual selection of a supervisor based on that.

2. How do you know which academic does what? Either email a number of potential academics or organise a quick in-person/online meeting with them to discuss their respective research interests. You can either align yourself to these or ask if they’re willing to take you on but...

...supervise a topic outside of their own research interests. It’s not unheard of but just depends on them.

3. Ask them about their supervision style, what works for them and assess whether that sounds like it would work for you. You can love their research topics but if you feel like they won’t be a good enough supervisor, find someone else. Remember you’re going to be spending...

What does it take to sustain screwiness in the way the world works? Mostly, it's just good people, trying their best to get us to a better place... within constraints which pretty much preclude us actually getting anywhere! A case in point with

These authors come across as hugely committed to something we might all agree upon: improving young people's experiences of physical education through better school-based-interventions. Sounds great? Agreed, & pretty much everything about their study models best practice 🥳

Sadly, established "best practice" involves further embedding the medicalisation of PE as if it should be about the potential contribution of physical activity to everything from quality of life, self-perception & cognition to the likelyhood of becoming healthy & active adults 🤯

We're reminded of the Chief Medical Officer's "recommended guidelines of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day for healthy growth and development" 👇 This is a focus on what we can easily measure (generic) rather than on what we might value (individual).

We get recognition that PE "is not merely an opportunity for children to engage in PA" but that's linked to its role in "the development of knowledge & skills to foster their PA engagement throughout life" - so further focus on health outcomes. A long way from @meaningfulPE 🙄

1/ 🚨BREAKING: Lawsuit filed today against educational agencies, teachers, principal, & CEO responsible for hosting workshops requiring children to make public professions about their racial, sexual, gender & religious identities, some of which were singled out for interrogation.

2/ Educators directed the plaintiff "to reveal his identities in a controlled, yet non-private setting, to scrutiny and official labeling," and are "coercing him to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm."

3/ The educators "repeatedly threatened William Clark with material harm including a failing grade and non-graduation if he failed to comply with their requirements."

4/ Plaintiffs claim that the educators' "coercive and intrusive behavior compelled William Clark’s protected speech and invaded his privacy, violating his constitutional rights under the First Amendment and his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment."

5/ The new curriculum, based on Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, was done stealthily: "The generic name and syllabi provided to parents remained the same," and "parents were not made aware of the ideological turn in the curriculum."

New Report: Funding students instead of institutions in Georgia

School is an astonishing failure of modern society.

We're taught about dinosaurs before learning how to function as people.

Thread: Life lessons I wish school taught all of us.

Schools don't teach us to:

• Think critically
• Nurture curiosity
• Save and prep taxes
• Sustain relationships
• Have difficult convos
• Navigate mental health

Yet they teach how to:

• Differentiate dinosaurs
• Memorize the periodic table
• Make paper snowflakes

Why is school curriculum so broken?

1. Awareness: Those in power don't realize how bad it is.

2. Priorities: It's not a pressing issue. Voters care about the cost of education—not enough about WHAT is taught.

3. What to do: Shout to the politicians and educators in power.

Onto the lessons I wish I was taught.

These are the ones on my mind lately. This list could be 1,000 items long. Add yours to the thread.

Here we go.

Many relationship troubles emerge from one root cause:

Assuming bad intent.

One of the highest ROI things we can teach our children:

Start by assuming good intent: Train your reflex to ask questions before making assumptions.

Always lead with curiosity—never critique.

The way the club has got into this mess is of course mismanagement going back years, but we are where we are.

Dont expect to much vs Chelsea, but BHA and WB they need results, or frankly he's gone, and then what.

As much as i want to blame the owners, they have overseen an overhaul that has given much if not all of the shaping of the club over to Edu. So yes, its on them, but its also on him, and frankly he has been inept.

First one that needs to be shown the door, and if you sack MA then Edu needs to be gone at the same time. Someone on the board, who is based in this country needs to be appointed to oversee with checks and balances on whats going on.

Edu allowed the shaping of the squad in the summer, trying to ostracise players so that they leave and then of course they dont, has allowed for a situation that off field, players have taken sides. This has seeped through the squad and the club is broken because of it.

🧵1) I don't know if my view is appreciated or puzzling to the professor and students in my seminar course on the conquest narratives. It's been enlightening in some ways because it has started to prove my theory that there is a hermeneutic for those who are #ActuallyAutistic

🧵2) I have been quite appreciative of the voices I have connected with, especially here on Twitter (@robertjmonson, @JoLuehmann, etc) that have expanded the space of interpretation I take into consideration when approaching the biblical text.

🧵3) While one cannot be wholly objective about a text (Hermeneutics 101), it has helped me develop a stronger empathy for "interpretations from the edge," minority and philosophical interpretations. Admittedly, this also stems from my own baggage with Evangelicalism.

🧵4) What I learned from the flavor of Evangelicalism I was exposed to in college has more or less been designed to exclude (read: ignore) other voices because of 1) its deep roots in American Imperialism and 2) its implicit ties to a passive form of white supremacy.

🧵5) If you don't believe that, you needn't look much further than the previous presidential administration. Chris Hedges, in his book "American Fascists", connects religious conservatism to fascism, which is "a kind of colonization," according to Rev. Davidson Loehr.

The Copywriter’s Guide to Buyer Persona

•••THREAD•••

1. Define a Background

For this thread we will be selling Mass Gainer protein shakes to college men that want to gain weight.

Go deep and make a full profile up of one of these people.

You want to include:
> age
> job
> what they do in free time
> what they’re feeling

Example:

Brad is a junior in college (21 years old). He does work during the week and parties on the weekends.

He started going to the gym with his friends but isn’t really seeing results. He’s starting to get frustrated and wants to find a cure to his problems.

2. Define Their Goals and Challenges

When you define these things, you can use them in your copy.

Painting your ideal customer’s pain points throughout your copy is important.

You need to show them that they have a problem, and you can solve.

Example:

Brad is fairly skinny and wants to gain weight fast.

He’s tried eating more but can’t eat enough, or maybe he eats the wrong things.

Whatever it might be, it’s not working and he’s getting frustrated.

If You Want a Voice in NYC Education, You Must Vote for Mayor in the Primaries - Deadline to Register for the Primaries is February 14.

https://t.co/VGqli10Owu

Thread 1/

The Next Mayor Will Determine the Fate of Public Education in NYC: The Mayor will determine whether the city cuts or protects education budgets and whether highly successful G&T Programs are abolished or made more accessible and expanded to every district in the city. 2/

He or she will determine whether 8th graders have access to Algebra, Arts and Regents level science classes and will determine whether NYC’s selective high schools stay selective or dole out seats via lottery. 3/

Mayor and other NYC Races Decided in the Primaries:

The election is not until Nov, but the vast majority of NYC elections are won by the winner of the Democratic primary. So most NYC elections are effectively decided in June. 4/

To Vote in a Party’s Primary, You Must Register to Vote as an Affiliate of that Party

To vote in the Democrat, Republican or any other party’s primary, you must submit a voter registration and check that you are registering with that party. 5/

It's been hot takes on LGBTQ. Let's get some Islamic edu on "gender nonconformity" i.e. "identifying as a gender different from what was assigned at birth."

There're 64 genders* today—not just male/female anymore. Anything of such & how's gender established in Islam?

THREAD

Is gender about anatomy (the genital you were born with) or personal decision?

That's summarily the question this thread seeks to illuminate as per Islamic perspective. It doesn't matter if you're a Muslim or not. So far you're a knowledge-seeker and here for that, be my guest.

Like you're probably confused about the LGBTQ arguments, some persons around are confused about their biological sex and gender. The exact reason they (the few real ones among them - not trans) appear noncomformist.

This problem is called gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria is the feeling of unease that occurs in people whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth or genitals (sex-related physical characteristics).

See attachments on gender identity, gender expression & sexual orientation. All.. different things.

Forward. Is there anything different from male/female known to Islam? Yes, there're gender-atypical persons.

1. The ambiguous khunthā (al-khunthā al-mushkil)
2. The congenital mukhannath (al-mukhannath al-khilqī)
3. The non-congenital mukhannath (al-mukhannath ghayr al-khilqī)