Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they
conceal is vital.
- Aaron Levenstein
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
GRF!!!
The NSF has finally ended the suspense....I got the fellowship!!!! Woo hoo!!!!
Ok, now I will take my immature celebratory whooping offline....but yay!!!
Ok, now I will take my immature celebratory whooping offline....but yay!!!
Sunday, April 05, 2009
"Scheduled Maintenance"
So, the NSF's GRFP page has a notice that the site will be "unavailable Sunday, April 5 from 5:00PM ET until 12:00AM ET on Monday, April 6 for scheduled maintenance."
Maybe this could this be an indicator that they're uploading the awardee information. Or am I just being hypervigilant? Last year the winners of the grant were posted on the 1st, so I have been in a state of constant anxiety waiting for the announcement this year. I should have taken it for granted (no pun intended, I promise) that the year I apply will be the one in which everything is delayed . . . but maybe the maintenance message is a cryptic light at the end of the tunnel? We shall see tomorrow. . .
Maybe this could this be an indicator that they're uploading the awardee information. Or am I just being hypervigilant? Last year the winners of the grant were posted on the 1st, so I have been in a state of constant anxiety waiting for the announcement this year. I should have taken it for granted (no pun intended, I promise) that the year I apply will be the one in which everything is delayed . . . but maybe the maintenance message is a cryptic light at the end of the tunnel? We shall see tomorrow. . .
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Chrysocyon Baby Pictures
I am putting together the PowerPoint version of my honors thesis to present at our undergrad research forum next week, and so am scrounging Google images for maned wolf pictures. They have miserable reproductive success in captivity (details in the thesis!), so there aren't too many pictures of pups, but this one absolutely melted my heart and I have to share:
Poor kid looks like he already knows his species is on the brink. And look at that little tail! Bless his heart . . .but I think the next one wins the prize . . . who knew your offspring's ears make good toothbrushes?
And some human raised pups:
And one last one, now we know how their legs get so long, baby yoga:
(Image 1 credit, Image 2 credit, Image 3 credit, Image 4 credit)
Poor kid looks like he already knows his species is on the brink. And look at that little tail! Bless his heart . . .but I think the next one wins the prize . . . who knew your offspring's ears make good toothbrushes?
And some human raised pups:And one last one, now we know how their legs get so long, baby yoga:
(Image 1 credit, Image 2 credit, Image 3 credit, Image 4 credit)
Saturday, March 28, 2009
GRF Season
The graduate school search has been inching along over the past few months. I applied to about five schools, visited three, and am now down to deciding between my top two choices. As with everything else in the country these days, finances and funding issues are unfairly large factors as well. I applied for the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship grant back in November, and after months and months of patient waiting, notification season is upon us. Awardees are supposed to be receiving their letters over the next week or so.
I have been putting the little red flag up on my mailbox every day, even though I have no outgoing mail, just so I can tell at a glance when the mail has been delivered. But even when I see the mail has been delivered, I wait all afternoon and make myself complete the day's list of work and writing goals before actually checking it, just in case the letter has come, because I know that once I recieve the news, for better or for worse, I'll be too worked up to accomplish anything for the rest of the day.
At this point I'm not even really having anxiety over the fellowship itself, the main concern is that this award pretty much determines which school I'll be attending in the fall. I would like to know, already! But I am stuck in neutral as far as decision-making until I get word on the GRF.
So, that is the current status on my quest to become a graduate student. I have found a really great job for the summer, but am holding off on blogging about it until it is 100% certain, still waiting for all the paperwork to go through.
Pondering Pikaia has been neglected recently, I intend to be a better updater in the near future. In case you missed the announcement earlier this year, science news and research blogging has moved to Endless Forms over at the Nature Network, and PP is going to be more of a chronicle of my (hopefully) continuing progress through the world of academia.
Meanwhile, is anyone else awaiting notification about the GRF? Any stories about the experience from people who have applied in the past?
I have been putting the little red flag up on my mailbox every day, even though I have no outgoing mail, just so I can tell at a glance when the mail has been delivered. But even when I see the mail has been delivered, I wait all afternoon and make myself complete the day's list of work and writing goals before actually checking it, just in case the letter has come, because I know that once I recieve the news, for better or for worse, I'll be too worked up to accomplish anything for the rest of the day.
At this point I'm not even really having anxiety over the fellowship itself, the main concern is that this award pretty much determines which school I'll be attending in the fall. I would like to know, already! But I am stuck in neutral as far as decision-making until I get word on the GRF.
So, that is the current status on my quest to become a graduate student. I have found a really great job for the summer, but am holding off on blogging about it until it is 100% certain, still waiting for all the paperwork to go through.
Pondering Pikaia has been neglected recently, I intend to be a better updater in the near future. In case you missed the announcement earlier this year, science news and research blogging has moved to Endless Forms over at the Nature Network, and PP is going to be more of a chronicle of my (hopefully) continuing progress through the world of academia.
Meanwhile, is anyone else awaiting notification about the GRF? Any stories about the experience from people who have applied in the past?
Monday, February 09, 2009
Darwin Tweets?
So, yesterday Bora and I had fun joking about what Charles Darwin would have been like on Twitter. We came up with some hypothetical yet reasonable ideas:
Me: @arwallace Damn!
and
Bora: @rowen next time I'll block you!
Today I thought of a couple more:
@agassiz i can has barnacles?
@huxley down, boy
@drgully i'd like to see you try the wet wrap for a change!*
So, in honor of Darwin Day on Thursday, I thought it would be fun to solicit more ideas, make up your own Darwin tweets and post them in the comments! Remember Tweets must be 140 characters or less.
(Note: Someone has actually created Twitter accounts for both Darwin and Wallace, but they haven't been too active as of yet, and I trust the creativity/absurdity of Pondering Pikaia readers to get the creative juices flowing!). EDIT: it has come to my attention that there are two accounts for Darwin, the one I originally found was charles_darwin, but cdarwin is a good one, active and informative too!
*Dr. Gully was the physician at Malvern, a medical resort where Darwin frequently sought treatment for his various infirmities and ailments. The treatments were decidedly unconventional, involving exposure to cold showers, being wrapped in cold wet sheets, etc etc.
Me: @arwallace Damn!
and
Bora: @rowen next time I'll block you!
Today I thought of a couple more:
@agassiz i can has barnacles?
@huxley down, boy
@drgully i'd like to see you try the wet wrap for a change!*
So, in honor of Darwin Day on Thursday, I thought it would be fun to solicit more ideas, make up your own Darwin tweets and post them in the comments! Remember Tweets must be 140 characters or less.
(Note: Someone has actually created Twitter accounts for both Darwin and Wallace, but they haven't been too active as of yet, and I trust the creativity/absurdity of Pondering Pikaia readers to get the creative juices flowing!). EDIT: it has come to my attention that there are two accounts for Darwin, the one I originally found was charles_darwin, but cdarwin is a good one, active and informative too!
*Dr. Gully was the physician at Malvern, a medical resort where Darwin frequently sought treatment for his various infirmities and ailments. The treatments were decidedly unconventional, involving exposure to cold showers, being wrapped in cold wet sheets, etc etc.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
ScienceOnline09 Conference Update
I thought that last year's ScienceOnline conference was great, but this year has had even more sessions, more people, and more fascinating topics. (I got a huge kick out of Henry Gee's summary in poetry form). I missed the evening banquet tonight because of a slight emergency back home that I needed to handle, but the day was jam-packed with tons of blog goodness. I haven't been liveblogging, but I do have a review of the talks I attended today:
First up: Blog-To-Book, moderated by Dave Munger and Tom Levenson. Dave and Tom told us about the role that blogging has played in their experiences with writing print books, and we discussed various issues involved in writing for books vs blogs. Some of the items mentioned were adjusting for a different audience, changing the structure from reporting to truly telling a structured story, and some discussion of why some bloggers want to try writing books. Is it because we feel our writing isn't truly legitimized by blogging, is it for fame and fortune, was it the writing goal even pre-blog? Does blogging help a writer to narrow down their interests for the book, or is it a diversion of time and effort? Someone (can't remember who, sorry!) drew the analogy that a blog entry is to a book what a YouTube video is to a feature film. Overall a very interesting discussion.
Next: Transitions: Changing Your Online Persona as Your Real Life Changes, moderated by ScienceWoman and PropterDoc. I was very interested in this one, as I am approaching graduate school and contemplating how the transition between schools, advisors, and projects will affect my blogging. There was lots of good discussion about pros and cons to being anonymous, how to maintain an online presence without detriment to family/career, and other related topics. Some issues of the difference between the experience of men vs women were given a lot of time, as were the generational overhaul that seems to be slowly coming around, as newer professors can seem to be more comfortable with the idea of blogging than older advisors.
My last session of the morning was Teaching College Science: Blogs and Beyond, moderated by Andrea Novicki and Brian Switek. I am currently a UTA for freshman Honors Organismal Biology, and hope to attain a faculty position some day, so I made sure to attend this one. There were many ideas presented on the advantages and challenges to using blogs in college classrooms. They can be great ways to engage reluctant learners or students who are more comfortable expressing themselves in writing than speaking up in class. Also, it's a great way to present supplemental material and encourage students to delve into the subject matter further in a less regimented, more exploratory way. It could become unwieldy for large classes, though, and there are also privacy issues. Overall, however, the ideas for innovative strategies and beneficial results were very encouraging.
After lunch came the session in which I was a panelist: Blogging Adventure: How to Post from Strange Locations. The other panelists were Kevin Zelnio, Rick MacPherson, Meredith Barrett, Talia Page, Karen James, and Vanessa Woods. We started off with an interactive simulation of blogging in the field, complete with flashing lights, pinching bugs, and pen-stealing anglerfish. If the whole blogging thing falls through, we should set up an amusement park. Then we all shared our stories of blogging from the field, and talked about technical challenges, time constraints, and other obstacles to updating from remote areas. We also talked about why blogging from the field is important: it helps to maintain a connection to the outside world and update family and friends, gets people interested in science, and provides a social context for scientific research. I currently have a proposal under review for my master's thesis, but if it comes through I will have a brand new adventure blogging opportunity in the coming year...stay tuned!
Finally, I attended How to Become a Paid Science Journalist: Advice for Bloggers, moderated by Tom Levenson and Rebecca Skloot. This included lots of great advice on how to pitch ideas to magazines, the importance of remaining aware that editors will judge your writing from any and all of your blog posts, etc.
So, that was my day! Keep in mind that there are four concurrent session in each time slot at this conference, so there is much more going on than one person can relate! Keep an eye on Bora's blog aggregations of the conference updates of writers from all across the science blogosphere.
I have had a great time, but tomorrow I am fleeing these arctic temperatures and heading back to Alabama. I've had a great time meeting and trading ideas with so many people this weekend, and I'm already looking forward to the 2010 conference!
First up: Blog-To-Book, moderated by Dave Munger and Tom Levenson. Dave and Tom told us about the role that blogging has played in their experiences with writing print books, and we discussed various issues involved in writing for books vs blogs. Some of the items mentioned were adjusting for a different audience, changing the structure from reporting to truly telling a structured story, and some discussion of why some bloggers want to try writing books. Is it because we feel our writing isn't truly legitimized by blogging, is it for fame and fortune, was it the writing goal even pre-blog? Does blogging help a writer to narrow down their interests for the book, or is it a diversion of time and effort? Someone (can't remember who, sorry!) drew the analogy that a blog entry is to a book what a YouTube video is to a feature film. Overall a very interesting discussion.
Next: Transitions: Changing Your Online Persona as Your Real Life Changes, moderated by ScienceWoman and PropterDoc. I was very interested in this one, as I am approaching graduate school and contemplating how the transition between schools, advisors, and projects will affect my blogging. There was lots of good discussion about pros and cons to being anonymous, how to maintain an online presence without detriment to family/career, and other related topics. Some issues of the difference between the experience of men vs women were given a lot of time, as were the generational overhaul that seems to be slowly coming around, as newer professors can seem to be more comfortable with the idea of blogging than older advisors.
My last session of the morning was Teaching College Science: Blogs and Beyond, moderated by Andrea Novicki and Brian Switek. I am currently a UTA for freshman Honors Organismal Biology, and hope to attain a faculty position some day, so I made sure to attend this one. There were many ideas presented on the advantages and challenges to using blogs in college classrooms. They can be great ways to engage reluctant learners or students who are more comfortable expressing themselves in writing than speaking up in class. Also, it's a great way to present supplemental material and encourage students to delve into the subject matter further in a less regimented, more exploratory way. It could become unwieldy for large classes, though, and there are also privacy issues. Overall, however, the ideas for innovative strategies and beneficial results were very encouraging.
After lunch came the session in which I was a panelist: Blogging Adventure: How to Post from Strange Locations. The other panelists were Kevin Zelnio, Rick MacPherson, Meredith Barrett, Talia Page, Karen James, and Vanessa Woods. We started off with an interactive simulation of blogging in the field, complete with flashing lights, pinching bugs, and pen-stealing anglerfish. If the whole blogging thing falls through, we should set up an amusement park. Then we all shared our stories of blogging from the field, and talked about technical challenges, time constraints, and other obstacles to updating from remote areas. We also talked about why blogging from the field is important: it helps to maintain a connection to the outside world and update family and friends, gets people interested in science, and provides a social context for scientific research. I currently have a proposal under review for my master's thesis, but if it comes through I will have a brand new adventure blogging opportunity in the coming year...stay tuned!
Finally, I attended How to Become a Paid Science Journalist: Advice for Bloggers, moderated by Tom Levenson and Rebecca Skloot. This included lots of great advice on how to pitch ideas to magazines, the importance of remaining aware that editors will judge your writing from any and all of your blog posts, etc.
So, that was my day! Keep in mind that there are four concurrent session in each time slot at this conference, so there is much more going on than one person can relate! Keep an eye on Bora's blog aggregations of the conference updates of writers from all across the science blogosphere.
I have had a great time, but tomorrow I am fleeing these arctic temperatures and heading back to Alabama. I've had a great time meeting and trading ideas with so many people this weekend, and I'm already looking forward to the 2010 conference!
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