I have two. I have gone as far as buying phone-book sized manuals. They stand on my desk, mocking me, exuding their “new, unused book smell”.

R

Yes, I know it is high-end, extraordinarily flexible, and doesn’t suffer from the bloat and baroque passive-agressive coding of SAS. But I know SAS. I learned SAS using punch cards. And I don’t want to sound like a pirate.

Dreamweaver CS3

Gawd I hate web design programs. It used to be MS Frontpage. An abomination. Currently I use Adobe’s Go Live! CS2. That program!, and the people behind hit!, are personally responsible for the collective loss of about 4 cm! of my stomach lining!. Now Adobe has bought Dreamweaver.  Do I have any reasonable expectation for things to be better? No. But it is integrated with all the other Adobe stuff that I do use.

So have at it. What software do you feel compelled to learn, through some combination of peer-pressure (yeah, Aaron, I’m talkin’ bout you), slick marketing (Oh! A piece of candy! Oh! Another piece of candy!), and serious issues with procrastination? Leave your approach-avoidance conflicts in the comments.

The software one uses is typically some combination of what you were trained on, what you can borrow…erm…afford, and what you, on a wild hair, decided to try out.

New software cries out like a siren. It offers new features. It will allow you to finally drop that klugey program that annoys you daily. Like the guy in the adjacent cubicle who is way too fond of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors.

But new software is also a seductive opportunity to avoid working on that manuscript. Software invariably has some incompatabilities that are not trumpeted on it’s homepage. And finally, all software has a learning curve. Before you hit that “download” button, ask yourself, “Do I really need this, or do I just really want it?”.

With that warning, if you are a MacHead, take a look at Kerry Magruder’s list of cheap effective mac apps that take on and, in his mind, supercede Microsoft Office, Endnote and a host of other programs that have been around since the Cold War. Magruder, who is a science historian, makes a compelling argument:

Are you accustomed to using one application for everything? A single “kitchen sink” application that tries to do everything usually ends up doing nothing well, while locking you in and preventing future migration to new and better tools. On a Mac, things are different. The best applications tend to be small and agile, optimized to do a small number of taks extremely well. These apps work well with others, and pass information back and forth so that you can put together your own favorite, customized suite of applications that work best for your writing and research needs. Mac users work in many different ways; the abundance of high-quality Mac software may surprise you. Also, don’t let their relative affordability fool you: these are superb apps. Rather than buying Microsoft Office, try Neo-Office and invest in some of the following instead. Soon you’ll be wondering how you ever got anything done without them.

Magruder also has an excellent page on his paperless workflow. It leads you, step by step, through the programs and protocols that start with reading and proceeds through analysis, writing, onto publication.

Go ahead. The sirens are calling.

See also:

On leaving MS Word for greener pastures

Second brain software

5 steps to capturing and storing your ideas

This is so cool.

And disturbing.

It’s coolsturbing.

All I know for certain is that this is one helluvan effective way to teach invertebrate zoology.

Daniel Pink is a keen observer of the changing workplace and its implications for the way we think about, and train for, our careers. His A Whole New Mind describes the challenges and opportunities in the transition from an “information age”-based economy to a “conceptual age”-based economy.

Now, in The Adventures of Johnny Bunko Pink has created a comic full of advice for college graduates as they prepare to enter the world of business. It is a joy to read. The manga illustrations of Rob Ten Pas give one a new appreciation of this art form. It is also meant to be digested in one sitting, and there is enough good stuff that, upon completion, you feel as if you’ve just eaten a tasty bag of nacho cheese Doritos, only to discover they are 0-fat and full of protein.

Get yourself a copy and pass it among your colleagues. It ought to spur some healthy conversation. Below the fold, I translate some of Johnny Bunko’s life lessons to the world of grad school, with a wee bit of commentary.

Think strengths, not weaknesses. Money quote: “Successful people don’t try too hard to improve what they’re bad at. They capitalize on what they’re good at.” There is always the temptation, as you plan your dissertation, to see deficits that must be remedied (e.g., an ecology Ph. D. candidate that needs to make up an undergrad course in physics). Frankly, many first committee meetings, by focusing on deficits pushing more coursework toward making everybody equal. However you will excel as a scientist when you find the handful of abilities you are naturally good at and then take those abilities to the next level. In other words, Spend time making yourself exceptional at what you are already good at. Don’t spend much time filling in potholes in your education. Instead make mountains out of your molehills.

It’s not about you. Money quote: “The most successful people improve their own lives by improving the lives of others.” Academia in general, and grad school in particular, finds one spending large sweeps of time in one’s own head. This, as a friend of mine says, is dangerous territory. One danger is that you begin to see your progress–your first course taught, your first seminar given, your first (and subsequent) publications–on purely personal terms, as achievements. However, most everything you do in academia is a service to somebody else. Your students, your audience at a national meeting, your co-authors, and the much larger audience of your publications, all benefit  from your careful, creative, empathetic work. So at the very least, keep them in mind as you write and speak; you will become a better writer and speaker. In the longer view, see yourself as an academic in a privileged position to touch the lives of others and shape the future; you will take yourself out of your head and into the world around you.

Persistence trumps talent. Money quote: “There are massive returns to doggedness. The people who achieve the most are often the ones who stick with it when others don’t.” I was in a smoky bar in western Nebraska, sitting across a table from an assistant professor. We were swilling Schlitz and talking about a joint research project. I was an undergraduate, perhaps a senior, and I had the biology bug bad. He was my mentor. As we talked, the tone became heated with the ambition of young scientists eyeing a future of discovery and chiggerbites. Then he said it: “You know, Mike, you get a job in this business by being brilliant or working your ass off. I’m not brilliant, and neither are you.” When I tell this story folks often say, man, that was harsh. But I understood the message–Ph. D.’s dissertations often fail, not for lack of basic brainpower (universities go out of their way to screen for smart students) but for lack of tenacity–the willingness to put in the hours, and the unwillingness to let temporary setbacks become permanent.

Make excellent mistakes. Money quote: “The most successful people make spectacular mistakes–huge honking screwups. Why? They’re trying to do something big.” The best dissertations take on important issues and unresolved controversies, then attack them creatively, using a variety of approaches. Reach high; aim to regularly perform research with results that raise the eyebrows of the entire scientific community, not just those from your corner of the universe. Now, fair warning, by doing this you are guaranteed to fail on occasion. Guaranteed. A flood will wash away your cages. You will fail to perform a subtle, but important control in an experiment. A completely new facet of the problem will reveal itself. But all these things can happen in a mediocre, safe, confirmatory study. Sure, include some fail-safe stuff. But if you want to change the world, just remember, nothing ventured…

Leave an imprint. Money quote: “Recognize that your life isn’t infinite, and that you should use your limited time here to do something that matters.” This nicely sums up Pink’s philosophy–by focusing your work on things that are important you will be motivated to do your best, you will never be bored, and your work will have lasting value.

Not bad for a comic book.

The things that motivate our life’s path are often only clear in retrospect. But on occasion there are those singular moments that light a fire. For me, an amazing number of those moments come with my nose buried in a book–in a coffee house, on a beach, in an airport. Something crystallizes.

I remember clearly my freshman winter at Nebraska, picking up John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez.The book is an account of an expedition to map the organisms that live in the bays and beaches of along the Baja peninsula. The characters are Steinbeck, his colleague the marine biologist Ed Ricketts,  a crew of sardine fisherman, and the variety of critters they collect along the way.

I read Log over Xmas break while hunkered down in my basement room. I fell in love with Steinbeck, whose lucid prose revealed a person with deep regard for the human race. But I also fell in love with idea of field biology: the romance of exploration and the drudgery of wading through the muck. The solitude of peering into a tidepool–miles from any other human soul–and the comraderie of the team, plowing through burlap bags of specimens while drinking cheap beer. I didn’t just want to become a biologist, after reading Log. I desperately wanted to become a biologist.

That book, and the idea it planted, helped get me through that first year of college–the huge classes with the (mostly) bored professors. And as the years passed, and I got my shot, it was with considerable delight  that I found Steinbeck had pretty much nailed it.

So, dear readers, dish. What book helped point you down the path you are on?

Lab scientists are all over the concept of keeping a laboratory notebook. This is your one-stop summary of a given project, from near-conception through publication. We field biologists, not trained at the lab bench (which tends to be conveniently flat and relatively protected from rainstorms, mud, and leeches) often find ourselves compiling the notes and assorted detritus associated with a given project in computer folders, desk drawers, and refrigerators.

Which is not to say that, at the very least, a logbook, or diary, isn’t extraordinarily useful when you find yourself juggling a variety of projects.

My protocol is to open a new file, named “_Log_projectname” in Word or (now) Omni Outliner–any program that allows you to timestamp a given entry.  The “_” at the beginning of the name is an old trick to make sure this file sits at the top of the folder, along with the manuscript files, figures, data files, etc.

Then, whenever you do something substantive on that project, you make a dated entry describing what you did. My rule of thumb?  If you open up the manuscript, work on a figure, add new data, or perform some analysis, that deserves an entry.

As an added bonus, at the end of that entry,  type out a few of the next steps you foresee in turning that project into published manuscript.

Once you have this habit down–opening up, and adding to, a “_Log” file for every project–you can confidently set it aside for a short time to work on something else. When you return, just read the “_Log” file from beginning to end to get yourself back up to speed.

Just don’t wait too long…

Exercise, avoid man-made foods, and smile, fercryinoutloud.

Lalanne is 93, btb.

h/t Boing Boing

h/t Boing Boing

“People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.”

B. R. Myers The Atlantic April 2008

Last spring, Carlos Martinez del Rio visited our program. After one discussion, I asked (as I am wont to do) if he had any advice for beginning graduate students. I recall at the time many of the faculty nodding, and some of the students looking at Carlos, looking at each other, looking at Carlos again, then looking down at their notes, slowly transcribing.

I might be mistaken, but I could have sworn I heard the muted buzz of molars grinding.

His remarks, and my commentary, below.

Carlos recommended that every student should develop two tools, at least one of which was a programming language. Since so many advances in science are limited by available technology, being a maven of molecular methods, or a guru of geographical information systems has obvious benefits (moreover, when it comes time to look for post-docs, having a useful tool can ingratiate you to future mentors). Programming, in particular, can free you from the canned software out there, allow you to explore hypotheses with simulations, and is an excellent practice in applied logic.

When I wrote Carlos recently for any follow up, he made two more points worth considering:

I believe that the programming skill is important. I also have a soft spot for knowledge about a taxon (”the virtues of monotaxophylia”). I think that it grounds you.

In ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) there is a healthy tension between folks who ask a variety of questions about a given critter, and those who ask the same question of a variety of critters. (I suspect some form of this is true in other disciplines-let me know in the comments). Each approach has its proponents. Part of it lies in the culture of your lab, and how steep the learning curve is for your critters and your theory.

It also depends on why you chose to be a scientist.

When I was a grad student, a pal of mine and I starting asking other grad students why they chose to pursue biology. The answers fell rather cleanly into two camps. “Skin-in” students (folks who work on molecules, cells, and tissues) pretty much always invoked childhood predilections for taking things apart to see how they tick, solving crossword puzzles, and the like. EEBies, in contrast, pretty much always invoked an early childhood memory of an organism: snakes, fish, hawks, and (in my case) watching a Cecropia moth emerge from it’s chrysalis (a good way to freak out a three year old, btw).

Non sequitur alert:

For what it’s worth, I think going to “critter meetings” is a helluva lot more fun than going to “question meetings”. The reasons are not entirely clear to me.

Regardless of which tactic you choose, each is a good example of mixing diversity and depth. One without the other makes you a dilettante or a drudge (unless you are really, really, really good, in which case you are smirking right now and I hate you).

Carlos closed with a comment about incorporating diversity in the way you approach a problem.

I like my students to have 3 ingredients in their dissertation: 1) theory, 2) field, 3) experimentation. The proportions vary depending on what Goethe calls “elective affinities“, but I think that it is good to try their hand at these three axes. Steve Fretwell has a lovely (albeit dated) fitness set analysis on whether to specialize or not in the intro to “populations in a changing environment”. (MK: Fretwell’s book is, sadly, out of print, but it’s worth a visit to the library.)

If this causes sweaty palms, rapid breathing, and the urge to scream into a pillow, note that he softens the first sentence with “I think that it is good to try their hand at these three axes”. Two out of three can produce a good dissertation. If you can pull off the triple play, and publish each, you letters of rec will ascend commensurately.

I think much reluctance however arises because a lot of grad students have a feeling that theory is done by fuzzy haired, coffee-swilling, dreamy antisocials. Much is (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

However, if you really want to answer a question, nothing beats closing your door, taking out a blank piece of paper, and trying to get your ideas down in the simplest possible language. Sure it’s humbling, but you have to be humble before challenging problems. And even if you don’t find a neat solution, your messy dissection will inevitably give you a deeper understanding of the data that needs to be collected to kick the problem down the road a bit.

And there is a further benefit to this exercise. Nothing endears a field biologist to a theoretician like a workmanlike, if incomplete, attempt at theory. Now it’s time to walk down the hallway and knock on the door of the theoretical type, with your notes clenched in one hand, and a tray of coffee in the other.