Advice for Undergraduate students
If I am writing you a letter for graduate school or a fellowship, I need the following material two weeks before the first deadline:
If I am writing you a letter for graduate school or a fellowship, I need the following material two weeks before the first deadline:
- A copy of your transcript (unofficial is fine)
- A copy of your "personal statement"
- Copies of any other essays you are submitting with your application
- An "I-am-great report" that you write describing all the great things you did in my class, in my lab, working with me on a project, or whatever. The goal is to be sure I don't forget anything, so slather praise on with a trowel. If it needs toning down, I can do it. But if I've forgotten something good that you did, it's less than ideal.
Resources for Graduate students
Three helpful sources (in alphabetical order):
How to give a talk
The best advice I've ever seen about giving a talk was in a talk entitled ``Making the most of your presentation'' by Jean-Luc Doumont. This talk itself is not available, but there is other material on Doumont's web site. In 2009, Dr Doumont published a wonderful book about structuring scientific presentations; it includes many ideas about giving talks.I haven't found a lot of other material, but here are a few good references. You will eventually develop your own style, but reading some of these papers can help give you some ideas and can certainly keep you from making rookie mistakes.
Three helpful sources (in alphabetical order):
- Robert Boice, Advice for New Faculty Members. Not for faculty only; anyone who writes can benefit from this book. Do you subscribe to the myth that the only way to write is to set aside large blocks of uninterrupted time? Boice shows how to write in brief daily sessions of 45--90 minutes. He has gathered convincing data showing that writers who work in breif daily sessions are roughly twice as productive as binge writers (number of pages written, manuscripts published, etc) and also report themselves to be happier. This idea changed my professional life.
- Joan Bolker, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day. Some more good advice about how to succeed in working in brief daily sessions, as well as other hints for living through the dissertation process.
- John V. Carlis, Design: The Key to Writing (and Advising) a One-Draft PhD Thesis. The title is a bit misleading, but the goal is a good one: Avoid wasting time reorganizing your thesis or (worse) writing stuff you have to throw away. What is really good is the collection of small hints to use along the way. For example, focus on your contributions and work backwards.
- How to write a great research paper, Simon Peyton Jones, Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft
How to give a talk
The best advice I've ever seen about giving a talk was in a talk entitled ``Making the most of your presentation'' by Jean-Luc Doumont. This talk itself is not available, but there is other material on Doumont's web site. In 2009, Dr Doumont published a wonderful book about structuring scientific presentations; it includes many ideas about giving talks.I haven't found a lot of other material, but here are a few good references. You will eventually develop your own style, but reading some of these papers can help give you some ideas and can certainly keep you from making rookie mistakes.
- How to give a good research talk, Simon Peyton Jones, John Launchbury, John Hughes, SIGPLAN Notices 28(11), Nov 1993.
This is really quite good, although the balance has tipped away from hand-written slides. Don't overlook the commentary! - Ian Parberry has written a useful Guide for Speakers.
- Ideas from Bruce Donald.
- Ideas from Paul Edwards on How to Give an Acadmic Talk
- Olivier Danvy has given a talk about giving talks. You can see his slides .
- Avoid the practices listed in these Maxims for Malfeasant Speakers.
- You can ask Google.
