More Effective Virtual Meetings
Zoom is the new normal isn’t it? But it’s still tough, even if we’re getting more accustomed to it. How do you have effective virtual meetings that really engage everyone involved?
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Corwin Olson
Statistical Estimation Engineer, Author
Listening to Your Advisor
Some grad students will unfortunately experience the following scenario:
I fear my PhD advisor thinks I will fail and wants me to quit. Should I change advisors? What if I’m already multiple years into my PhD program?
Before you take action to switch advisors, I strongly recommend you have a conversation with your current advisor. Below is some advice on how specifically you tackle that conversation.
Read more ›Replacing Your Main Water Line Cutoff Valve
TLDR: Concise Instructions
Background
It all started with a leaky tub faucet. “Crap!” I said probably too loudly near my 3 year old son, who had just gotten out of the bath. This was early last fall (2019) I believe.
Fortunately I had faced this problem before: I knew it was likely a broken faucet cartridge, which I had replaced before (after paying a plumber WAY too much to do this simple operation for me shortly after we bought the house and I had far less house-fixing skills). This video is one of many on YouTube that explains this relatively easy task.
Read more ›Taking Class Notes with LaTeX
“Are you actually typing these notes?”
The professor looked at me in disbelief. I’m pretty confident I was the first person to ever try typing his lecture notes, especially given how equation-heavy this aerospace engineering graduate course was. I think standing on my head while singing the school fight song in the middle of class would have produced less surprise.
I had decided after several years of furiously scribbling class notes in grad school (and never capturing everything I wanted) to try something I later learned is called “Live-TeXing”. Yes, it is exactly as cool as it sounds. The idea is to type equations using the typesetting language LaTeX in real time as they are thrown up on the board. I had always assumed prior to that class that typing math-heavy notes was totally impractical. But as I became more comfortable with LaTeX, I realized it would probably not only be feasible, but also much better.
The good news is you don’t have to be a LaTeX master to do Live-TeXing. With a few pointers, I think anyone can employ this system, assuming you can type at a reasonable speed in general.
Will an engineering PhD over-qualify me for jobs?
“If I get a PhD in engineering, will I have trouble finding a job after I graduate?”
This question dominates the minds of many prospective (and current!) PhD students in engineering.
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