Comments for Athene Donald's Blog

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by Richard Sutton

Richard Sutton — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:34:55 +0000

If I can live with it inside a filing cabinet, chances are that I didn’t really need the information on it.

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by Geologist

Geologist — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:25:40 +0000

I also doubt that the performance of the scientist can be correlated to the cleanliness of his/her office. For example, one of our lowest performers in our dept has such as messy office that he routinely gets in trouble for having a fire hazard, whereas our highest performer also has a pretty messy office, and another has a very tidy and clean office. It seems to be pretty random. Each person has methods that work for them. I have a pretty messy disaster area for my office which I blame on choosing to do work instead of ‘waste time’ by cleaning/organizing. When I take a sabbatical I sometimes find time to clean up a bit, but things quickly deteriorate again because I”m just too busy and having a tidy office isn’t a priority whereas writing grants/papers is.

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by John Luffrum

John Luffrum — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:33:26 +0000

I too am a long-time user of the stratigraphic pile system of filing. Whenever I tidy to a cabinet I can find nothing for weeks!

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by David Colquhoun

David Colquhoun — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:02:09 +0000

I doubt it tells you anything at all about science. But I would say that because my office is an appalling mess. The worst case so far is when I had to move from an office that I’d occupied for decades. A piece of chocolate was discovered under a pile of papers, or rather some shredded aluminium foil left by a mouse.

I think that this results partly from a reluctance to throw things away (a habit that I’ve found useful more than once), but mostly because I’m normally doing several things at once. That’s got worse since I started blogging as well as still doing some science.

If it’s good enough for JBS Haldane, it’s good enough for me.

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by Brigitte

Brigitte — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:07:38 +0000

I bet this story is false, but I was once told twenty odd years ago or so that, when at Oxford, Daniel Dennett had a great ‘system’ of dealing with paperwork. Everyday, so I was told, he would put the letters he got on top of his desk or other surfaces and by the end of the day he would put the daily newspaper he had read on top of the letters, and so on. When somebody came and asked: Have you read the letter I sent you on such and such a date, he would rifle through the piles interspersed with dated newspapers, would then find the letter in question and reply to the request if necessary. That’s what I call ‘quaintly chaotic’! I can’t even remember when exactly I heard that story (I should have kept the newspaper of that day) and who told it to me, and as I said, I don’t even know whether it is true. But it’s a good story.

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by cromercrox

cromercrox — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:10:08 +0000

Sorry: ‘speculation’ should read ‘preoccupation’. What a mess.

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by cromercrox

cromercrox — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:07:16 +0000

Worry not. Untidiness is a symptom of life, which is of course another system maintained far from equilibrium. J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote a letter to one of his sons, in theme much like your post, in which he had to take time out to tidy up his home office. Untidiness, he wrote, is a sign of ‘literary or phililogical speculation’. And one person’s untidiness is another person’s order – it’s all a matter of perspective. Gee Minor’s room gets very little attention from either Mrs Crox or myself. Gee Minima doesn’t strew her clothes randomly on the carpet. To her, it’s a perfectly valid storage system, which we call a ‘floordrobe’.

Comment on Muddled Mess or Merely Work in Progress? by Rachel H

Rachel H — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:01:26 +0000

I’ve tried to explain to people that I have a pile filing system – it looks messy but I can find stuff. And I’d forgotten that I did my school & university work mostly on the floor surrounded by paper & books. I feel judged as inefficient by people at work sometimes because I don’t clear everything away, so I’m so pleased to hear that you’ve achieved all you have without a tidy desk

Comment on Will This Look Good on my CV? by Pam

Pam — Sat, 18 May 2013 06:57:35 +0000

Thank you for this. It’s timely as I have just received a ‘tap on the shoulder’ to step up in one of my admin roles. I have great ambition for this particular role and am glad that I am being considered. I am hopeful that this will help my cv. Having said that, the huge (and sometimes overbearing) emphasis on papers and papers alone is perhaps narrow. I say this because where I am, ‘big professors’ continue to publish and win grants etc but don’t seem to share this in terms of writing together/conducting research together – therefore not benefiting their research team/group of other junior academics. They hardly do any teaching or somehow have the ability to get out of teaching/setting exams/marking exams etc.

The junior staff then end up carrying most of this. Surely it is then a case of teamwork. If the juniors teach/mark etc and that enables the big shots to publish, win grants then all sorts of work should be acknowledged. Rather than papers/grants ranked higher than being a ‘great teacher’.

I would imagine that actually it should be a case of say professors need to demonstrate more than just more papers/grants. They need to demonstrate leadership, mentoring, ability to teach, outreach etc.

Comment on Will This Look Good on my CV? by Richard Wintle

Richard Wintle — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:06:56 +0000

I have a section entitled “professional activities”, which is an admittedly intentionally vague category. The main problem I would have were I reviewing my C.V. would be in determining what the real impact of any of these activities was. As one example, gender is not the only reason for “filling out numbers” (as in, “let’s get someone from Research on this committee, because we need representation from there”).

I think there’s a fine line between what’s reasonable to state on a C.V. and what is essentially padding… even more so in these days of virtual associations, internet based societies, and so forth.

Slightly related – I am obliged to report on a periodic basis to some of our funders, and these reports always contain sections about “social and economic impact”, which is a catch-all for public engagement, media relations, training, commercialization, IP filings, and so forth. It’s messy, can be difficult to select what to report and how, and I’m not entirely sure that the people reading it have good methods to quantify the impact of any of it.