{"id":2501,"date":"2008-04-17T08:37:57","date_gmt":"2008-04-17T08:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/17\/on-the-asking-of-hard-question\/"},"modified":"2008-04-17T08:37:57","modified_gmt":"2008-04-17T08:37:57","slug":"on-the-asking-of-hard-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/17\/on-the-asking-of-hard-question\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Asking of Hard Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janet posted a few days ago about asking questions of grad students<\/a> in seminars and journal clubs and so on. This is part of a larger conversation that I’m too lazy to collect links to– Janet has them– about whether grad students should show solidarity with their fellows and refrain from asking tough questions of each other in public.<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting question, and the sort of thing I would ordinarily be all over, but my graduate experience was idiosyncratic enough that I don’t think I can say anything that would generalize well. I was officially a student in the Chemical Physics Program at the University of Maryland, but my lab work was done in Bill Phillips’s group at NIST, where I was the only grad student. As a result, I got a fair bit of experience speaking in public at conferences and so on, but didn’t have a great deal of experience interacting with other grad students at departmental seminars and the like.<\/p>\n

I can say, though, that being at NIST has left me with a terror of the phrase “Before you leave that slide…” That was one of Bill’s signature phrases to visiting speakers, and almost always prefaced a question I would have no idea how to answer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I used to hear that a lot when giving practice talks to the group, and even more at a few events that were basically dissertation defense practice sessions. I heard even more of it when people from outside the group would come to give seminars or colloquia to the group.<\/p>\n

It was always really intimidating, as a student, because Bill is amazingly smart and has a gold medal to prove it. Those were some brutal questions, and I saw some very distinguished speakers fumble and flouder in the wake of “Before you leave that slide…” questions. Bill remains the only person ever to call me on a slide where the error bars were too big<\/strong>… I really had no idea what to say to that, but now I’m keenly aware of the difference between “standard deviation” and “standard error,” and the rule you can use to tell within seconds whether a speaker has confused them.<\/p>\n

One thing, though– on the few occasions while I was at NIST and spoke at conferences where Bill was in the audience, I never heard those words. And even at my thesis defense, he hardly asked any questions (unlike the outside-the-program representative, who blew up when he thought I misused the word “ballistic”). I got quite the grilling during practice talks, but that was by way of preparation– and, by the way, the advice that came out of those practice talks was always excellent. In public, outside the group, Bill wasn’t about to make anybody working for him look bad.<\/p>\n

So, to the extent that I have anything to offer on the question of whether grad students should ask or be asked hard questions, that’s probably it: Inside the group, for practice, yes. Outside the group, in public venues, no.<\/p>\n

Also, for the record, I did go back to NIST once to give a seminar as an outside speaker, and I got the full treatment. I knew what I was headed for, though, and prepared accordingly– I brought the slides for the 20-minute version of my talk, and we ended up calling it at an hour and a half, with two slides to go.<\/p>\n

I knew my stuff inside and out, though, and having been prepared for it, I managed to field all the “Before you leave that slide…” questions reasonably well. And because of that, it was actually about the most fun I’ve ever had giving a seminar talk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janet posted a few days ago about asking questions of grad students in seminars and journal clubs and so on. This is part of a larger conversation that I’m too lazy to collect links to– Janet has them– about whether grad students should show solidarity with their fellows and refrain from asking tough questions of… Continue reading On the Asking of Hard Questions<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}