In my first year honors seminar, 5% of the grade is earned by making five posts on a webpage Forum. I added this to the course because I was searching for a way to keep the students engaged between class meetings. I invited students to comment on the readings, posts from other students, and anything else relevant to the course theme. I tried to reinforce their postings by commenting on those that I thought were particularly insightful. By mid-semester, I noticed that only about half the students
Author Archives: Howard Aldrich
Teaching a class? Be the 1st to arrive
When I leave my office and head for class, I’ve noticed that my step quickens noticeably. I feel excited about the class I’m about to teach and eager to share with the students what I’ve learned about the day’s topic. However, I also walk briskly because I want to arrive in the classroom before my students do. My goal is always to be the first to arrive so that I’m there to greet the students as they enter. This may seem like a minor detail in the greater scheme of
Professional meetings: act like you’ve been there before
Many professional associations have their annual meetings this time of year, and thousands of attendees will mingle in the corridors of super cooled hotels, many for the first time. When newbies ask me for my advice on what to do at these meetings, I’m reminded of a quote variously attributed to John Wooden, Bear Bryant, or Vince Lombardi: when you score, “act like you’ve been there before.” In other words, don’t make a fool of yourself. As a professional, you were supposed to score
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
One of my favorite expressions is “if you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” I believe that the legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden was the first to use this expression. How does this apply to academic writing? After a little thought, I came up with these five examples of putting things off that would have been better accomplished had they been completed at the appropriate time:
John Wooden quote from http://www.brainyquote.com/
First, not doing a full outline before beginning to write a draft.
What To Do After the Reviews Arrive, Revised Edition
Over the past five decades, I have responded to more than 100 revise and resubmit requests from editors, served about 10 years as Associate Editor of the Administrative Science Quarterly, and reviewed hundreds of papers for dozens of journals. I decided to see whether I had learned enough to share some general tips with other authors. So, here are a few, with no claim to originality on any of them.
Ryōan-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan. Only 14 of the 15 rocks are visible from all vantage points
First, just wait. After you finish reading the editor’s letter and the reviews, you might
The Impossible Necessity of History
Some book titles are so compelling that you’d feel guilty if you didn’t at least pick the book up and skim it. Such is the case with Ged Martin’s book, Past Futures: the Impossible Necessity of History (University of Toronto Press, 2004), based on the 1996 Joanne Goodman lectures at the University of Western Ontario. Despite his thoroughly convincing arguments that historical explanation, as we know it, is methodologically and analytically impossible, he managed to convince
Organize literature reviews by ideas, not authors
A few days ago I received a draft manuscript from some friends who asked for comments. The manuscript was prepared for a handbook meant to summarize the state-of-the-art in an emerging field and thus was intentionally focused on reviewing the literature and identifying trends. I first checked the references and saw that they had included what I expected. Therefore, the review was certainly up to date. I settled in for a good read.
Wilhelm Hofer “Medir a Coherencia da Vitalidade.” Santiago de Campastella
The first paragraph announced the paper’s purpose and then laid
Use the norm of reciprocity to get constructive feedback on your work
In popular fiction, authors are often portrayed as isolated and tortured souls, locked away in a garret apartment or in a cabin in the forest, producing their great works without benefit of human companionship. In reality, writing is an extremely social activity, highly dependent upon an individual’s network of family and friends. Peer networks play in a particularly important role in moving writing from solipsistic doodling to prose that others want to read. Let me suggest one way in which
Message to graduate students: The way you practice is the way you will play
In sports, coaches tell their players that they should treat practices the same way they would treat actually playing in games. They say this because sloughing off in practice, rather than following best practices, can carry over into the game. When a game situation arises, when decisions must be made quickly, people
Can you live up to the titles you choose for your papers?
Which of these two papers, on the same theme, would you read first: “Patterns of Vandalism during Civil Disorders as an Indicator of Target Selection” or “Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities
Using the literature in your writing: interpretive notes, not summaries
At the beginning of my doctoral workshops on academic writing, I start with a simple question: “when you sit down to compose your draft paper, what does the space look like around you? Is it covered with books and journals? Photocopies of papers and articles?” Most students confirm this description, but others say no, it’s just them and their computer. However, when I push them, it turns out that they have multiple files open on their computer, with digital copies of papers and articles
Journal submissions: Playing up (or down) to the competition
Every fall I look forward to the opening of the college sports season: football, soccer, field hockey, volleyball, and so forth. People get so into it they go and look at the FanDuel betting odds to see how they could do if they participated in a bet. In particular, I enjoy the discussions in the sports press about the choices athletic directors and coaches have made in setting up their schedule of games. Unlike the professional sports leagues, where
Imagination, interrupted: creative writing requires a lot of control
How often has this happened to you? You sit down to work on a piece of writing for which the deadline is fast approaching. You feel energized and optimistic. Shortly after you begin, the notification alert on your smart phone goes off. Or, a colleague pokes her head in your open door and asks if you have a moment. Or, you look back at the previous sentence you’ve written and decide that it could be worded better. And so on. Taken in isolation, such small interruptions seem harmless. However,
Write As If You Don’t Have the Data
At a conference, when you ask somebody to tell you about their current project, what do they typically say? I often get a puzzling response: instead of beginning by telling me about an idea, the person starts by describing their data. They tell me they are using survey data they have collected, or data from an archive, or data they’ve scraped from the web. As they go on at length about the nature of the data, I have to interrupt them and ask for what purpose the data will be used. Then,
Why start early on your projects?
A few days ago, I was sitting in my car at a stoplight, waiting for the light to change, when a thought suddenly popped into my head. In a flash, I recognized the relevance of a paper I’d read several decades ago for a current project on which I was working. I had been thinking about ways to justify the narrative I was trying to set up, and I’d been frustrated by my inability to find recent literature that could be cited to justify its importance.
Purple installation @ Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, August, 2015
Why did that idea suddenly occur to me? The
Pitching Papers as if You Worked in Nashville
For the past decade or so, I have made presentations to groups of graduate students and junior faculty on how to write more effectively. I’m always on the lookout for new ideas that I can inject into my presentation. Thus, I was delighted to come across an essay by C. Neil Stewart Jr, on “Songwriting and Science,” in the July 24, 2015 issue of Science magazine. Frustrated by his low hit rate from grant submissions,
Family Businesses as Boundary Objects
Boundary objects are arrangements that permit people to work together without needing to achieve consensus, as Susan Leigh Star explained. The figure below displays a collection of small dots that represent different manifestations of some phenomenon of interest, with three of them labeled with capital letters. Object A is clearly at the center – it is probably the central tendency in this group.
Assignments: better late than never?
A few days ago, a colleague came to me for teaching advice. On his syllabus, he had written that he did not accept late assignments. One of the students, a young woman who was struggling in the class, had turned in a paper that was woefully incomplete and he told her that it did not meet the assignment requirements. However, rather than rejecting it outright, he took account of her struggles and accepted that she hadn’t decided to
Lecturing & daydreaming: what happens when students have no decisions to make?
A few weeks ago, I spent several days at a conference on a topic that holds great intrinsic interest for me. I signed up for the conference, eagerly anticipating meeting new people and being challenged with novel ideas. I had never attended the conference before and had few preconceived notions about the format for presentations. However, because most of the scholars were in the humanities, I knew that I wouldn’t be seeing many tables of numbers or hearing about esoteric statistics!
What
Memories of Clark Terry at Jazz Land in Vienna, Austria
The death of Clark Terry (1920-2015) this past week brought back memories of watching him in concerts when I was teaching in Vienna several decades ago. He appeared at a small jazz venue called Jazz Land, run by Axel Melhardt, an Austrian man who clearly has a great love for American jazz. Somehow, he has been able to book great American jazz artists for his small club off Schwedenplatz, near the banks of the
My Evening with Talcott Parsons
Between 1970 and 1973, Anant Negandhi held a series of conferences at Kent State University, sponsored by the Comparative Administration Research Institute. The conference focus was on “the various conceptual problems encountered in studying the functioning of complex social organizations.” I took part in several of these, including one that led to the publication of a book on Interorganizational Theory, edited by Anant. These conferences attracted a stellar cast of organization scholars,
Outsmarted by a largemouth bass twice in the same day
Do largemouth bass learn from experience or are they just naturally cleverer than us? Discussions with other anglers have confirmed that the experience I describe in this post is a common occurrence, but no one has come up with a satisfactory explanation. I invite your speculations.
One that didn’t get away, caught with a big popper
My unplanned experiment in trying to outsmart the bass began when I decided to spend a morning at a local lake, practicing my casting and, along the way, catching a few bream. The water had finally cleared up, after
What Sustains a Belief in Success Among the Unsuccessful?
I’ve been haunted by the question of what sustains belief in success among the unsuccessful ever since I read Reinhard Bendix’ magisterial book, Work and Authority in Industry. Bendix wrote about the economic ideology that kept millions of people in England, the United States, and other Western
My 4 weight rod versus Vinnie the LMB
What every large mouth bass wants!
“My 4wt rod is not up to the job!” That’s the conclusion I came to after another losing battle with my tormentor, Vinnie, the LMB.
Down at my lake at night, I usually start up with a confidence builder — using either my 4wt or 5wt to fish for bream & crappie — and then when it starts to get dark, I switch over to the 7wt. I’m using the 7wt to cast poppers, Sneaky Pete’s, and the like, with the hope that something other than too-big-for-their-britches bream will attack. Some of those bream really do have delusions of grandeur — last night, I hooked a bream a bit smaller than my hand on a Sneaky Pete, which, if the fish had actually gotten into its mouth, would’ve throttled him.
As I’ve reported to the TFF Group, I’ve caught a couple of small LMB’s, but otherwise have only broken poppers, snapped hooks, and bitter disappointment to show for my efforts re Vinnie.
Tonight, I decided to start with the 7wt while it was still sunny & I could see where the poppers were actually splashing down. (I’m not the world’s smoothest caster.)
After a half hour wihout even getting a rise out of the overly ambitious bream, I decided to switch to the 4wt & console myself with battling a few scrappy bream. I tied on a copper john — a fly they’ll always take, when all else fails. I started by working the deeper side of the inlet, where I usually catch the bigger bream. Then, I decided to try the shallower waters, on the other side, where I sometimes have luck.
On my first cast into water that couldn’t have been more than 2 feet deep, a small bream hit the copper john. I was surprised when he jumped out of the water, without a tug from me, but then I saw why: right behind him was Vinnie, who scarfed up the bream and headed for the center of the lake. You may have heard a similar story before, but it never gets old, in my book. As always, I fantasied that Vinnie was so hungry that he’d swallowed the bream, hook & all. For about 30 seconds, I thought my fantasy had come true. Just like last May, when the battle lasted long enough for me to think I’d actually hooked him, he made several runs across the inlet, bending my 4wt like a twig and stripping line off like I’d greased the reel. I tried stopping him a couple of times, but couldn’t hold onto the line. He finally turned & headed again out into the lake. I felt the line go slack & he was gone. I reeled in the line and saw that he’d not only taken the bream with him, but also the hook. For the record, it was tied on with the best improved clinch knot I could muster, but I guess I need to go back to the fly shop for a refresher course.
I think I only had a chance at landing him if I could’ve worn him out before he wore me out and/or snapped the line on one of his runs.
So, what do you do when the only thing a LMB seems to want is live bream on a stick?
Stand Up & Be Counted: Why I Don’t Like the Labels “qualitative/quantitative”
30 tips for successful academic research and writing
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