Jabberwocky Ecology

We’ve recently been following a couple of blogs by graduate students studying ecology and have been enjoying them enough that we thought we’d point folks in their direction.

Transient Theorist is a first year PhD student interested in quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches to ecology. How could we not love his blog. Particularly good recent posts include Ups and Downs and Intimidating questions.

Karina at Ruminations of an Aspiring Ecologist is a third year PhD student who travels to remote foreign lands for field work (we love her use of – Ukenzagapia – to pseudonymize the location). Good recent posts include Timescales in graduate school and Even more of my life in comics: writing to professors.

We are glad to see graduate students blogging for a variety of reasons. First, graduate school can sometimes be an incredibly isolating experience in that it can feel like some of the difficult situations are unique to you, when in fact hundreds of students are going through exactly the same thing. Having a cadre of students writing about these experiences helps their readers feel less alone in their struggles. As faculty we also appreciate the opportunity to be reminded of the graduate student perspective on academia. We’re not too far out of graduate school, but it is already difficult to recall what a committee meeting was like from a student perspective. Reading students thoughts, especially the sort of honest presentation of internal thoughts made possible by pseudonymous blogging, helps remind us that things often look very different to students than they do to us, which (we hope) helps make us better advisers, committee members, and teachers. Third, it provides opportunities for mentoring and interaction beyond the traditionally defined boundaries of one’s own department or university. Finally, and most importantly, it helps to build the nascent community of ecological bloggers. If you know of other good blogs by students studying ecology let us know in the comments.

How then is it possible to modify and improve upon an academic culture populated by smart, creative individuals who are motivated by ideals more than by money, who have deep, intense interests, value substance over form, have little patience for conformity, think for themselves, do not defer to authority, and see their work not as a job but as a calling? Clearly the challenge is to find the incentives and rewards that will motivate this unique workforce to buy into desired changes and work willingly toward implementing them. But the first step is to explain clearly why change is nececessary and, even more important, why change does not mean abandoning core academic values. To win the hearts of academics, one first has to educate them.

- James C. Garland, Saving Alma Mater

This is just one of many brilliantly reasoned (and worded) arguments from Saving Alma Mater. If you are an academic, or an administrator at an academic institution, you really should read this book.