Teaching advice: what to do when a student loses it

Quite a few people, including PZ, have posted this video of a student completely loosing it in a classroom.  From the school paper:

“Associate Professor Stephen M. Kajiura was reviewing with his evolution class in GS 120 for a midterm when FAU student Jonatha Carr interrupted him: “How does evolution kill black people?” she asked. Kajiura attempted to explain that evolution doesn’t kill anyone.…..The classmate reported that Kajiura was discussing attraction between peacocks when Carr raised her hand to ask her question about evolution. She asked it four times, and became increasingly upset each time Kajiura’s answer failed to satisfy her.

A video taken by Bustamante shows Carr ranting and threatening to kill the professor and several students.”

I’ve discussed violence before that is motivated by anti-evolution, both directed against me and others.

Honestly, I don’t think this outburst had that much to do with evolution, although it’s certainly scary that evolution seems to be the topic that triggered the student’s outburst.   What I was struck by, watching that video as someone who’s been teaching for over 25 years, is the behavior of the instructor and the other students:

• They tried to engage in dialog with a person that is clearly in severe mental distress
• They did not clear the classroom
• It took way too long before anyone called 911
• The students were more interested in filming the student’s meltdown than getting to safety

That? Honestly? Bothers me far more than what the woman was yelling.

If there is anything that needs to be discussed and post-processed about this, it’s that the area was not secured, not that she was angry about evolution.

Do you teach?
Do you have a plan for what you would do in your class if something like this happened?
Have you thought about how you might get all your students to safety in case of an emergency?
Have you recieved training–or at least instructions–about what to do with a distressed student?

If someone is this out of control, your best bet is to GTFO.  Get the distressed person in a quiet room, or make the room quiet by getting everyone else out. But don’t expect rational discourse to work.

If you are going to watch this video, do it with an eye to how you would have handled this situation as an instructor.
And learn from it.

Example University Student Risk and Review Referral Guide

Transcript of my ESA talk about Social Media

Sorry this took so long to create! This is the transcript of my Entomological Society of America talk that I posted last week. I have taken the liberty of editing and prettifying things up, and including some feedback on the draft version I got.  You can download the PDF handout from this talk here, including some recommended links and resources.
I am still not happy with this, mostly because the topic is so huge, and there is so much very good info and thoughtful stuff out there. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but hopefully this will help you find some new ideas to chew on.  Without further ado:

The Adventures of Bug Girl
OR: Everything you wanted to know about entomological social media but were afraid to ask

In a 12 minute talk, I tried to address these topics:

• Why do this social media stuff, anyway?
• Why was Bug Girl successful?
• How can you measure your success?  (An overview; I’ll leave the question of tools you can use to measure and assess online success for a separate post/presentation.)
• How can YOU become an online entomology goddess?

I’m off to the ESA

If you aren’t a major bug nerd, you may not know what goes on at a big scientific meeting like the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America.  It is the largest insect meeting in the world. There are usually ≈4000 insect scientists of all kinds, from every continent. (Except Antartica. But if I’m wrong, let me know!)

Unfortunately, it’s not anything like a science fiction convention. Nearly everyone is in suits, and it’s a time to make professional networking connections and present your research. There are organized symposia about some topics I’m really interested in–the way in which media has covered Colony Collapse Disorder in honey bees, for example.  Multiple bed bug symposia.  I’ll be sure to report back about those topics, as long as I’m not revealing anything that seems to be publication bound.

Titles of talks or papers usually have formal names like “Update on medical consequences of bed bug biting,” although sometimes you get a bit more humor; I liked this one: “To Baetidae or not to Baetidae: comprehensive phylogeny of baeitid mayflies.”  

Talks start at 8:00 AM and run until 9:00 PM at night. For 4 days.  By the end you just feel like your brain is swollen.

It’s also a great time to hang out, talk to old friends, and commune with bug people.  I’ll be distributing “I am Bug Girl” stickers in the spirit of “I am Spartacus” in order to:

1. Confuse the issue on just who Bug Girl is; and
2. Help bloggers and blog fans find each other at a huge meeting!

There will also be a Bug Blogger/Friends of Bug Blogs party Tuesday night; check out the Facebook Event Page for more details once we get on the ground in Reno and scope out venue and liquid refreshment options.

If you are an undergrad or a graduate student attending ESA for the first time: DON’T BE SHY! Seriously, entomologists are fairly laid back, even if they do insist on wearing suits. Anyone with an official ribbon–even the ESA President–will make time to talk to you.   If you see someone with an “I am Bug Girl” sticker, odds are good they also are a good person to ask questions of as well.  Don’t sit alone when you have meals–ever! That is a great time to sit down next to someone and start a conversation.

I’ll be revealing the winner of the Ribald Tales of Entomology Limerick Contest later this week, as well as other updates.
Stay Tuned!

Anonymous Entomological Punditry on the Internet

[This is part of a series of posts about writing, entomology, and career development that are linked to my upcoming Entomological Society of America talk in November.]

I get a surprising number of emails from reporters asking for interviews, or podcast requests, or other questions related to some of the debunking posts I’ve published about different bits of media nonsense.

“Are you a bee expert?” one of the reporters asked once.
“No, I’m a bee pundit,” I replied.  ”I’m like the Lorax, except I speak for bees, not trees.”

Later, I realized punditry was actually a pretty good description for where I’ve plopped myself in the blogosphere.  I am, literally, a talking (blue) head that people accept as having some sort of authority about bugs.  I don’t write about my personal research much, but I try to translate the insect research of others and life in academia into regular human speak.  And I provide color commentary, usually with more F words that the average pundit, but that’s how I roll.

Had I used my real name, I could have quite a bit to add to my professional Vita (Curriculum vita is just a fancy academic way to say resume).  In Academia, size matters.  The fatter your vita is with publications and invited talks, the more well hung you are–in a scholarly sense, of course.

But I have stayed Bug Girl for many years, even at live appearances at Cons, and at the Entomological Society of America National Conference.  Why?
I thought it might be helpful for students starting out as bloggers, or established scientists pondering blogging as a means of outreach, to talk about the tradeoffs between real name and anonymity and career implications.

I’ve actually used the nickname “Bug Girl” since the early 90s–it was my first personal email address in 1993. Back then in the land of listservs and bulletin boards, women were fairly rare, and it was helpful to not have an immediately identifiable identity.

I also had an….interesting career path, and I left my first tenured position over an academic freedom dispute. I wanted to teach evolution as a well-established fact.  My position was similar to that of this recently fired prof:

“Science is the litmus test on the validity of the educational enterprise. If a school teaches real science, it’s a pretty safe bet that all other departments are sound. If it teaches bogus science, everything else is suspect…. I want a real college, not one that rejects facts, knowledge, and understanding because they conflict with a narrow religious belief.

It was useful to have a nickname where I could solicit advice online about the Dean’s instructions to soft-pedal evolution without publicly identifying myself.  And over time, this led to path dependence–rather than making a strategic decision between My RealID and a pseudonym, I drifted into the online identity of Bug Girl because of a bunch of random decisions from 20 years ago. Those decisions were made well before blogging was a “thing.”   It turned out, though, that it was a good decision, because as I began to be successful in my post-faculty career, I discovered that blogging was not only a thing, it was a bad thing as far as most of my bosses were concerned.

There are actually laws on the books on several states banning state employees from lobbying, or using their government positions to influence politics or the media. That is a reasonable restriction–it would not be appropriate for me to use an official .gov or .edu email, for example, to lobby for a specific candidate.  If you are high enough on the food chain that you manage large sums of money, lots of people, or set policy, then linking your real identity to a sometimes ribald blog can be a big deal.  Especially if you are in a job where you are not part of a union, not tenured, and basically serve at the pleasure of the provost.

I’ve tried to keep plausible deniability with my identity.   By not linking my name and Bug Girl’s, I can at least make sure that a Google search by one of my students will not turn up a post of me yelling F-bombs at Nintendo or disclose details of my rape.  My boss will not know for sure that I am an atheist (which, based on her comments that “those people have no moral compass” is probably for the best.)  I’ve  had several stalkers over the years, and I can be reasonably sure I won’t wake up, look outside my window, and see creepy dude #6 parked in my driveway.  It also helps that there are a lot of other Bug Girls online.

There are a lot of reasons (which I have articulated in detail elsewhere) that this online identity makes me feel safer.  Now that my new job has moved me near the Provost’s office, Bug Girl is honestly a better reflection of who I really am. Diplomacy and tact are now a major part of my day to-day-work life.  Anyone who knows me realizes this is an inherently unstable situation. To paraphrase one of my favorite blues songs, “It’s in her and its got to come out!”  Most of my friends call me Bug, and certainly my writing here gets several orders of magnitude more exposure than my scientific publications ever did or will.  I AM BUG GIRL.

Here’s something important you should never forget, though.  Your secret online identity exists only because of the kindness of strangers.  As hard as you try, you CAN be identified.  It’s only politeness that keep your online friends and readers from outing you.

It isn’t hard to find examples where science bloggers that use their real names–and that have known employers–have had disgruntled readers contact their boss.  It isn’t hard to find examples where a decision has been made by the higher ups that silence is better than controversy, even if the information provided online is correct.

There is no way to blog–anonymously or not– and never have it affect your career.  Your blogging had better be something that you enjoy, and that you are willing to defend to your family and your boss. When you are outed, all the F-bombs you’ve dropped will come crashing down on you if the only thing you did with your bully pulpit was trash your coworkers.

Blogging is a great outlet for my creativity (which is not expressed by writing official memos, trust me) and for my warped sense of humor.  I write for ME as much as anything, to challenge myself to make science as entertaining and interesting to non-scientists.  I am amazed at how successful I’ve been, which I think has more to do with being in the right place at the right time than the content I produce.

The way to be a better writer is to write more.  And so I did.

I think I’ve gotten better, but I still have a long way to go.

Related posts:

• Orwell and anonymity

Advice for successful career decisions

One of the things I do more or less full time now is give students unsolicited advice.  I talk to both graduate students and undergraduates, and they are mostly worried about the same things:

• Did I make the right choice when I decided to study ____?
• Will I get a good job?  Is *this* job (graduate program/major/whatever) the one for me?

I actually have a mathematical formula that I use to help people figure out when they are in the right major or the right job, or if a career change is a good idea.  And I’m going to give it to you, for free, because you read my blog, and are, Post hoc ergo prompter hoc ipso facto, cool.

Ready?

Here it is.

Job = Puppy

Yep. A job is like a puppy.  When you first get a job (or start a degree program), it’s wonderful and cool. Here, look –>

Doesn’t that make you smile?

Puppies are awesome. And if you have an actual puppy, you realize that puppies also have some downsides. Like…..poop.

There is no such thing as a poopless puppy.
There is also no such thing as a job with no shitty tasks.

The trick is to find a job that maximizes what I call the cute to poop ratio.

In other words, the quantity

must be greater than one.

If  the cute of your job is overwhelmed by the poop–it’s time to start looking for a new job.

I’ve made some really radical career changes–including walking away from a tenure-track faculty position.  Each time it was because the amount of poop in the job became overwhelming, and drowned out all the fun and cute elements.

Obviously, right now is not the easiest time to be starting a career, or make a career change.  Other things can modify this equation; health care benefits, for example, can turn a negative cute : poop ratio into a positive for me, at least in the short term.  If you are someone just starting out on your career path, taking a job that is not exactly what you want may also balance out, so you can get your foot in the door and start building a resume.

Just don’t stay in a job where the crap piles up around you and you are miserable longer than you have to be.
Life is short.  There has to be a balance.

Thus endeth today’s sermon. Back to bugs tomorrow!

Where should I look for a job?

One of the most common questions I get from students around this time of year is “Where should I look for a job?”

The question they actually are asking is “where ONLINE should I look for a job?”, and it’s the wrong question.  The vast majority of jobs for students are filled informally, without a search.

I always have extra work, and when I manage to have money + work that needs to be done, I usually tend to hire people I know–either a good past student, or someone recommended by a friend.

For full-time jobs, the question is a bit more relevant, but still, applying online doesn’t yield the results that using your network of contacts will.  If I happen to know someone involved in a search, and I send them a copy of your recommendation letter directly….yeah, that immediately moves your resume up to the top of the pile.

So, before I give you my list of places online to look at:  Let me ask, what is the ratio of time you are spending pasting your resume online to the amount of time spent chatting with your friends and professional contacts about where you want to go?

My favorite places to look for Ecological/Environmental type jobs:

• Ecolog-l (includes graduate assistantships)
• Society of Conservation Biology (includes graduate assistantships)
• Student Conservation Association
• Environmental Education Jobs
• Audubon Society Jobs
• Nature Conservancy Jobs
• National Association for Interpretation (sadly, all jobs require a login)
• NatureServe
• Society for Plant Biology (includes graduate assistantships)
• Studentjobs.gov (The feds consider you a “student” up to a year after you graduate!)
• BirdJobs
• Organization of Biological Field Stations

Two other things to try:

1. There are a lot of new job indexes that basically work by harvesting other websites. Indeed.com is a good example of that type of service.
2. Don’t forget to look at local university and state websites! While the funding may be shaky long term, for those starting out in the job market, there are usually lots of opportunities.

Have I missed an important resource? Please suggest it in the comments!
[Note: I will be especially harsh on spammers for this post--if you are suggesting a link, it needs to relate specifically to finding job postings in environmental science/conservation]

Additional Career Advice: 

• Spellcheck is not your fiend friend
• How not to write a cover letter
• Hints for Academic Job Seekers
• How not to send a reference letter
• Dear Parent….

Overblown DEET news

DEET is the gold standard for insect repellent. I’ve covered it fairly extensively at the Bug Blog–it’s the best thing we have to prevent a wide spectrum of insects from biting and transmitting an even wider spectrum of diseases.

So…Sigh.
Some new DEET research was published this month, and the media…well, has done a crappy job of covering it.  Here’s the latest headline:  Insect Repellent DEET is Neurotoxic.

One thing all the news stories have in common is a very alarmist tone, and reprinting freely from a press release that has very little connection to the reality of the paper.  When you look at the research, they did NOT find that DEET is neurotoxic, and it does NOT cause nerve damage.

Here’s the take home:

If you decide not to use DEET insect repellent on the basis of this bad journalism, you are probably putting yourself in danger. DEET is really the only repellent we have that can deal with ticks, and also protects against a wide range of biting flies.

The results in this paper are preliminary, need to be confirmed, and even IF confirmed, remain irrelevant to the average person who might want to use DEET.

Right, that’s the message.
Now to the details.

Here is what the researchers ACTUALLY found:

Corbel, V., Stankiewicz, M., Pennetier, C., Fournier, D., Stojan, J., Girard, E., Dimitrov, M., Molgo, J., Hougard, J., & Lapied, B. (2009). Evidence for inhibition of cholinesterases in insect and mammalian nervous systems by the insect repellent deet BMC Biology, 7 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-7-47

“electrophysiological studies were performed on isolated mouse phrenic hemidiaphragm muscles. We showed that 500 µM deet prolonged by about threefold the decay time constant of synaptic potentials on endplate regions of the muscle fibre…”

Wha? Ah.
Here’s a translation into English (by me):

We put DEET directly onto mouse cells and insect neurons in test tubes. It had a mild inhibitory effect on an important enzyme. The amount of DEET we used on mouse cells was 500 times the level that was active for insect cells. The amounts we used were several orders of magnitude larger than you would ever encounter in life as a human user of DEET repellent.

The best breakdown of this story I’ve seen yet was at Neuroskeptic. In fact, Neuroskeptic saved me a whole lot of time and work by writing an excellent article that I will now swipe here and quote freely:

“the fact that DEET can act as a cholinesterase inhibitor in the lab changes nothing. It’s still safe, at least until evidence comes along that it actually causes harm in people who use it. You can’t show that something is harmful by doing an experiment showing how it could be harmful in theory.”

This paper, when combined with decades of DEET usage data with very, very few adverse affects reported, is really not news at all.  It’s interesting, sure. But it’s not at all relevant to the average American trying not to be bitten while BBQing.

I also agree with this statement from Neuroskeptic:

“To be fair, there is one cause for concern in the paper – in the experiments, DEET interacted with other cholinesterase inhibitors, leading to an amplified effect. That suggests that DEET could become toxic in combination with cholinesterase inhibitor insecticides, but again, the risk is theoretical.”

In some situations, DEET is combined with other compounds that it could, potentially, interact with–but that almost never happens in the US. Those situations are more common in military and tropical uses.  This is a good note to be careful, and to monitor that in the future.  There is also some (laboratory) evidence that sunscreen can increase absorption of DEET, and the two should be combined with caution.

If you are using DEET sensibly, you have nothing to worry about.
What is sensible DEET use? Borrowing from The American Pediatric Society, as well as my own experience:

Do not use DEET under clothing. Put it ON your clothing.

Do not use DEET on the hands of young children; avoid applying to areas around the eyes and mouth.

Do not use DEET over cuts, wounds or irritated skin. Wash treated skin with soap and water after returning indoors; wash treated clothing.

Avoid spraying in enclosed areas; do not use DEET near food.

20% DEET is enough for nearly all US situations. You can buy higher concentrations, but don’t.

Don’t spray DEET on spandex (it’s a long story, but trust me. This won’t end well for you)

Don’t drink, smoke, or otherwise do butt-stupid things with DEET. It’s safe, but only if you play by the rules.

Career Tip #7: First impressions

I can’t tell you how much first impressions count when I have a posted position open, and I get calls from candidates.  Many of them seem to have missed learning some of the basic rules of job hunting. As a service, I provide them here:

Rule 1: Do your homework.
If the job posting has an address, a business name, and our website on it, look on a map. Use Teh Google.

Please do not call me and ask where our organization is located,  or what we do.  You should already have read/researched enough to figure that out when you call–or at least have some idea!  Cluelessness: never a good first impression.

Rule 2: Never. Never. EVER. Say bad things about your previous supervisors.
Most people know that they shouldn’t do this in an interview, but it seems like outside that setting they forget it’s still a no-no.  Don’t blame your past failure in a job on a past boss that was “jealous” or say your expertise was stifled.  There are nicer ways to say that.

“The job wasn’t a good match for me.” “I felt like I needed new challenges.”

Yes, I will know what you are implying, but it shows you know enough to at least not blame others for what happened. No one has a perfect job situation, ever. However, if all of your past bosses had issues…perhaps they are not the problem?

Rule 3: Relax! But, don’t relax.
This is one of the things that makes interviewing so hard.  You don’t want to appear so uptight and over-caffeinated that you can’t function. You also don’t want to relax so much you are tempted to make remarks that might, say, disparage your previous boss, tell me you may have a drinking problem, or let me know you think Obama’s birth certificate is a fake.

An interview is NOT a conversation. It is a sales meeting.  You need to sell me your product–YOU.  What are your strengths? Why are you a good match? Identify those core messages before you call me.

I don’t like talking on the phone, so I’m pretty sympathetic to an awkward science type that blunders around a little. I actually write down notes when I’m making an important phone call, so I know my lines. But help me out here with a little homework, K?

Career Tip # 6: REU Applications

Do not print your cover letter for an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates on Hello Kitty paper.

Seriously.

Had it not also come with transcripts attached, I’d think some of you were just messing with me.

Other things you should not do when applying:

• Don’t have an email that is something along the lines of asss69@yahoo.com for your primary contact
• Don’t email me DAILY with questions about your application, the process, and if we’ve made a decision yet
• Don’t start your letter with “Dear Sir” if I am NOT a SIR.
• Don’t use Babelfish to translate your emails. I’m pretty sure that’s how this sentence was created:  “If there is any information I can render you with, please ask.”

Related posts:

• Spellcheck is not your fiend friend
• How not to write a cover letter
• Hints for Academic Job Seekers
• How not to send a reference letter
• Where should I look for a job?
• Dear Parent….

Dear Parent….

When you email me about an internship I’ve posted, and tell me YOU are looking for an internship for your son/daughter, that pretty much puts the kibosh on me ever hiring your kid right there.  (BTW, It’s especially not helpful if you use the words “lost”, “adrift”, or “confused” to describe your child.)

I’m sympathetic. Figuring out what you want to do in the world is hard. But any student over the age of 18 should be able to write me their own damn email.

If your kid isn’t with it enough to seek me out on their own, then I’m not about to let them near my research. Sorry.

The Collegiate Employment Research Institute found that 23% of employers reported parents were involved in the hiring process “often” to “fairly often.”  In fact, some recruiters reported parents came to the interview with the student.

That’s messed up. Please don’t be a parentzilla.

Related posts:

• Spellcheck is not your fiend friend
• How not to write a cover letter
• Hints for Academic Job Seekers
• How not to send a reference letter