On Writing

So last semester I taught a seminar for the general student population called "Astronomical Arguments", which is focused on how scientists -- astronomers in particular -- deal with differing scientific models. We start with a reading of Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", which the students hate. I will admit it is not a summer beach read, but it's very interesting and provocative. Then we talk at great length about the Copernican Revolution, astronomy throughout the 18th and 19th centuries (the nature of galaxies, the expanding universe), then on to modern questions of dark matter and dark energy, the issue of whether or not Pluto is a planet, etc. This is pretty close to the historical astronomy course my mom always wanted me to teach, and she's right -- I enjoy teaching the historical side of things. Kepler cracks me up...

But the course is as much about writing as it is about science. So we talk about writing styles, the structure of arguments, choosing your audience, etc. Most of the grade revolves around a series of written papers, and I'm big on having the students do revisions of their papers once they've been graded.

This is the second time I've taught the course; this time, I've had a great writing co-instructor, Terri, who handled much of the actual writing pedagogy. And I've learned a lot watching and listening to her.

But the hardest thing for me has been evaluating writing. Some things are easy. Basic grammar, punctuation-- that's straightforward. And God help you if you turn in a paper with spelling errors. That just tells me you were too lazy to hit the spell-check button before hitting 'print'. That doesn't go over well with me. (And having said that, you can bet I'm gonna hit the spell checker before posting this to the blog!)

Other things are tougher, but manageable. Logical structure takes more time to figure out, but if I'm reading a paper and have no idea where it is going, it's a good bet there's been a problem with structure. And I can work it out, or at least scribble in the margin "What's the point of this?"

Then there are stylistic issues, and that starts getting hard. Sometimes it's obvious, and I can jut circle a phrase and write "awkward", because it is. Or "wordy". Or "choppy". But sometimes you read things and think "that just doesn't work" and it's hard to say why. This is where I struggle with the grading end of things. Is it that their writing doesn't work, or that it doesn't work for me? It’s a very different, much more diffuse type of grading from what I usually am doing in my regular astronomy classes (in which there is typically a clear and demonstrable right or wrong to a scientific problem or mathematical argument).

Also, when grading, students accept feedback and correction much more easily in my quantitative courses. If I can circle on their paper the spot where they divided by pi instead of multiplying by pi, or where they switched the terms for emission and absorption in an atom, they recognize their error and accept the grade. But when I say "this paragraph doesn't logically support your argument", they then go to great lengths to tell me how I hadn't read it properly, (typically bringing in many arguments that, had they written in the first place, would have made the paragraph work!).

The flip side of grading is that the less-quantitative nature of writing evaluation led to some rather comical experiences. I was completely flummoxed when a student turned in a paper that had almost nothing to do with what I had assigned. The student said to me "I know you assigned us to write about that, but I really couldn't, so I wrote about this instead." How do you handle *that*? Do my faculty friends in the humanities have to deal with this kind of stuff frequently? I can't imagine a student in one of my science classes saying "I couldn't figure out how to solve for the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy, so I worked out its color instead."

But I digress...

I recently heard somewhere that you learn to write not necessarily by writing, but by reading. And that makes sense to me. The more you read, the more you experience good writing, and learn what works and what doesn't. Thinking about that a bit more, it becomes obvious *why* students should read so much literature. Not because there is going to be a test on Joseph Conrad or F. Scott Fitzgerald once they get out into "the real world", but because some day they are going to have to produce mature, well-crafted writing and they better see how it looks.

So when all is said and done, did I help my students improve their writing? I hope I did, and at least a few of them said they felt their writing had gotten better. But it was clear many of them still were struggling with their writing, and will continue to do so. And after hearing that comment about needing to read to be able to write, suddenly things clicked for me. If a student really doesn't know what good writing looks like, can they ever hope to produce it themselves?

A First Time for Everything

So today, for the first time in my 12 years as a professor at CWRU, I went over to the university library and checked out a book.

Now before my librarian mom hits the roof, let me just point out that the Astronomy Library is actually located in the Astronomy Department, literally about three steps from my office door. And I get books from there quite often. And also, astronomy is a very technologically oriented field (and one that's always been way ahead of the curve when it comes to electronic resources), so 95% of my "library activities" take place online (literature searches, journal downloads, database access, etc).

But today, for a class I'm teaching on the process and philosophy of science, I actually needed a book. My first thought was to wonder if I could get it at the public library, then suddenly I remembered we had a library on campus. So I headed over to that big building across Euclid, clutching a printout with the book info on it.

(there are rumored to be books in this building)

When I walked inside, I stopped, looked around for a while in confusion, then headed up the stairs to my favorite librarian's office.

Me: Bill, in this big, fancy library of yours, where are the, uh... well... you know.... the, uh..."

Bill: The books?

Me: Yeah, those things.

Bill (clearly resisting the urge to throw a shoe at me): Upstairs, third floor.

So I found my book, checked it out (another helpful librarian had to show me how to do that), and finally went back to my office to read...

Supermodels!

So who are those two gorgeous little girls on the website of the University's Annual Report?

(This is all Lisa's doing, by the way.)

My academic colleagues need a bit of help

So whenever I go visit another university to give a talk, one of the necessary stops is at their department administrator's desk to pick up the travel reimbursement forms. At that point, the person usually describes in incredible minutiae how to fill out these forms. I've always listened very politely to the description, the whole time thinking "It's a travel reimbursement form. You don't need to explain this. I've seen a million of these things, it's not exactly rocket science to fill them out."

And I would always fill them out, send them in, and get reimbursed. No problem.

I was amazed, however, at the response I got after filling in my reimbursement forms for a recent trip to another university. I got an email from their administrator which said:

Thanks for the great job filling out the report. You are my first speaker ... to complete it with no mistakes.

Really? REALLY? Come on, people, how hard is this? All these smart academic folks running around and none of you can properly fill out a travel reimbursement form? Yeesh.

The whole episode reminded me of this Far Side cartoon:

Report Card!

a.k.a. how to survive Caltech with honors...

So digging through my office the other day, I found a highly entertaining document: my undergraduate transcript. Now after years of handing out grades to my students, hollering at them about their GPA, and telling them "I have to see your transcript before I write you a recommendation letter", I figure fair's fair and it's time to let them see mine. It's been over 20 years since I graduated from Caltech, and they can't take away my degree at this point (can they?). So here it is in its full glory, and I'll even throw in a running commentary.

Things to remember:

• Caltech was on the quarter system, not semesters. There were 3 quarters per academic year.
• We used a wierd unit system -- divide the units by 3. In other words, a 9 unit course is like a 3 credit hour course.
• We were allowed to pass/fail a certain number of courses -- a lot of them, by the looks of my transcript!
• Freshman year at Caltech was pass/fail entirely.

---

First Year, Fall

OK, so fall term my freshman year looks pretty standard:

Standard 1st year calculus, physics, and chemistry. The obligatory "Literature Past and Present" course -- I remember reading Chaucer. That's about all I remember from that class. Like every freshman at every university everywhere, I took PE at the beginning, before realizing that I could blow it off and do it my senior year like every other upperclassman at every university everywhere. God only knows what "Computer Application" was.

---

First Year, Winter

On to being a second term freshman:

Pretty much a carbon copy of first term, except now we throw in Phys lab and Chem lab. I vaguely remember learning how to pipette in Chem lab. My friend Ich couldn't -- or wouldn't -- pipette to save his life, and he ended up having to take freshman Chem lab over again his senior year. When that happened I think he spent most of those lab periods scaring the poor freshmen...

Oh and that was the semester I suddenly realized that "Electricity and Magnetism" was how physicists spelled "Pure and Utter Hell". But I made it to be a third term freshman.

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First Year, Spring

Yay, finally an Astronomy course. It was fun finally being able to take Astronomy. I think we used Shu's book. Third term freshman chemistry was notable mostly for the fact that the professor was teaching undergraduates for the first time after teaching grad students for several years. So we basically got graduate level physical chemistry rammed down our freshman throats. My grade on the midterm was, if I recall correctly, something like a 37/300. During the final, which was take home (all Caltech finals were, actually), I remember walking into Ich's room and finding him taking the final while doing tequila shots. It probably helped.

Then I went home for the summer and hung out in my buddy Mike's basement. Think That Seventies Show shifted forward slightly into the early 80s.

---

Second Year, Fall

Then it was back to school, as a sophomore ON GRADES this time. Strap in.


Hey look at that -- a good start in Astronomy. That's gotta be a good sign. But there's a so-so math score to balance it out. That was assuredly the first C I'd ever gotten in my life -- a sign of things to come. "Basic Graphics" was a engineering drawing class, and it proved that my brother Bill got all the drawing skills in our family, clearly. I remember having to draw a nut and struggling mightily. But I got through the course, and I have my first grade point average: a 3.2.

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Second Year, Winter

OK, that's looking a bit more respectable. I raised the math grade, but dropped the astronomy grade. I think the astronomy course was taught by Tony Readhead, and had a lot more radio astronomy than I'd ever seen before. There's the art course (why did I pick 1900-1940? probably because it fit in my schedule...), and then the beginning of my intense interest in African politics. Or at least my intense interest in easily graded courses in African politics. And there's my GPA creeping up.

Now it's about this time that I realize that, unlike all my engineering buddies, who just need to graduate and they'll get a high paying job, if I want to go on to graduate school in astronomy, I need to get my grades up. As I tell my current students, a course screw-up here or there is understandable, but if your GPA is below a 3.5, you have some 'splainin' to do. Plus, 3.5 is the GPA necessary for "Graduating with Honors", so that seems like a nice juicy target to shoot for. But there I was, sitting at a 3.3. Time to get to work....

---

Second Year, Spring

Ah, "Solar System Astronomy", taught by Hal Zirin. This was basically three students meeting with Zirin in his office talking about stuff we read. (Note to students: when you are one of three students in a class, you do not skip class. It's obvious when you do. I think of Hal every time I yell at my students about skipping class.) EC115 was a course on global population growth. Being a Caltech undergraduate, I was practicing birth control by default, so that was a pretty easy A. StatMech seemed really cool to me, for some reason -- I enjoyed Kittle and Kroemer far more than is probably decent. And how is it that I can take three terms of Phys lab, and still have no idea how to wire a circuit board? (They did teach me all those important units like "farad" and "ampere" that come in handy while doing crossword puzzles...) But math bit me again, and my GPA slips back down to a 3.2.

---

Second Year, Summer

Then I did the smartest thing I ever did at Caltech:


Yep, that's summer term, where I worked reducing quasar spectra for Wal Sargent and earned 20 units of credit -- that's like 2-3 courses worth of credit! Keep that in mind when we get around to senior year...

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Third Year, Fall

On to junior year. As I have always said, junior year in a physics or astronomy program is the absolute worst academic year of your life. Much worse than anything you get in grad school, in my opinion. So navigating this year was going to be challenge.


That math course (AMa95) was a killer -- tons of work, hard as hell. But it wasn't required for the Astronomy program, so I could pass/fail it, and all my smart engineer friends had to take it, so I could work with them. I remember one time before lecture holding up a big sign in class that said "PASS/FAIL" and all the engineers got very cranky with me....

And finally, finally, I get to take a Shakespeare course. Now, I love Shakespeare. Always have, always will. There was no question I was going to take that course, and it was great. My term paper compared the storm in King Lear to Lear's internal anguish (Damn that Goneril!). Yeah, it probably was your typical 10 pages of undergraduate twaddle, but it seemed good at the time. And Jenijoy Labelle, the professor, said it was awfully good, too, so there!

Remember how I said "Electricity and Magnetism" was Physics-ese for "Complete and Utter Hell"? Ph 106A is E&M. Out of Jackson, no less. God save me, that was the worst experience of my academic life. How I got a C+ is anyone's guess. To this day, if you mention "Green's functions" to me, I pass out. It made Quantum Mechanics look easy, and I think that's why I did pretty well in QM.

But, look -- only four courses? What's up with that? I took five courses, dammit. I'll let Sherry tell you about that Optics course.

---

Third Year, Winter

"Physics of Stars" I believe was taught by Bev Oke. Racking up an A in an 11 unit course helps the old GPA, that's for sure. But that C in 106B is still dragging me down - curse you, Jackson! Other than Green's functions, the most striking thing I remember about Ph 106B was when the department secretary interrupted class one day and whispered something to the professor. He looked at her, and went on teaching. It was only when we said "Excuse me, did she say the Space Shuttle blew up?" that he actually stopped class. Yeesh. And then there's "Microcomputer Engineering"? That must be more programming, although I don't remember it. (This is usually where Biff likes to point out that I took more computer classes than he did.)

---

Third Year, Spring

And into 3rd term junior year, where the master plan starts coming together:


"Interstellar Medium" was cotaught by Nick Scoville and Fred Lo. It was early in the morning. I didn't mind -- I was working heavy hours in the Housing Office, and liked to get my courses done early so I could go to work. In fact, the early hour looked like it pained Nick more than it did any of us students. Look closely, though: another African Studies course! And finally "Classical Physics" has finally transitioned to covering mechanics, which made a lot more sense to me, so my grade finally ticked up there, pulling my GPA up another tenth.

Now comes the good stuff: senior year scheduling!

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Fourth Year, Fall
So there's the optics class -- if you take a class twice, and did well the first time you took it, you better do well the second time. Then do research with Nick (something about correlating IRAS maps w/ HI maps), take a stellar atmospheres class from Jeremy Mould, and a techniques class from Judy Cohen. Judy made us basically design Keck. I remember suddenly having to worry about the thermal expansion coefficient for Zerodur glass and thinking "This is engineering, dammit -- I'm an astronomer!" She mowed us all down, so we all pass/failed it, I think. I did, anyway.

Oh, and check out that A+ in "Political Geography of Developing Countries"! Five bucks if you can guess what continent that focused on. But still, I'm sitting at a 3.4. Must push it up one more tenth of a point!

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Fourth Year, Winter
Since I took all those politics and economics courses, I figure I should take an Intro to Political Science course, right? Me and a bunch of freshman. Pass/failed it, of course. Then a Stellar Interiors course, and Wal Sargent teaching about Galactic/Extragalactic Astronomy. I vividly remember one homework set where he gave us a list of stellar coordinates and radial velocities, and we had to solve for the solar motion. It blew me away that, as an undergrad with a simple HP15c, I could take real data and come up with an astrophysically meaningful answer. To all my students: when I hand you real datasets and tell you to solve it yourself, you have Wal Sargent and his AY 154 class to thank for that!

And of course, like every good senior, I took PE. "Independent Study" PE, which consisted of running around the track and then reporting my laps to some bored assistant track coach. At one point, he asked me how far I was running before stopping, and I said "Oh, about half a lap." He just looked at me and said "Try harder." So I would run for three quarters of a lap. Ah, PE at Caltech!

But look -- one graded course earned an A, and I got my GPA up to a 3.5! Honors, baby! So what are we going to do for third term? Well, remember that summer working for academic credit? That means I need only one more class to graduate. And since I've completed all the major requirements, it can be a non-major class that I pass/fail. So it's time to play a prevent defense with my scheduling -- can't chance a graded class that might lower my GPA...

But -- horrors! I've taken all the African studies courses offered by my favorite easy-grading professor. What to do, what to do?

---

Fourth Year, Spring

Ask said African Studies professor if I can take retake the course as Independent Study!

Now the way this works is, you have to show up for a few seminars and then write a paper about some political aspect of an African nation. I know that going in, I know how long the paper needs to be, and I know I just need to pass. So the week before the term starts (also known as "Spring Break" to you slackers), I research and write the paper and then stuff it in my desk. I sit in on a few classes, otherwise loaf around all term, and then at term's end I turn in the paper, and that's it. Game, set, match.



As my good friend J.R. would say: Boogie.

On Writing...

When I was writing my thesis long ago, this was taped to my office door. Twenty years later, it's still one of my favorites:


The look on Hobbes' face in panel two is priceless....

Grad School Letters

So one of the aspects of my job that really should be enjoyable is writing letters of recommendation for my students applying for graduate school. And I do enjoy writing the letters for the most part. But submitting the letters has gotten to be such an aggravation that it just sent me into a steaming rage, loudly swearing a blue streak that could be heard up and down the departmental halls.

So what has happened? Well in the good old days you would just write a letter, print it out, and hand it to your department assistant to mail out. Simple, easy.

Now? Sweet fancy moses, what a pain in the ass it has become.

Now we have to fill out forms online. Each school has a different process, and the quality of implementation is often abysmal. Some places want you to "create an account" or "reuse your existing account". Create an account? Give me a break -- this isn't online banking here, I'm just trying to send a letter. Reuse my account? I do this once a year, you expect me to remember some disposable account password I use once a year? Yes, I know I can contact your technical support group, but for crying out loud, I'm just trying to send you a letter.

So here's the report from just one student's application:

• Wisconsin: online, worked fine.
• Virginia: online, and I had to create an account, but it then wouldn't accept an uploaded letter. It wanted me to type my letter into a silly little webform box, which would mean reformatting, etc. So I killed that online form, and put the letter in the mail.
• Illinois: online, create an account, and it crashed my browser when I tried to submit it, so I had to go through the whole process again. The second time it worked.
• Indiana: online, same 3rd party software ("ApplyYourself") that crashed my browser for Illinois. No problems on this one, but after submitting and getting a confirmation that it was received, about a week later the department says they in fact never got it and asks me to email the letter again.
• Ohio State: online application that again wouldnt let me upload a letter, but wanted my to type my letter into a webform. But they also want me to send in a duplicate copy of BOTH my letter AND my rating form. So why am I asked to submit it online?
• Penn State: seems to be paper only.
  

So here are my pleas:

To my students: I'm happy to write you letters. It's my great pleasure to see your successes and help you attain them. But this has become a real time sink, which is why I ask you to get me all the information well ahead of time; please do so. And it's why you should deliver me a six pack of good beer when I am done.

To most graduate programs: STOP THIS NONSENSE! Just give me an email address where I can send you a letter and be done with it.

To the few graduate programs who do have a simple online recommendation process: Thank you.

To my colleagues writing recommendation letters to Case: I hear our online recommendation form is also abysmally bad. Just skip it entirely, and e-/snail-mail me your recommendation. I'll get it into the right hands.

Good god, weren't computers and the intertubes supposed to make our lives easier?