2019-20 FUF Sessions
Welcome!
The goal for Physics and Astronomy Community Excellence (PACE) Fire Up Fridays is to provide regular meeting space and programming that is designed specifically in the interest of supporting and developing incoming graduate students in our department. This includes both structured and unstructured activities that will foster a sense of community and inspire resilience within our community of graduate students.
For resources and summaries of our past Fire Up Friday sessions, see below or click the corresponding link: Time & Goal Management, How Funding Works in Our Department, Working Out & Working In (Physical Health), Career Path Exploration, Demystifying the Qual Exam, Personal Wellness with Dr. Phong Luong, Building Your Mentor Map, Finding and Fostering Healthy Relationships with Advisors and Summer Professional Materials Development.
2018-19 FUF Sessions See Our Syllabus HereTime & Goal Management Session
Description
This session served as a guided discussion/panel on balancing grad student responsibilities. In small group settings, senior students shared their experiences, including their successes and failures, as well as trips and tricks for studying, TAing, etc. Key take aways from this session were to know it's ok to ask for help and to do so often, that scheduling can be a life-saver, and that checking in with yourself is incredibly important!
Resources
- How to Align Your Time with Your Priorities (aka The Sunday Meeting to plan your week)
- Mastering Academic Time Management
- Every Semester Needs a Plan (this webinar walks you through step by step creating a quarterly plan and how to implement that on a weekly basis)
- UCI's Keeping the Balance Guide for Grads and PostDocs
- How Hard Do Professors Actually Work (some perspective)
- Research On the Overestimated Workweek (see fig/chart 1)
- Example of How a Physics Graduate Student Could Spend Their Time (see slide 10)
How Funding Works in Our Department
Description
In this session, our faculty leader Franklin Dollar presented information to PACE mentees regarding how funding works as a graduate student, departmental support and external fellowships. The objective of this session was to provide students with a space in which they could ask questions regarding how the department handles funding, how summer funding works
Resources
These serve as a repository of resources regarding funding in the Physics and Astronomy Department
- How to establish residency
- Google Drive of Some Resources/Solutions Ten things graduate students need to know
Working Out & Working In (Physical Health)
Description
In the first session of this two-part series, we explored as a group some methods of stress reduction - or rather stress expression - to use for when times get rough. This included discussions that facilitated the normalization of our struggles. The key take aways from this session were effective stress management methods such as calendar blocking, practicing discipline, exercise, using To-Do Lists, outsourcing and multitasking (links below). We were left with a great Grandpa quote - "Do your best and eff the rest."
Resources
Career Path Exploration
Description
This session was geared at starting a conversation around the future careers that will be available to Physics PhD students. We encouraged mentees and mentors to evaluate their skill inventory and discuss skills that can be obtained during graduate school.
Demystifying the Qual Exam
Description
In this special session lead by UCI's Grad Division Counselor, Dr. Phong Luong, we will discuss individualized and consistent self care, especially for physics graduate students and learn some breathing exercises!
Resources
- Self Care During Dissertation Writing(Good for any busy period of your grad journey!) 17 Minute Video + 'Homework'
- Radical Self Care Article
- Listening to Your Body Article
Personal Wellness with Dr. Phong Luong
Description
In this session the graduate student counselor Dr. Phoug Luong offered his advice for how to reduce anxiety and stress for students preparing for the qualification exam.
Building Your Mentor Map
Description
This was our very first virtual FUF, and during this session we discussed the concept of mentor maps and we had everyone complete the exercise of filling in their personal mentor maps to determine which areas of mentorship were and were not being satisfied. We ended the session by reviewing the various types of mentors and how to acquire new mentors.
Resources
- Inside HigerEd: Intro to Mentoring Network
- Chronicle Vitae: Why a Mentoring Network is Beneficial
- NCFDD’s excellent video on advisors, mentors, sponsors and the filling out your Mentor Map (70 Minute Video)
- Other Related NCFDD Resources
- NCFDD's Mentor Map (One suggestion is to think of the Intellectual Readers section as mentors who will read your papers and give you feedback on such areas as Research Methods, Science Story, Readability and Overall Story.)
Finding and Fostering Healthy Relationships with Advisors
Description
During this discussion, we explored how and when to find an advisor across physics subfields, what to look for in an advisor, and what it means to have multiple mentors.
Resources
- This report from the American Astronomical Society’s Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion on Astronomy Graduate Education contains guidelines on admissions practices, recommendations to improve retention, and has a lot of very practical resources to accomplish improving diversity and inclusion in the appendices.
Summer Professional Materials Development
Description
This session will serve as a time to discuss tackling conferences and self promotion over the summer. We will discuss balancing intense research time with developing important professional skills/materials such as personal websites, CVs, posters, etc.
Resources
- Self Promotion the Right Way (Blog by Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings)
- Self Promotion Balancing Act (Science Article)
- Is There Room in Science for Self Promotion? (OpEd in The Scientist)
- Networking for Introverts (and Extroverts, Too!) (NCFDD Guest Webinar - 70 minutes)
- PhD's Guide to Academic Conferences (Scientific American Blog)
- Conferences: 'Adulting' for Grad Students (Inside Higher Ed Blog)
- How to Network in Grad School (Cheeky Scientist Blog)
- Where to Begin Building a Website (Inside Higher Ed Blog)
- GitHub Pages Instructions
- htlm5 up (Free website templates!)
- Speak Your Science: How to give a better conference talk (Planetary Society Blog)
- How to Give a Great Scientific Talk (Nature Blog)
- Better Posters Blog (A resource for improving poster presentations)
- Better Scientific Poster Templates
- How to Write a Good CV for Industry (Physics World Blog)
- Physics Today CV Template
- Keep two CVs, a long version that has all your accomplishments and a condensed version. Consider having the condensed version as the one on your website.
- Personalize Your Website and CV/Resume
- Remember, we are humans as well as scientists.
- Examples include recommending books, discussing your hobbies or adding a QR code to your website on your CV/Resume.
- Photos are great! Consider adding a professional headshot and photos of yourself presenting your science and doing activities you enjoy.
- Keep in mind that motion graphics on websites can be sensory overload.
- On your website, consider structuring it after your goals - one tab/page per set of goals.
- Cross-linking on your website is super helpful for two reasons - 1) it gives your audience more ways to interact with you and learn about you, and 2) it can help boost your website to the top in search engine results. Examples are:
- Your articles on arXiv.
- Your ORCID, Google Scholar or ResearchGate profile.
- Personal Blogs
- Social Media Profiles