Beginnings: Old and New

Beginnings: Old and New

“I want to be a C. scientist” That’s what I told my brother, with an impish grin. He was visiting Bombay from New York, circa 1997, during a break from his studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He was pursuing a degree in Computer Science. He asked me what I wanted to be when […]

Where I describe how to write rebuttals to academic reviews.

The Art of Rebutting

This is a post on how to rebut reviews. Specifically, CHI reviews. The ideas presented here probably apply to rebuttals more broadly, but much of what I’m going to speak about in this post is specific to CHI. Okay, so the long, long — so long — wait is over and you have your CHI […]

Tips on presenting your thesis proposal.

Lesson Learned From Proposing My Thesis: Presenting

You’ve got your committee and you’ve scheduled a date. You’ve got your document written. Now, you need to present and defend your thesis proposal. In many ways, the presentation is the most frightening part of the process. Your committee will ask tough questions now so that they don’t have to at your defense. Those tough […]

Some tips on how to Ph.D. I've learned over the years.

5 Ph.D. Survival Tips

I recently had to give a short presentation on “survival tips” as a Ph.D. student [1]. I thought I’d summarize that presentation in written form, too. Now, there’s a lot of material out there on how to succeed as an academic and as a professional. This post is going to be a rehashing of those […]

MakeWriteLearn -- How to Conference: How to deal with "networking" at academic conferences

How To Conference, Pt. 1: Networking

Conferences can be fun and exciting. You get to travel, meet new people from all around the world, reconnect with old friends, and learn about bleeding-edge work. If you are a student, you even get to do all of this for free [1]. But, conferences can also be nerve-racking — for newcomers and veterans alike. […]

The Day You Became An Academic Writer

The Day You Became An Academic Writer

I went from being a good writer to being an academic writer after five years of grad school. I couldn’t believe how convoluted it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste half of your life in academia. Academic writing is about self-aggrandizing and duplicity. The main technique is […]