- “Should I be a bio major?” “What do I get out of a biology degree?” I just printed out this response to hand out when I get asked this question.
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Heads up: Do not trust Microsoft Excel, whatsoever, with dates. It doesn’t know how to handle them.
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EO Wilson writes a blog post, about spiders.
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Simon Goring tells us what it’s like to interview for a permanent research position with CNRS. This job is like a tenure-track position but with more latitude. It turns out the whole interview is just a very brief conversation. Here is a post before the interview and here is one after the interview.
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This column by Meghan Daum about David Letterman’s legacy was incisive and and explains how his flavor of wit and irony foreshadowed (if not modeled) our contemporary media environment. If you remember watching Late Night in his early days, you might find her column enlightening. (And pretty much everything that Meghan Daum writes is designed to view culture by piercing through superficiality. You’re lucky if your local paper carries her columns.)
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This weekend my family installed a Little Free Library — the picture of it is below. It’s accessible from the sidewalk, and people can come by and grab a book for free, and drop books off if they wish. It’s only been up for a few days now, but a few books have appeared and one’s disappeared. There is a low-to-moderate about of foot traffic by our place. As word gets out, we’re hoping it thrives. Do you have one in your neighborhood? Check out this map to find out. And look at the Little Free Library site to look into hosting one yourself.
Little Free Library Charter #12221, photo by T. McGlynn
For a link, thanks to Bug Gwen.
Small Pond Science 
I’m a little troubled by the “passion” aspect of the “Should I be a bio major” piece. It comes pretty close to Do What You Love ideology, which has some classist aspects to it.
That is a really great piece Lirael. Thanks for suggesting it. I recommend that everyone read it. It touches a bit on the academic job search as well.
I really do struggle with how to advise students when they ask me some version of this question. Of course, I am a bit biased as I wonder, after many failed job searches, whether the path I have chose out of love is really the best one to have travelled.
In my observations, I’ve found little correspondence between academic major in college and a person’s career path. If we treat the Bachelor as vocational training, then this idea would be classist. More detailed thoughts forthcoming.
I agree that we shouldn’t treat a BS or BA as vocational training. I am being a bit myopic and egoistic. My mind was more on grad school I think (I realize that is not what the piece was about). Nonetheless, I think the piece that Lirael links to is a worthwhile read.