I suspect that nothing much has changed over the past fifty or one hundred years. There have always been a grinds and nerds, but much of the university student body lives not through the classroom and library and laboratory, but through undergraduate life, now enhanced by fitness centers, therapy, etc. And graduate students in the professional schools are often not so different, albeit they ought to be more focused on their schoolwork and often are. Whatever aura professors used to have has somewhat diminished, in large part because the professoriate has been unwilling to distance itself from the student body. In any case, the students seem not to be much better (even if the SAT's go up wildly), since the issue is discipline and character and that has not changed so much.

1. When you write something or prepare a presentation, whether it be a report, a memo, a love letter, or a speech--make a rough OUTLINE before you start drafting. You can start by listing your main points, then order them. You can attach to each item various sub-points or illustrations.

Then when you write you can do so with confidence. It's also much easier.

Also, you have to REWRITE and COPYEDIT. When you have a draft, let it sit for a bit, and then figure out if it flows appropriately, etc.

Much of what I read from students seems not to have gone through this. One consequence is that you discover what you are trying to say 3/4 of the way through the paper. You should know that before you start.

2. If your instructor (or boss, or coach) tells you to do something in a project, and seems concerned for the quality of your performance, it does not do to ask, "Will it affect my grade (salary, ...)?" You are being done a favor, being given some extra guidance. Now, you may decide not to take the advice, for the instructor may be wrong. But it does you no good to act as if you are in a negotiating position. Moreover, in the world I live in, doing your personal best is what counts--not merely doing enough, or doing what you can negotiate down to. It's easy to recommend someone who does decent work but is of reliable character. It's harder for someone who does superb work, but is unreliable or not manifestly trustworthy.

3. When your instructor is talking, it is courteous to not talk to your classmates, and to attend to what is being said. No checking of email, either. I am told that coaches in athletics make their charges do various penalties for violating these sorts of rules.

I would think these observations are well known to most of you. But my colleagues all tell me that they see evidence that some fraction of you need to be reminded.

I wrote back:

"Your issues have little to do with statistics, but a lot to do with thinking. For example, intuitively you know that you cannot average small and large states, and that you have to normalize by the states' populations. You surely have the capacity to think this stuff through, since most of it depends on your basic intuitions about the sizes of things, and the credibility of the numbers your computer spits out--such as those large standard deviations you got at first. Trust yourself more, think if something makes sense, and that will help. It's not at all about formulas, or about tricks. You want to be autonomous, and I am sure you can be.

You knew something was wrong, and you have the capacity to figure out where to go next."

But, it does take lots of time...

In general, students are more than smart enough to do the work they have to do. But, often, they do not realize that problems may well require hard thinking or writing out an answer and seeing if it makes sense. Or many drafts, or many trials. Computer applications may have steep learning curves, and the only way you master them is by trying things and learning by your mistakes. Of course, you want someone to help you get into the application, but from there on, you have to experiment and try things out. Yes, someone may know exactly what to do, but that someone may be not be around when you are doing your next job or project. So you have to learn how to rely more on yourself, your own wits, and the kindness of strangers and friends. What you have to learn is how to learn more, how to figure things out--and of course you'll still want to ask for help. There are surely more efficient ways of teaching and learning, but what you want to learn more than anything else is how to be courageous and resourceful enough when the going gets tough.

Eric Clay wrote me, after seeing the above: "This seems to be the sort of learning moment when play and work merge into creativity. That is the sort of approach that happens when students are driven by a light-hearted sense of the importance of what they are trying to do, and they are fully aware that they do not know how to do it. The job of the teacher is to create an intellectual and emotional space where that can happen." [Eric Clay, M.Div., Ph.D.]

By chance, in the last day or two I have heard of several academic integrity violations. Namely, when papers and projects were checked with Turnitin or just Google, the source was discovered. Often, substantial quantities of a paper or project are lifted from some source with no attribution, or with a general attribution but with no quotes.

What's happened is that there are people who make money not only from selling papers and projects, but other people (Google, Turnitin) from web search and other such to find similar items to what you are looking for. The search people are very smart, very motivated, and quite powerful computationally. Moreover, other "borrowers" leave their work on the Net, so that even if you have borrowed from a secure source, there will be footprints by those less careful. It's sort of like inside trading, where one of the beneficiaries just can't help but tell a friend.

Professors are encouraged to use these search services, and the services are becoming much more automatic--and competition will make them much more effective. Bing vs. Google.

By the way, there way a time when students would say that they did not know this sort of borrowing was not ok. It was part of their culture. (Think here of what happens in popular music and mixes. See "Steal This Music," by Joanna Demers, where the traditions are more deeply explored. Or, look at the wonderful literature on book publishing's early days. And quoting from Scripture or authority is often done in speeches, without acknowledgment.)

But, at least in school-work and in scholarship, such unacknowledged borrowing is a violation of academic integrity and a form of theft. Acknowledged borrowing with proper references is in fact the nature of scholarship.

In conversations with my colleagues, I realized that many of our students do not realize that most of their professional writing is for a busy audience: bosses, clients, community members, other scholars, etc. They have lots to read and do. Or, as a lawyer friend told me: Don't assume the judge will read past the first page of the brief.

So: BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front! Professor Juliet Musso calls this pyramidal writing. We have written articles about this sort of writing, but the essence is:

In your first paragraph, give away your main point. Don't promise, don't motivate (yet), don't tell me what you are going to do. Just tell me what you are sure you want me to know or do.

Often, you discover this main point while drafting your memo or essay or article. The put it UP FRONT. I discover the crucial sentence or paragraph in the Conclusion or somewhere about 2/3 into the piece. BLUF!

This means you have to draft and redraft. It also helps to Proofread and Spellcheck.

Finally, you have permission to ENUMERATE, SUBHEAD, and to USE TOPIC SENTENCES. If you have several main points, number them. If you have several divisions of your piece, use subheads. And each section or division should begin with its main point: BLUF! People should be able to read your piece in outline.

By the way, this is also good advice for talks and and informative speeches. Tell me your findings in the first five minutes. I want to know then, not in the last 1/3 of the talk. No promises, not teasers. Give it all away.

None of this applies necessarily to love letters, novels, or New Yorker essays.

MK
PS Note that my Subject Line gave away the whole email. If I did not have a Subject Line, I would have put that in the first sentence.

2. My concern about your being late or talking over me or going in and out of class, missing classes. . . is actually a concern with your well being once you leave USC. In the world I inhabit, especially when you have not built up credibility with years of scrupulous and proper behavior, you "lose points" rapidly by being late, etc. What drives me to distraction is watching you happily set yourself up to go over a cliff or be hit by a truck. Perhaps I am not tough enough, or even do not convey my expectations (I think I have done the latter), but in fact the world is filled with people whose respect you covet but who are not tough or do not tell you what to do. You are supposed to have mastered proper decorum.

As a friend of mine said, he found that letters of recommendation for those students just had to wait and often did not go out--other students' requests came first.

Also, it does not serve you well to "talk back" to your professor. I don't care, so much as I watch you self-destruct before my eyes. I think of what your parents/coach/bosses would think.

What you brag about shows who you are, not the person being described. Joe, for example, has made many contributions, widely recognized, but the best way of describing him would be in terms of two or three of the most influential contributions or lines of research. Of course, we add National Academies, Guggenheims, etc.

"peer-reviewed publications" is a sign of something fishy, since that is what we expect. Grants may or may not be indicative of quality, depends on the field. If someone won an award of medium prominence twenty years ago, it does not count for much in general. N millions of dollars of grants might be impressive, but again what really counts is contribution.

Books are a curious category. Did you write them yourself, or are they edited collections. You might say "five books," but I always then check to see if they are edited collections. On the other hand, titles always are good currency, since they are substantive, again as long as they are by the person (and not edited).

As for public service, the bigger the role, the better. Advising on some sort of state committee is nice, but bragging about it is a sign of weakness in general. But being deputy undersecretary of xyz in DC, or head of department in Sacramento means something real.

Marginal cases list publication quantity, either because the contributions do not add up, or because as in medicine the numbers are large, reflect joint pubs, and that's what they do.

The problem is that bragging about weak stuff devalues the strong contributions. On the other hand, I have no idea what works for the general public. Maybe there you can brag about numbers of peer-reviewed pubs, but I think this shows that you have little regard for the academic culture.

I look for fluff, and usually do find it. On the other hand, some people are so substantial they are bulletproof--although they too may well engage in fluffery. In general, I observe that the most prominent academics are acutely aware of their status, and when they are with others of their rank they tend to try to show off. Not all, not always, but more often than you would believe. I don't know if women are like this, but men are surely like this in my observation.

Dear Professor Krieger,

Next weekend I will be attending a conference and I
won't be flying back until Tuesday morning. I will be missing class on
Monday, I am a little concerned about what I will be missing on Monday. Do you think I will be able to pick up the information I will miss quickly if I visit you at office
hours that week?

I wrote back:
What students who chose to miss classes did when I was a student was to consult with other students and learn from them. Are things different now? (It's not that I won't help you,I'll gladly do that. But you are choosing to miss class, and not being proactive in working around it. What would an employer think?)

You don't want to set yourself up. You want to be in charge and show that you can manage your life--unless you have real tragedy visited upon you.

1. Stay Within the Time Limit: If you have fifteen minutes for your talk, speak for fourteen. Practice and time yourself; this means the main work has to be done a week before the meeting. Cut out anything that is not vital. Allow time for others to ask questions.
2. Main Point Up Front: In the first two minutes, people should know your main point, the most important finding, your theoretical claim. Discuss your paper with your advisor, to be sure that the main points are highlighted. You represent USC, SPPD, and your advisor, so you might as well do a fine job.
3. PowerPoints are Often Unhelpful: Do have a handout, maybe just one page, that summarizes your main points. You want people to listen to you, not fall asleep in the dark or just read your PowerPoints. On the other hand, if you do not speak clearly or find that your English is not up to the task, use PowerPoints, so people can follow what you are saying.
4. Have copies of your paper with you, to give to interested people, and if you are seeking a position, be sure to have your CV with you. In any case, be sure your email address and website (if appropriate) are on the paper and on the CV.
5. Most titles are cuter than they are informative. So be sure that you follow #2. If you have a chance to change the title, make sure the main finding or claim is there. Tantalizing people is much less effective than giving them the good stuff.
6. Your goal is to have some people be interested in your work, argue with you, take your work seriously.
7. Multi-authored papers seem to be more frequent than some years ago. If someone asks, and if they are recruiting they are likely to, be able to explain your contribution to the work, your plans for future work, the implications of your work for practice or policy or other research. Have you thought about places to obtain grant support to further your agenda?

How do you approach a new field, and get a sense of the lay of the scholarly land--trace out what is in the literature: see the forest for the trees? What's up here?
Listening to a Seminar, Reading a Promotion Dossier, Reading an Article or Book outside a field I know well.
I assume that I can understand anything, at some limited level to be sure, but anything. It is like something I know already.
1. There must be a story here. What are you up to? What is the punchline? What is the claim? (What is a "story"?)
a. How does X work, where X is an argument or an object or a process or . . .
b. What is the method of inquiry and study? How do you go from the materials you work with (and what are they?) to your claims?
2. Is the evidence and theory potentially adequate to the claim? A matter of comparable levels of detail.
3. Is the argument I am reading or hearing experiential? That is, the punchline is less important than the process of going through it. A mathematical proof, poetry or a novel or some forms of criticism and belles letters.
4. What is at stake here? The field of argument in this discipline or arena.
5. Nothing is new, all is a repetition and variation. Analogy is destiny. Models and Metaphors: mechanism, typology or archetype, structure, narrative, form.
6. Am I being snookered? What is hidden, left out, inconsistent? Does it make sense as a whole? Are the special arguments really special? Are the outliers ignorable, should they be trimmed off, are they part of the story?
7. How does the work deal with arguments within the field, and with matters of truth or reliability or credibility? I do not concern myself much with whether the claim is empirically true or supported by the evidence or whether the argument has flaws. (I assume that I can be effectively lied to on matters at this level of detail. Stuff is outside my ken. Arguments must have apparently-fatal flaws.) I leave this to the experts on the archives, the statistics, or the internal issues within the field. So, for example, there are others who can better sniff out problems with claims about citation statistics or with teaching evaluations or with charts and diagrams or with technical philosophical arguments.
8. Would you buy a used car from this dealer? In the end, Are you being given a fair representation of the facts and judgments and arguments so that you could make your own decision? Can I supply (from other sources?) what is missing, and so make a judgment?
9. When I ask a question, I am trying to find out what is really going on. Am I on track?

How do I choose problems to work on, whether in my books, in my photographic and now aural documentation of Los Angeles, in teaching? How do I know about disparate fields?
1. I try lots of topics, and only some prove fruitful for me. Hence, the topics that characterize my work may be diverse, but, as in evolution's species, there is continuity with the past, but much of the intermediate materials are no longer much available. What is apparently incommensurable and diverse and discrete is actually historically linked. Topics may come up by chance, but they are not likely to be pursued unless they fit into a larger agenda.
2. Whatever the topic, I explore the scholarly literature, finding the authoritative works, often going backwards in time, and ground myself in what is known or understood. I rarely if ever master the subtleties of many of the subfields and subjects. I do want to avoid making egregious mistakes, and to be sure that I am decently grounded in scholarship. Has this topic been so well explored, there is little I can contribute?
3. I was trained in physics, but also had an undergraduate education that emphasized the Great Books, and thinkers about politics and society. It took me many years of subsequent reading and thinking to have any decent critical sense of the Books and thinkers, but the origin is in my first two years of college as well as high school.
4. Over the now-many years, I have developed an informed sensibility, reading bits and pieces of scholarship. More to the point, there is lots I have no real feeling for (biology and medicine, history), but others ignore that because they see only what I do know. In any case, I seem to have no reluctance to trying to figure out foreign material. I assume all is understandable, there is a story here, it's like something else I do know. And, if I really don't know anything, or have no feeling for the problem, I find people (or sources) who can help me. Or, I make an informed guess, and have others correct me, or I read further and get corrected by what I read.
5. In any case, the topics that capture my attention for more than an instant are almost always informed by past experience and scholarly knowledge. When I was starting out, I surely went down less fruitful paths (mistakes?). But, in the end, even the diversions prove useful, often years later. (In effect, I make them useful.) What I recall is that by the time of college I had some sort of taste that was reliable enough for me. I was brought up in a working-class family, smart but not highly educated, with a strong political interest. I was an outsider, my nose pressed against the glass, and I wanted in.
6. When I think of my books, and other research, there are several big themes:
a. Structure. Mathematics/physics. Models (drawn from diverse humanistic fields such as religion)
b. Design. Why there is order in the world
c. Decisions and leadership

In each case, what I am trying to show is how the world makes sense, how what might seem esoteric or unavailable is not so foreign to one's everyday knowledge and examples.

7. In my photographing and Los Angeles media (sound, video) work, the topics are typically what is everyday but ignorable. I like topics where there are many many examples (patterns, types). And I am informed by major topics in the study of cities: work and worksites, worship, street life and public spaces and traffic, environment and background ambiance, commerce and commercial districts, infrastructure, housing, and "how the other half lives." My techniques and styles of work are usually unashamedly borrowed from artists (photographers, painters)--I am a documentor, not an artist. I do not worry about originality or the artworld. I am concerned with the depth and sensibility of my documentation, its reliability and future usefulness. Can I tell a good story about what I am doing, have I done a good job in indexing the corpus, does it look or sound interesting?
8. I record public (aural) ambience, where ambience refers to what might be called background sound, usually unavoidable, pervasive, varying, and to be ignored if possible while you are up to your tasks. To attend to public ambience is to be up to a new task, attending to what is to be ignored, the emperor's new clothes. Public ambience may include industrial noise, conversations, traffic and infrastructure, HVAC, people playing basketball or shopping, commerce, sounds of bells and pings of ATM machines (not church bells), other people in the room when in a restaurant, the sounds of worship coming out of a church, worksites, flatulence, . . . Of course, in other places it may include animal sounds, wind and rain, plants rubbing against each other, . . . To record public ambience in Los Angeles is to create a documentary record of the place, to be interpreted and listened to in decades hence. I am interested in patterns, in the everyday, in cases where there are many examples.
What is remarkable is that in public, there is almost no expectation of privacy. Conversations are loud, cellphone conversations are broadcast. Everything is shown, displayed,... Not always, but often...

I have documented public and private Los Angeles, what you can see from and on the street and what is behind closed doors. The profane and the sacred. I am interested in commerce and merchandising, services and real estate. Industrial worksites and people-at-work, utilities and ports and rail yards and warehouses. Public life includes conversations heard out loud, life of the bus and transit, and people gathering together to each. As for the streets there is background ambience, commercial and wholesale districts, neighborhoods, residential and industrial streets, and traffic and people using transit. On those streets are thousands of places of worship, and some of the time I go inside as well. Infrastructure provides the nerveways and arterials that link it all together.

Every detail matters as it is, so we want to have lots of resolution and accuracy.
What I want to do is to make you stop and look and listen: my work has sensitized to what is there, in front of you. So you stop to confirm and enhance your now trained intuition.

9. (I am informed by W. H. Whyte, although less with human behavior than with the background and signs of behavior, but also by a long tradition of photographing cities and city life--Marville, Atget, Evans, Friedlander. Also, Diderot on worksites; Ruscha on the street, Sanders and the Beckers on typologies. RM Schafer on soundscape.)

10. I am like the fieldwork anthropologist or linguist, trying to document a vanishing culture. Here, what is vanishing is the now and casually-made records of the now (perhaps of low quality, but as likely they are not preserved, nor are they locatable).

11. More generally, I find topics because my eyes and ears and mind are open enough, things come along, and as mentioned earlier many topics do not pan out. I am always in business.

Otherwise, perhaps you ought go to medical school or law school?

1. You are being trained to do research and participate in a community of scholars. Find a faculty member with whom you can work, at first on their ongoing projects, and link up early. You want someone who "owns" you, who feels responsible for you.
2. Attend research seminars, often. People will notice that you are there. When you have questions, ask them.
3. Start looking at the top five journals in your area of concern or your field. If you have time, look at the last five years of issues.
4. Find peers, in your own department or in allied departments.
5. Start thinking about your future career. Go to meetings in your field, and eventually present at those meetings. It's fine to talk to anyone whose work interests you. Even the most famous of people rarely feel they are being attended to enough--they hunger for attention.
6. Start reading in your field, above and beyond your courses.
7. Look respectable. No flip-flops, no too casual clothes. You really don't want to look like an undergraduate.
8. Prepare for your classes, so that you are able to contribute, to ask questions, etc. If you are shy, you will have to learn to speak up.
9. If you have made a mistake in coming to this university, speak to your advisor early on, and see if something can be done. If nothing can be done, go to another university.
10. Intellectual and cultural life at a research university is usually rich, and you might as well enjoy it--seminars in other departments, visiting big shots, etc.

2. On fields in which a book is the standard contribution, usually impact and contribution is not well indicated by citations, for promotion purposes. It is indicated by book reviews, how many and their venues. Main journals in the field vs. specialized ones, many vs. one or two. In the journal article fields, citations indicate something about impact, but for substance, it is useful to rely on the letters.

3. Books tend to take a while to be influential through citations in journal articles, even longer in other books, times too long compared to when decisions are called for. Often, one has to rely on reference letters for first books when promotion to associate is on the agenda.

4. For journal fields: Citations are helpful for promotion to associate, crucial for promotion to full. Again, issues of delay, but much shorter delay than for books.

5. Some fields demand a book and several articles. (Usually, this is honored in the breach, by the way.) The articles here are previews, almost always. People are waiting for the book to really evaluate the work.

6. In a field like political science or sociology, while there is often talk about demanding a book and a bunch of articles, individuals tend to show one tendency OR the other. The articles can be incremental contributions, to be evaluated as a whole, or previews of the book. If previews, we want to see the book.

7. In all fields, I am convinced that it should be possible to explain to a professor layman and the provost what the contribution is and its significance, even if the field is technical or has a specialized diction and discourse. Moreover, letters can be substantive using lay language in describing the contribution clearly.

For a university to become stronger, MANY of the lateral appointments must be very stong, as should be MORE and MORE of the internal promotions. They set the standard, they benchmark. Strong ones cases make weak ones seem untenable, unless there are institutional reasons that are overriding.