The juice and the squeeze

Julia and Jonathan tackle questions around authenticity and navigating all the different relationships we have in our professional lives. What do we choose to share with whom? And how? Being honest is valuable but it’s also nice to avoid oversharing. The “right” choice will be different for everyone, but as people who value authenticity your hosts try to find ways to be honest in a variety of situations. PS Sometimes Professors have hard times, too!

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• Jonathan Peelle (@jpeelle.bsky.social) — Bluesky

Inspired by a listener question, Jonathan and Julia talk about mentoring, with specific attention to how it might look different for trainees of different stages (for example, undergraduate vs. graduate students). Important considerations include generalizable "don't call them soft" skills related to time management, organization, and so on. Some strategies include formal onboarding for new lab members, individual development plans, and “professional development” portions of lab meetings. Julia learned the importance of knowing the why of something in the context of sweeping the floor. But first, celebrating 50 episodes of The Juice and the Squeeze, and an update on Julia’s Halloween.

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• 50th Anniversary Gifts

It's really tempting to count things like credit hours, publications, or grants. Julia and Jonathan talk about some of the disadvantages of counting, including missing out on "hard-to-count" activities that may be important to us, and how to push the needle in our own thinking or evaluations to fight against easy answers. How do we consider the important aspects of helping students in our offices, deep thinking, or playing with Legos?

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• Goodhart's law - Wikipedia

Back after a year (!) away, Julia and Jonathan cover what’s been going on for the last year, and new things they are doing. Perhaps depressingly, they agree that being older or more advanced in one’s career doesn’t prevent the need for some degree of “starting over” when new challenges present themselves. Plus, Julia shares a strong book recommendation!

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us a book by Ed Yong

Jonathan has a career announcement and Julia is excited about graduation. Jonathan’s world didn’t fall apart when he checked his email less. And the main topic: what makes a good hobby? Do Jonathan or Julia have any hobbies?

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• Jonathan Peelle on Twitter: "I'm tremendously excited to share that in August I'm moving to @Northeastern! A big THANK YOU to my WashU department, lab, students, and many colleagues who have supported my lab since 2012. I'm looking forward to continued collaborations, and also to Big New Things in Boston! 🤘 https://t.co/I9CmDYsIVE" / Twitter

Julia and Jonathan revisit the issue of how we manage our time and our commitments so that we can keep some sense of sanity, instead of feeling like butter being scraped over too much bread. In brief, when there’s too much stuff in the closet, you need to lean harder into your pile of no’s, because you probably only have about 4000 weeks to work with. How do we decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze (as it were)? Maybe we should start giving awards for thinking long and hard about a topic.

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• The juice and the squeeze Episode 5: A pile of no's

After some long-overdue Halloween follow-up and Jonathan horrifying Julia with his new strategy for (not) dealing with email, your hosts tackle the topic of exam questions, and in particular, how to handle the prospect of open-book exams in classes where we would still like students to study. Should exams be timed? Multiple-choice? How do we incentivize students to spend time outside of class and support our learning goals while also being appropriately flexible? There are no easy answers but Julia and Jonathan offer some ideas.

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

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• The Brain Made Plain

For many of us, collaborating with other researchers is one of our favorites part of an academic career. In this episode Julia and Jonathan talk about different kinds of collaborations and what to think about when you’re starting a collaboration. And, some potential downsides of collaborations and how hopefully avoid the worst of these.

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

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• EP02: Inside Story: Lungs and Respiration - The Breath of Life - YouTube

Like all of life academia is social. Julia and Jonathan talk about different strategies for telling our colleagues about our work, including “advertising” our papers, talks, and the importance of having a website (you don’t have one? Get one!). These things are important at any career stage and you can start doing them wherever you’re at.

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

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• The juice and the squeeze Episode 6: Aggressively friendly

There's a lot about the last year and a half we are happy to get rid of, but are there any things we'd like to keep? Julia and Jonathan talk about the advantages of online meetings and talks, flexibility in classes, and (if we're lucky) discovering we can say "no" to things and it's OK.

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• The juice and the squeeze Episode 5: A pile of no's