Leave No Stone Unlearned: Twitter

I guess we (academics) use Twitter now? Some context: I attended three conferences this summer and was shocked (do we say “shook” now?) by how much behind-the-scenes action was going on (#FOMO). So thank goodness for kind souls who saw some of us bumbling around in the dark:

Ok. There are a ton of great articles on WHY scholars should join Twitter, but most don’t offer an in-depth HOW-to.

This leads to hesitation and timidness.

So, I present a thread “You’ve joined Twitter. Now what?” #AcademicTwitter #scicomm #SoMe
— Sarah Mojarad (@Sarah_Mojarad) June 7, 2019

Because the night is dark and full of TIDBITS! One positive thing about being a fifth year postdoc is that (I’d like to think) I’ve received a lot of insight on the #hiddencirriculum from my mentors over the years. But come to find out, Twitter is a treasure trove with a hive mind of, like, twelve hundred mentors:

Okay, we hear about the #hiddencurriculum a bit. There’s stuff in academia that can happen, but only if you know about it. Odds are, nobody will tell you about it unless you have really savvy connections. Let’s open this up:

What are some open secrets you’ve learned?
— 🐙🛐Will Gervais🛐🐙 (@wgervais) July 25, 2019

I’ve also come across (and attempted to contribute to) some really cool resources:

ok we are writing a lab handbook so I spent my afternoon reading 25 lab handbooks to figure out all the things that people put in lab handbooks.

here they are so that you don't have to read 25 lab handbooks.

(this is not exhaustive and many of the topics overlap, obvi)

1/
— SAM (@samuelmehr) June 15, 2019

And some pretty relevant discussions:

Student emailed late last night asking for extension because the plane they were on didn’t have WiFi. They’ve known about this deadline for 6 weeks. I have a no late work policy (with the exception of serious, extenuating circumstances). How would you respond, #AcademicTwitter?
— The PhD Story (@thephdstory) July 27, 2019

Along with some real talk about situations that I think many of us have found ourselves in:

One of my favorite comments from a reviewer of a manuscript I wrote many years ago:
“This paper is a great idea. Such a great idea,in fact, that Scheffé wrote about it in 1971.”
— Gregory R. Hancock (@GregoryRHancock) July 27, 2019

As well as some tough love/I feel attacked (in a motivated way):

My key piece of advice for anyone wanting to learn R is that in order to learn R, you need to use R. It took me ~3 years to learn on my own bc whenever things got a bit tough I went back to SPSS. The year I finally got it was the year I uninstalled SPSS. It was awful. It worked.
— Emily Nordmann (@emilynordmann) July 28, 2019

And just some hilarity that could make even a sixth year postdoc crack a smile:

The truth from @pedromics https://t.co/CYcy4sDH3s—
Edge for Scholars (@EdgeforScholars) July 28, 2019

All in all, Twitter: A time suck, sure. But a stone/log with lots of learning tidbits/bugs hidden underneath.

Published by Liana S.E. Hone