Studying is a skill, and undergraduates often ask me for studying best-practices. There exists a few study resources for UCSD undergraduates taking classes within the Department of Psychology.
Resources
Amici Curiae: People vs. Jason Wright
Psychology, ResourcesThe Innocence Project and the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law wrote an amici curiae brief that utilized the two most recent scientific consensus statements in eyewitness memory (and utilized a lot of basic memory science in general). This amici curiae brief cites work from our lab and from our collaborators, and gives an explanation on how…
Resources: Sequential vs. Simultaneous Lineup Superiority
Psychology, ResourcesWhen I give presentations to the legal / criminal justice system on memory science and eyewitness reliability, the topic of lineup superiority invariably comes up in Q&A. Here, I link a few resources (coming from the National Research Council, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, etc.) on ROC Analysis and the rescinded endorsement of the sequential lineup procedure being superior to the simultaneous lineup procedure.
Cognitive Foundations: Memory in Context
Psychology, Resources, Teaching & Talks, UC San DiegoCognitive Foundations is an open-source, collaborative textbook edited by Dr. Celeste Pilegard. Last fall, she brought me onto her team as a subject matter expert in order to revamp “Chapter 6: Memory in Context” in preparation for the release of the second edition of the textbook. I did a lot of revising of the current material (nearly all of it overlapped with the material I taught in my PSYC 144 Memory & Amnesia course) and did a good amount of original writing as well.
Stay in the Chair: Ideas for staying focused while writing
Resources, UC San Diego“Stay in the chair.” It’s one of the mantras used within writing groups at UCSD in order encourage progress on long writing projects. Below are some tips for staying in the chair. The list is broken down by the type of issue impeding focus too—super nifty.
Truthfully, this is one of the most helpful lists I’ve been given for productivity in graduate school.
Tips: Overcoming avoidance behaviors in the writing process
Resources, UC San DiegoBelow are some writing tips from a graduate writing retreat hosted by UC San Diego’s Teaching + Learning Commons. These tips are centered around how to overcome resistance to writing when you find yourself doing (or thinking about doing) avoidance behaviors.
“hello world” (Some Intro-Level R Resources)
Personal Blog, Resources, UC San Diego
Data science proficiency goes hand-in-hand with Ph.D-level research. For most of us, however, we don’t enter graduate school with strong programming skills. Instead, we’re likely thrown into a two-in-one, programming-and-statistical-methods course during our first year of graduate school, using any number of possible languages (MatLab, R, SPSS, etc.). Personally, I’m of the belief that learning R is invaluable. I think the learning curve is steeper compared to other languages, but as you develop proficiency and confidence, I find it to be a dynamic language that can do most-anything you’ll need within the scope of a Ph.D program. (A bonus: It’s heavily used in industry as well.)
Since proficiency comes with practice, I take coding workshops as frequently as they’re available. It solidifies what I already know and keeps me from forgetting methods that I may not use regularly when doing my own research and analyses. Sometimes, I’ll learn more efficient ways to do things too. Also, learning from different teachers has the benefit of having concepts explained in a different ways—things that seemed ‘fuzzy’ when explained by one professor may be crystal clear when explained in a different manner.
I advocate for a general literacy across a few languages — after all, you’ll have little control over the format of materials sent over by colleagues — but here I thought I’d focus on my favorite beginner-level resources for R programming.
Resources: Pathways to Ph.D panel
Psychology, Resources, UC San DiegoDuring UCSD’s Pathways to Ph.D event, some of the panelists shared resources which helped them navigate the graduate school application process.
- UCSD’s Psychology Department has an “Applying to Graduate Programs” webpage. This webpage contains information on: how much time to set aside for applications, when to consider applying to graduate school, additional links / resources / downloadable forms, and information about choosing programs / advisers / schools and making one’s application competitive. This webpage is tailored to people interested in research programs in psychology, but much of it can be applied to other disciplines.
- UCSD’s Career Center has a “Get into Grad School” page. They provide important academic resources as well as questions you should ask yourself before choosing a program.
- Colors of the Brain is a UCSD-based program promoting diversity within the brain sciences. Their graduate mentors will review academic CVs and applications of undergraduate students looking to enter a graduate STEM field. All of the graduate mentors are first-generation or come from a historically underrepresented background. Also, Colors of the Brain can provide support and resources to students about life in STEM and/or graduate school in general.
Thank you to everyone who attended and to those who made this event possible.
Work from Home: 6 months later
Personal Blog, Resources, UC San DiegoIt’s been six months since I wrote my last blog post on working from home during a pandemic. I highly suggest reading that first — I biasedly think it was good advice — but here are an additional five, concrete steps that I use to help me work from home.
The Writing Process (Tips)
Resources, UC San DiegoAs all of us in academia know, the writing process rarely begins with a blank Word document titled, “rough draft.” It begins with an idea, notes jotted into a notebook, a lot of (annotated) reading, study design, data collection, and a whole host of other steps before the aforementioned Word document even exists. Large-scale writing projects can be daunting, not only because they require a lot of hard work, but because organizing oneself can be challenging.
Before UCSD went fully remote, I attended a graduate writing retreat to make progress on my qualifying paper. The writing retreat, hosted by the Teaching + Learning Commons (TLC), is meant for those with large writing projects (e.g. qualifying papers, dissertations, etc.). It was my first time attending a writing retreat. I expected attendees to spend the entire time quietly working, but the TLC structured the time such that students first learned how to efficiently work. Below is one of the most-helpful handouts that they gave to us.