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Speaking as a faculty member in an R1 institution, I've had a fair amount of experience on both sides of the desk.

First off, congratulations on landing the interview—that's the toughest part of getting an academic job. Now all you have to do is convince your prospective department that they want to hire you more than the four or five other people they will be interviewing.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that the people who will be interviewing you are your potential future colleagues; focus on what they are looking for in hiring someone who might be working with them for the next thirty or more years. At an R1 university, they are going to want to hire someone who will be (1) an excellent researcher, (2) at least a passable teacher, and (3) a good colleague. If you can satisfy them on all three counts, you will have an excellent chance of landing the job. Fail on one, especially the first, and you'll have basically no chance.

Maybe the best thing I can recommend is that you get a copy of Tomorrow's Professor. It is full of excellent information on the faculty hiring process, and will give you a lot of insight into what things will make you an attractive candidate.

With regard to your specific questions: When speaking with the chair, you should be prepared to talk about your research and teaching interests. Feel free to ask pretty much anything you like that will show you are serious about the opportunity. General questions about the department and university are fine, as well as specific questions about what their expectations are for your visit. Stay away from more sensitive topics like salary, tenure, start-up packages, opportunities for your spouse, etc. There will be plenty of time for those questions later, once they are serious about you as the candidate they want to hire.

About attire: A suit is fine, although it may even be overdoing it a little bit for academia. More important is your demeanor; if you come across as a stuffed shirt, a suit will accentuate that; on the other hand, if you are confident yet relaxed, a suit will be fine. A perfectly acceptable alternative would be a blazer or sport coat, tie, and dress slacks. Whatever you wear, make sure that you and your clothes are well kempt. This is no time for frayed cuffs or badly worn shoes...not that these would necessarily disqualify you, but they go against the image you are trying to portray of a person who has his or her act together.

About knowledge of the faculty: You should absolutely peruse the department website and get at least a passing knowledge of all of the faculty and their general research interests. Pay particular attention to people with interests related to yours, or with whom you could see yourself collaborating, and dig a little deeper on those. (If there are people in related areas in other departments, it would pay to know that, too.) A bonus would be if you can identify particular things (areas of expertise) that you would bring to the department that they are currently lacking. Besides research, you should also think a bit about courses you'd like to teach, and how they would fit into the department's current offerings.

For an R1, the most important thing will be to convince them that you have exciting yet realistic plans for establishing an outstanding research program. Probably the single most common mistake here is to think too small; many candidates have plans for the experiments they want to do over the next couple of years, but many have not thought about the bigger picture of the kind of research program they want to establish that will carry them over the six or seven years to tenure. One of my favorite questions is to ask candidates what they see themselves doing 10-15 hence; you'd be amazed at how many people have not really thought about this at all. A specific answer is, of course, almost impossible, but having a general, big-picture idea is important.

Be sure that you can place your research in the proper context. It may be the neatest thing in the world to you, but you have to be able to give people a reason to care about it (this applies to funding agencies after you are hired, as well). Make sure that whatever you propose is reasonable. It helps to have given thought to how you will fund your program (e.g. be sure you know what an RO1 grant is).

About your talks: I am not sure what the distinction is between a "job talk" and a "chalk talk", but here's some general advice. First, when discussing your own research, be sure to present it at a level that most of the faculty will be able to follow (advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate); most of them will not be experts in your particular area, and they will appreciate not being left behind (it also gives them the idea that you can be a good teacher). On the other hand, you also need to convince them that you really are an expert, and that you have a firm grasp of the details. So at one or two key places you will want to dive down deep for a few minutes, before returning to the surface. Make sure your presentation is polished...it doesn't have to be slick, exactly, but you also don't want to be stumbling through your slides. Even if you don't usually practice your talks, practice this one!

Hope that helps. Feel free to post a follow-up if you have other specific questions. Good luck!

> You're still new at that job! Don't expect to get interesting work right off the bat when you've only been there for a month.

^ Well said. You can't expect to fall in love with your field overnight. Time and experience almost inevitable will yield a more satisfied mindset and more intellectually stimulating work. You've got to pay your dues - that's the case in any technical field.

That said, it's possible that OP really is in a dead-end position, and recognizes it. (Unfortunately without knowing his personality, work ethic, details of the position, it's hard to know. Maybe OP is deceiving himself and really needs to put in the time, but maybe he's right to be thinking about an exit strategy).

In any case, the wise thing to do is probably for OP to stick it out at his current job, while investing a good amount of time in PhD program research. He's clearly already invested a good deal of thought in it, so I'm inclined to think he's already going about it the right way. OP: e-mail your old professor with some questions to indicate interest. There's no need to commit to anything, but you'll be able to convey your interest, willingness to work hard, independent work habits, and intelligence all by sending an email. Professors want these qualities in a student. Despite your concern about lack of research experience, these qualities can help.


> I've been told by engineers I used to work with (who had PhD's) that it's really not worth doing a PhD to work in industry

I'd respectfully disagree with this sentiment. It's common for engineers to hold this view, and I'd speculate that it's because too many people go into PhD programs for the wrong reasons.

It sounds like OP is quite interested in research. The time spent vs. lost potential income argument is old, simple, and easy to evaluate. I'm in a PhD program myself, and realize that it's possible my lifetime income has taken a blow (not a substantial one). OP can evaluate this tradeoff for himself. The benefit of a PhD is this: you qualify yourself for highly technical work that otherwise wouldn't be an option. Depending on your field, these positions vary, but they're nearly all very interesting! This is what OP wants.

Example: personally, when I'm done with my PhD I could be an R&D specialist for a specialty contractor, a researcher for the USGS, work at a national lab, work as a civilian researcher for the military, go back into engineering consulting (and work on highly technical and/or high-profile engineering projects), take a research position at a university. These are all interesting positions and I'm confident that an interesting opportunity will present itself.

Will I necessarily make up for the lost income during my PhD? Maybe not, but I think it's a good possibility. More importantly, my career will become much more interesting, and I'm confident I'll be able to look back on it with satisfaction.

> I spent a year away from school between my BS and MS physics and i can't tell you how important that is. Working teaches you to be an independent learner - there really is a difference between students who have worked in industry and have come back to school, vs those who have just done school.

^ Again, can't agree more. I spent 18 months in industry before my MS, and then decided to continue on to a PhD. I'm glad I went the route I did. So yes, OP's inclination to jump ship may be a bit premature. But I'd encourage him to do the research into PhD programs now, and when next application season rolls around, he'll be ready to decide - or perhaps give it another year if his work experience has been improving.


One last thing, OP should absolutely check out Cal Newport's Blog, Study Hacks, and strongly consider picking up his new book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. I just finished it and highly recommend it to anyone in a technical field / knowledge work, especially if you're in academia or considering an MS or PhD.

Basic workflow: Find something to read, save it to Diigo or Zotero, autosync with Google Drive, mark it up in Xodo on tablet PC or smartphone (with another autosync), write about it using Sublime or Atom. If nighttime approaches, use blue-blocker glasses + F.lux.

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Specifics:

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Tablet/PC:

I love the Surface Pro series for academic work. Use it as a laptop when producing, then lean back and use it as a tablet with a great pen when reading. The tools I use below also integrate with my phone automatically, so I have a three-part solution in two devices.

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File mgmt:

I used to use Mendeley, but recently switched to Zotero for a few reasons:

- Open-source and highly portable (both the program and your bibliography/PDF library)

- Zotfile (makes it easy to save annotations, also makes file management with your favorite cloud provider a breeze)

- SciHub integration with plugin (shhhhhhhh.... but srsly it's amazing)

- However, Zotero does not have a good phone solution. If you use Google Drive (or w/e) and open your files in Xodo on your phone, linked to G Drive, the lack of Zotero phone app doesn't get in the way.

Diigo is also nice for web-first content (e.g. NYT articles, blog posts, etc.), and is available on phone/tablet/desktop. The free account does plenty.

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PDF reading/annotating/highlighting:

Xodo is my favorite software for reading and marking up PDFs, with the Surface Pen or on my phone. It's fast, free, and full-featured, and works across devices. (SumatraPDF, my old favorite, does not support annotation but is still great when speed is the primary concern, e.g. when ctrl-F-ing through huge PDF textbooks)

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Other:

OneNote has its perks and many adherents, might be worth a try, but the Zotero/Xodo combo linked through G Drive keeps my stuff in one place.

For blue-blocking, these glasses are dorky but dirt cheap and get the job done. This plus F.lux makes late-night reading sessions much easier on the little bit of subsequent sleep you might get.

Also, consider writing in an application like SublimeText or Atom, which are designed for programmers but are very easy to use, and offer much better color schemes than Word (e.g. dark backgrounds, text in whatever colors you fancy). Sublime is crazy fast, and Atom is prettier with more plugins but slow, so I find myself using Sublime for quick notes and Atom for longer sessions or touching up. I save everything in markdown files, so transferring from one app to the other, or to the web (or a publication) is easy.

Not a new faculty member -- I started out almost 20 years ago -- but I quit a tenured, almost-full-professor position back in 2011 to start over at a different university that was better suited for my goals, in no small part because of questions like these. I could give a very long answer on this because it's something I've thought about a lot, but I'll keep it short and maybe others can fill in their ideas.

Context: I work at a regional public university (26K students) and am pre-tenure but on the tenure track, up for tenure and promotion in 3 more years. I have a teaching schedule of 24 credits every year, which shakes out to three courses a semester (usually two preps) along with expectations for service and a modicum of research production (we're primarily a teaching-oriented institution). Also and importantly: I have a wife and three little kids and they are way more important to me than my career.

With that background, I usually am working on my stuff about 9 hours per day during the week, and maybe 2-3 hours on the weekends although I prefer not to work on the weekends at all. And it works for me, as I just had a successful halfway-point review for tenure and promotion and all signs are indicating that tenure shouldn't be a problem for me when I finally come up for it.

You asked a bunch of questions in that last paragraph that seem unrelated but actually I think they all hinge on one thing -- making sure that there is a space in your life for work and a space in your life for your life, and making sure that there is no unwanted invasion of one space by the other. What works for me is:

1. If you want to have a space for stuff in your life that isn't work, you have to set up hard boundaries around that space and defend it.
   
2. You have to know exactly what you should be doing at any given moment and also what you should not be doing at any given moment.
   
3. You have to choose projects and tasks strategically and manage them rigorously.
   
   To focus on #2 and #3, I practice the Getting Things Done or "GTD" system of task/time management promulgated by David Allen. It would be well worth your time to go read this book, maybe over the holiday break. I won't try to summarize it other than to say, the cornerstone of GTD is having a trusted system into which you put ALL your projects and tasks organized by context, priority, and energy available and focus ONLY on the next action for each project. This way of thinking will train you to distinguish what you should be doing right now from the many things that you could be doing, and also train you to let go, mentally, of anything other than the next available thing until it's time.
   
   So I highly recommend GTD. It's no exaggeration that when I discovered GTD a few years ago it changed my life. You asked about what I do to relax and feel peace -- the first thing I do is keep all my projects and tasks organized and under my control. Otherwise there is no peace!
   
   As for #1, I set aside evenings and weekends for family. That for me is an inviolable law. So, I shut down the computer and don't check email from 6pm to 6am. (I tell students this, and explain why, and they respect it.) I get up at 4:30am so that I can grade from 6-7am every day and not take time out of the weekend. Sometimes (like during finals week) I do have to bring work home. But I've found that I can get a lot done during business hours if I just remain ruthlessly efficient with managing my tasks (see GTD).
   
   So another aspect of having peace in my life comes from the fact that I never worry that I'm not doing enough to give time and attention to my wife, kids, church, or friends. Making hard boundaries around that personal space and fighting to maintain them makes it possible.
   
   TL;DR -- I've managed to maintain a good work-life balance and a productive career by practicing GTD and being deliberate about setting hard boundaries around work and family life.

They are tricky questions to answer because the process and people's experience are likely to vary a fair bit and the funding options are different for different countries. I am a PhD candidate in Education in Australia, so I can share my experience finding a supervisor/funding and what I have seen of other student's experiences, your experience could be completely different. I'd recommend borrowing/getting a book that discusses how to find and apply for a PhD program or looking for guidelines/suggestions for applying a PhD on the website of the institution you would like to do your PhD at. I found Getting What You Came For really useful. However, that book is fairly old, targeted towards US programs which you may not be applying for, and is pretty 'real' (bleak) about how tough a PhD can be and the lack of academic jobs. Someone else may be able to provide a better recommendation for a similar book.

What country are you in and planning to do your PhD in? In the institution I am in (in Australia) most Education PhD students seem to be either funded through a government scholarship (called an RTP here) or do not have any funding. I would not say an RTP is easy to obtain, they are pretty competitive here and I was lucky to have research experience and a publication when I applied for one, which would have helped me get it. It seems like PhDs funded through projects are not as common in Education as they would be in the natural sciences, engineering etc but they are out there. If you find a scholarship advertised as part of a project, then it would probably be easier to apply for that then finding funding for your own PhD project but then you don't have much choice about what topic to research. At my institution, when you apply for a PhD, you have to submit a short proposal about the topic you intend to research and a brief research plan. If you don't have particular researchers listed on the application then the university would allocate you supervisors. This may be different in your country though.

As for approaching supervisors, there is probably a few different ways you could do this. The book I mentioned above has some suggestions. I worked for my current PhD supervisor as an undergraduate student and knew that they would take me on as a PhD student when I applied, so I didn't have to seek other people out. One of the most important things was that they are interested in my research topic and we can collaborate well, so we work on projects/papers together. I know other students that have been allocated supervisors rather than choosing their own when they have started and that can not work out, particularly when the student's research interests don't align with the supervisor's research interests or they don't have a good working relationship. I would suggest looking up different researchers at your local institution/s (assuming you want to stay where you are) and see if anyone researches in the topics you are interested in. If the university's faculties don't have a list of the academic staff, you can try looking up the institution and faculty on researchgate. You can reach out to staff with similar research interests and let them know what you're interested in and ask them what your options are.

Also, I think with your background and qualifications, you will be a valuable person to have around an Education faculty as well. In my experience, there is a need for Educational researchers with mathematical skills (particularly expertise in Statistics). You could try reaching out to staff from Education faculties or keeping on your eye on the jobs at your local university/ies and seeing if there are opportunities to help out with data collection and analysis. This could be a good way to 'dip your toe' in research before committing to a PhD and it may help you meet potential supervisors.

Reddit has a hard-on for STEM - particularly engineering - and loves to denigrate degrees in the arts and humanities.

The thing is that when your diploma says "Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering," everyone has a pretty good idea of what your skill set is and what you had to learn along the way in order to get there. The answer is: probably some programming, good base in math & physics applied to mechanical systems, some thermo, some stats, and experience working on a team to develop a design. Because your degree automatically says this, its easier to rest on your laurels and still get a job at the end of it.

When your degree says "Bachelor of Fine Arts," it says less about your skill set. You probably can play an instrument or two, do some composition, probably some critical analysis of music... Okay, how is that marketable?

It's actually very marketable. BUT! It's up to you to show people what you know. You need to learn how to sell your degree and develop the skills you want to market. Communication, team work, time management, critical thinking, working independently to meet goals, etc.

The thing with a degree like Music is that you need to use your time at the university to develop and demonstrate these high-demand skills. Get involved in clubs, societies, political organizations, non-profits, community work, etc.

Major in something you're good at and interested in. For the first year or two, pursue some extracurricular activities you're interested in. Find a couple that you're really passionate about and feel could lead to something else later. Try to really make a difference in these activities.

Talk to older students about what they're involved in. See what alumni from your program do. When you meet someone who does something you think is interesting, ask them to meet for a cup of coffee so you can learn more about this field. Secret: people love talking about themselves, especially if you're buying a coffee. This, by the way, is called "an informational interview" and is an important part of networking. There are resources elsewhere for how to network, even for people who hate networking.

So yes, if you spend your entire undergraduate career in your room playing the flute and putting in the bare minimum to get a decent grade in your non-performance classes, you're probably going to have a challenging time getting a job. If you use all the resources at your fingertips in undergrad - and honestly I wish I had known how many great opportunities are available for networking & developing real-world skills in undergrad - then you could be a very well marketable prospective employee.

I think it's definitely developmentally appropriate if you approach it the right way. Here's a link to Kylie's "Gaming the System" book that is targeted at middle schoolers.


In my (undergrad) courses and presentations the point I make is this: systems thinking is to the 21st century as literacy was to the 20th. You could get by in the early 20th without knowing how to read or write, but eventually if you were illiterate it sidelined you completely. We're facing the same thing now with systems thinking, and we have to be teaching this in the lower grades.

For your purposes, some goals could be having students be able to diagram dynamic relationships (predator-prey, accelerating erosion, etc.) using the language of sources, stocks, and drains to the point that they can see how many relationships result in non-linear effects -- how many small inputs can create a disproportionately large output. This is like the analytic part of playing with a sand/stream table: they have to be able to recognize and describe the processes at work, not just observe them (and ideally, they should be able to transfer that knowledge from one domain to another). If you can get them (and you! :) ) to the point of being able to recognize and describe emergent effects too, that's a huge win.

And man, congrats on living close to (or being able to travel to) the Olympic peninsula. that's one of the most beautiful (if, okay, not always sunny) places on Earth.

Edited to add: if it helps, here's a video of me giving a presentation about systemic design and game design at a conference in Sweden. Probably above where you want to be with your students (and just hitting the wave tops of what I do in my course), but maybe some useful concepts for you.

In response to your request for "a book that might help" you decide on physics...

I actually hated my first exposure to physics in high school, but my freshman mechanics course really got me excited about the subject matter. The textbook we used was excellent and is called "An Introduction to Mechanics" by Kleppner and Kolenkow (link).

If you have made up your mind on classical physics, check out an introductory text on Special Relativity. There is a highly readable and mathematically completely unintimidating text by a man named Helliwell (link) that I like! I'll warn that it completely skips a tensor-based approach (which would actually be useful later on) in favor of a trivial-algebra-based approach that does miss out on some of the beauty of the subject but does manage to blow your mind if you've never seen the material before.

There are other books out there that are potentially superior, but these are the ones I like, although I will say that in my opinion nothing beats Kleppner and Kolenkow in clarity or material at its level. I hope this helps, and if it doesn't, shoot me a PM and I'll get back to you!

Good luck!

Edited: formatting, grammar.

I work at a community college, and we definitely have a significant number of students who are people of color and/or live in economic precarity. So, it sounds like we are interested in working with similar populations of students. Here are a few resources I've found helpful:

Reading on critical pedagogy for a theoretical framework. Freire and Giroux are where I'd start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy

The idea of backward design for semester-length planing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_design

I'm having trouble finding a good resource to link to quickly, but the idea of transparency in lesson design seems important to me.

"How Learning Works" and "What the Best College Teachers Do" for more day to day things:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Learning-Works-Research-Based-Principles/dp/0470484101

https://www.amazon.com/What-Best-College-Teachers-Do/dp/0674013255/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=F2A8M8CSVQKDBS14P2QC



"In The Middle" for a good outline of a workshop approach to teaching writing

https://www.heinemann.com/inthemiddle/

I haven't found a good single book that talks about teaching active reading, but there are a lot of resources online, and I've found teaching it explicitly and modeling it for my students as part of a whole class discussion to work pretty well.

As far as the critical theory aspect of reading (which I do think should be taught early on and even to people who are just beginning to read at the college level) I like "Texts and Contexts" and "Critical Encounters"

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Encounters-High-School-English/dp/0807748927

https://www.amazon.com/Texts-Contexts-Writing-Literature-Critical/dp/0205716741

Hope that's helpful! Good luck to you!

If you're looking for a course introductory book with some (very little) math, you could look at F.F.Chen, the standard undergrad plasma book. It's a bit simplistic, but it's an easy overview of plasma physics. He also wrote a more pop-sci-esque book that is (supposedly, I haven't read this one) a very good and informative book that avoids math completely.

If you wanted more rigor and details, you can try the Goldston book which has the basic concepts like F.F.Chen without the babying. I used the Goldston to review general concepts sometimes, but with more complicated or modern stuff, you have to just read papers.

Personally, my favorite is the free book/html/pdf offered by Fitzpatrick. It's got good organization, pretty good explanations, and doesn't skirt the mathematics. There are some more detailed books for specific things (such as Ideal MHD by Friedberg, Plasma Diagnostics by Hutchinson, Plasma Waves by Stix, Plasma Astrophysics by Tajima, and a crapton other).

In any case, I would say, go with the pop-sci one if you don't want to look into the math, go into the F.F.Chen intro book if you want to look at math but aren't strong in math, and go with the Fitzpatrick if you want to learn on the side, don't mind the math, and you're pretty good in math.

The (now classic) book to read is Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or a Ph.D. by Robert Peters. I remember reading this in grad school but don't remember too many of the details. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-What-You-Came-Students/dp/0374524777/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519058671&sr=1-3&keywords=grad+school+phd+guide+book

There are mixed opinions out there on The Professor Is In, so don't use that as your only source, but she has a lot of free information available on preparing for the job market, giving job talks, and interviews, etc. http://theprofessorisin.com/

Good luck! Play the long game. Try to have some fun. Take care of your body.

I am not familiar with the book ommm232 suggested (although it is certainly one I will be looking into as well), but I would also highly recommend Eric Hayout's The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities, which also delves into the differences between seminar papers and articles and how to transform the former into the latter. It has been immensely helpful in my own work as I try to improve both global and local elements of my writing.

Best of luck!

Congratulations! To add to what others have said. The following 2 things helped me the most to get things done:

1. Work with Zero Distraction: The most amount of research work I got done on any day, is when my internet was shut off. I got to a quick corner in my school's library and I use the K9 internet filter to get this done. It is free: http://www1.k9webprotection.com/
   
   
2. Organize your life: The best help for that is this guide by Cal Newport who got his PhD from MIT not working more than 9-5 M-F. https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586676/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1519028919&sr=8-1 You can check out his blog here: http://calnewport.com/blog/ The best thing about Newport is that he is also an academic and so you can relate a lot to his ideas.
   
   Good luck!

Not a direct answer, but your question reminded me of "The Craft of Research" which is a fantastic book. It might be something you'd like to read through. I think I had second edition - it now runs to forth. You could pick up a second-hand, early edition inexpensively.

If reading journals isn't sparking ideas for you, I'd perhaps consider reading something more mainstream and consumer grade. Perhaps BBC news, CES reports, things like that. Find a problem that's being reported, and that no one is solving. Find a problem that is being solved, and propose an alternative solution, or refine a solution that exists.

Good luck!

This book is an absolute must read for humanities and social science students, maybe useful for others as well: The Professor Is In by Karen Kelsky. It’s all about how to prepare yourself and navigate this hellish job market.

I think of tenure track professors as approaching something like professional athletes or artists at this point. You have to be both exceptionally talented and determined to make it, and even then may need a bit of luck. Know what you’re getting into, and only bother if you’re ready to give it 100%.

I just bought this book, which is less a narrative, but rather more of a hard, truthful, as well as insightful look into the problems of humanities academia, and how best you can survive them.

https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494283261&sr=8-1&keywords=the+professor+is+in

My only tip for you regarding imposter syndrome, is that everyone has it. However, you keep that truth buried deep in yourself. When it comes time to talk about your work to others, or in a job interview, YOU PUT ON THAT IMPOSTER MASK AND NEVER BLINK OR TAKE IT OFF until you're back home.

We all wear masks to function. Learning to live with them is an essential life skill.

For other examples of why this is essential, I'd also like to cite Dr. David Chappelle:

https://vimeo.com/58226569

Make an appointment with your university's career guidance councilor. They're paid to think about this for you and should be able to help you establish a plan.

The Professor is in is also a pretty decent book, although it's primarily geared toward securing an academic position: https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420

Network with folks outside academia and try and do a research project with broader topical and methodological relevance.

Once you identify a career you'd like work to develop strong transferrable skills for that area.

I really enjoyed Writing with Style. It's focused on process rather than rules (a la Strunk & White): how you should think (and how professional writers think) about the audience while writing and how to structure your text to best get your point across.

There's not a single answer. Lots of fields study internet culture.

But psychology and sociology are two that would be really worth checking out. There's a lot of work on how the internet affect individual brains in psychology, and a lot on what's special about the communities the internet forms in sociology.

A big name in psychology is Sherry Turkle. https://www.mit.edu/~sturkle/

Increasingly, there will be history written about the internet and the culture it's generated. You might enjoy this new book coming out in a week, on some of the very earliest internet activists, from before there was a worldwide web. https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Dead-Cow-Original-Supergroup/dp/154176238X

I too am a PhD student in Japan. The open secret is that academic publishing is kind of a joke here, and just self-publishing your thesis and pumping out crap it in your university's Kiyo is enough to come off as respectable.

But of course, just because you can get away with doing very little doesn't mean you should. Here's what I would recommend:

1. Find journals you like in your area and read them religiously. There's no "right" journal to publish in; remember, *you are the one that decides that part. But whatever you pick, aim high and go for the top ones in that subfield, and make sure you have four or five you read as a matter of habit. Gradually you'll get a feel for the subject matter, terminology, paper structures, hot research topics, etc etc. The important thing is that you have role models to emulate, in terms of authors, papers and journals.
   
   
2. Buy this book. It'll baby-step you through writing your first paper in 12 weeks. Follow the regimen religiously:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Journal-Article-Twelve-Weeks/dp/141295701X
   
   

I teach a course in writing for publication in STEM. I use excerpts from the following books: Writing Scientific Research Articles, Academic Writing for Graduate Students, and Research Genres. The last one can be a bit of a dense read, but many of my STEM students find it especially interesting because it's data-driven. A linguistics researcher collected a big corpus of well-cited articles and identified the most common features. These findings are often a big part of other more practical guides to academic writing. CARS, IMRAD, Swales' Moves are very common writing tips identified by this research. But it gets much more fine grained and nuanced than that.

I was assigned this text in one of my research methods/program evaluation courses, on systems concepts: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Concepts-Action-Practitioners-Toolkit/dp/0804770638

I found it to be a quick and easy read as well as a nice primer on the concept of complexity.

What is it you're looking for, if you feel like books on writing won't help?

If it's academic writing in particular that you want to improve, why not look at something like

• Hayot, The Elements of Academic Style
  
• Swales and Feak, Academic Writing for Graduate Students

I had a yearlong seminar in undergrad for thesis writing and we used this book, [The Craft of Research](The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) https://www.amazon.com/dp/022623973X/).
It was pretty helpful.

State testing is always a fun one - James Popham's The Truth About Testing explores how standardized testing has been misinterpreted by politicians and the media: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Testing-Educators-Action/dp/0871205238

WMU did a study about KIPP schools (https://www.edweek.org/media/kippstudy.pdf) and here is KIPP's response to the findings: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2011/04/kipps-response-to-western-michigan.html which would be interesting to discuss.

Old but still worth reading early in the process of you are interested in possibly getting a phd.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-What-You-Came-For/dp/0374524777

I would suggest getting Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or Ph.D..

This book is very easy to read, down to earth, and provides invaluable advice.

How Learning Works is a good one.
https://www.amazon.ca/How-Learning-Works-Research-Based-Principles/dp/0470484101

The HHMI Book is good as are the following:

https://www.amazon.com/At-Helm-Leading-Laboratory-Second/dp/0879698667

https://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Professor-Preparing-Careers-Engineering/dp/0780311361

So this is a good book to look at: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Your-Journal-Twelve-Weeks/dp/141295701X

It’s specifically tailored to helping you make your longer papers (dissertation/thesis) into an article for publication. I’d start there !

A very kind person recommended me this book the other day on this sub https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420

I have already learned SO much and I am barely a quarter of the way through. The woman who wrote it also has a blog that is absolutely stuffed with advice.

Read this