Advice to grad students and other academics

My friend and colleague, David Long, Ph.D., shared some free advice with me to both use myself and pass along to others who might find it useful.  I know that I need to work on a few of these points myself.  What tricks and tips do you use that should be added to this list?

  1. Back it up!  In three places — computer, campus network drive, network drive at home, portable drive, DropBox, Google Drive, etc.  — BE SURE TO SYNCHRONIZE FILES AND KEEP AN ARCHIVE!
  2. Read Piled Higher and Deeper — A comic that often hits too close to home for graduate students and their professors.
  3. Books — Websites such as Big Words and others are your friend when looking for inexpensive texts that beat the price of your local campus book store.
  4. Personalize Your Searches — Use services such as Google Scholar and customize them for the topics that you care about.
  5. Get to Know Your Librarians — Leverage their knowledge to leverage your research.  They can help you automate your bibliography with a whole host of software tools such as JabRef, Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, etc.
  6. Annotate Everything You Read — Put everything you read into your master bibliography file.  Make sure to apply keywords, write a quick three sentence summary, note if the the article is good or bad, flag interesting articles, etc.
  7. Write Something Everyday — Write at least a couple paragraphs everyday on your research.  Never slack off on this and you will always be ahead in your writing.
  8. Share with Your Friends and Colleagues — Share what you are doing regularly with your friends and colleagues.  Always be ready to share something interesting.

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