Blogaround

1. I guess I should say something about the shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 21 people were killed. Just kind of been... laying awake thinking about it... I have a kid, and his smile lights up the world. Don't really know what to say, I just hope that the US can pass better gun control laws. Go and protest about it if you can.

Mother who ran into Texas school during shooting discusses moments inside (posted June 2)

2. Christian predator Josh Duggar sentenced to over 12 years in federal prison (posted May 25) 

3. How can I explain bad grades in a PhD application due to bad lecturers? (posted May 29) I really like the Stack Exchange forums because they teach you how the real world works. The OP in this question is applying for a PhD, and is concerned because they had low grades in a few courses, and the reason [according to OP] is the lecturers for those courses were "bad"- so should they give that as the reason, in their application?

And the answer is NO. In a job interview (or in this case a PhD application) you should never blame your problems on someone else. Even if it's 100% true, it makes you look bad. If there's something on your transcript or resume that you worry doesn't look good, the interviewer doesn't want to hear "the reason I did bad at this was xyz which wasn't my fault" and leave it at that. NO. To look good in an interview, you have to say, "here's what I learned from that situation, here's what I would do differently in the future." (Or, just not mention it at all, if it's something pretty normal like having low grades in one or two classes.)

Job interviews are such a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING than a student being graded by a teacher in school. The teacher's objective is to give a fair grade that reflects the student's knowledge and abilities. It's centered on the student- here's the student, let's fairly evaluate whether they met the goals for this course. (And if you give an excuse for why you didn't do well, and the teacher thinks it's a reasonable excuse, they won't penalize you. Note: "your lectures are bad" is not a reasonable excuse.) A job interview is completely different. It's centered on the job position- we need someone in this role, so is this candidate the kind of person we'd like to have here?

If you did a bad job of something, but you can explain why it's not your fault, well, who cares? Bosses don't want employees who give excuses for why things can't be done- they want employees who get things done.

It's not just about you and whether or not it's fair to apply a certain standard to you because there were other factors beyond your control that affected your ability to meet that standard. No, that's not it at all. It's about the job. Can you get things done or not? If something's not working the way you've been promised it should work, do you say "well this is not my fault" and do nothing, or do you take on the extra task of finding a workaround even though it's not "fair" that you should do that? Yes, it's TRUE that it's not your fault. But you still need to keep trying to solve it.

And there are some tasks in one's job that will be easy and some that will be hard, and the reward and recognition you get for them doesn't at all match how hard they were. Your boss might have no idea which things were easy and which were a nightmare because the previous developer left you with spaghetti code. That's just the way it is.

And also, as an adult, your own academic and career development is your responsibility. If, for example, you're taking a class where the lectures are awful, it's on you to find other ways to learn the information you need to learn. At the end of the day, if you don't learn it, it affects you, even if the reason you didn't learn it was that the professor wasn't good enough.

I love Stack Exchange for the discussions like this.

4. Makeshift graves and notes on doors: the struggle to find and bury Mariupol’s dead (posted June 1) [content note: war, death]

5. The Masterpiece (posted May 20) A 1-hour-37-minute sudoku video. This is INCREDIBLE. Very hard puzzle. Wow.

6. And the 2022 Reader Survey is still open (until June 30). Thank you to all the readers who have taken it already!