Huffenberger Cosmology Group

Helpful links

What to expect

Funding

Graduate student fellowship / funding opportunities.

Professional Development

To succeed, you need so many more skills than you can obtain in an undergraduate or graduate physics classroom. Here are some resources that may be helpful in developing quality writing, mentoring relationships, academic productivity, and so on.

Books: Gleeson, The Personal Efficiency Program and Allen, Getting Things Done . These are somewhat similar books that focus on personal work habits as a way to improve productivity and reduce stress by getting tasks out of your head and into some system for addressing them. Both books have good elements that I have implemented in my workflow. Of these two, I prefer the Gleeson "Personal Efficiency Program" book overall. Both books are a little bit business-buzzwordy.
Book: Feibelman, A PhD is not enough.
Book: Reis, Tomorrow's Professor: Preparing for Careers in Science and Engineering.
Book: Noor, You're Hired! Now What? A Guide for New Science Faculty. Sinauer (2012).
Links: Large number of professional development links. Curated by the Knapp lab in Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at FSU
Guide: Graduate school mentoring for proteges.
Link: Choosing a good scientific problem
Link: Useful thread on salary negotiation.

Writing for Science

Keeping your head together

Beyond the technical trickiness of research, many people find advanced, postgraduate education fraught with other difficulties. Some of these include social pressure, anxiety (e.g. impostor syndrome, stereotype threat), and stress. These can be scary and unpleasant to address, but are often the biggest barriers that high-achieving people face.

For example, mindfulness meditation training was enormously helpful to me in addressing anxiety and panic attacks. These resources below can be helpful for a start, but a meditation group and supportive community are also useful.

Free audio downloads: Kara Matheson: Mindfulness Meditiations. A supportive meditation group is also very effective.
Non-free meditations that are good: Guided Meditations for Busy People.
Podcast: Zencast on Mindfulness
Book: Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living. A landmark work on mindfulness meditation.
Book: Steele, Whistling Vivaldi. An important work on stereotype threat and how people feel like they belong.

Research Group

Graduate students

Undergraduate students