Tell me who, when, where and how.

I do not like when people tell me we are going to meet X.


and then skip all the info about
when:
where:
who:
what:
and the amount of time we are suppose to meet so that I can put it in my calendar.

I do not know why people do that. I guess they are not as organized in their thoughts and patterns as I am? I do not expect this from the faculty.

Assistant to a Professor

I was doing a science-high-school-outreach activitiy last week. I was wearing a badge that said "assistant professor" blah blah. On a number of occasions I had students talk to me and refer to me as: "so you are an assistant to a professor, what do you do or how does it work?"

I did not know if I should be offended or educate. I opted for the latter each time but I am still perplexed. Does this happen or happened to people often? How come ?

Deciding on a student

I have started getting emails from prospective PhD students. The emails are getting from places that I do know about and from places that I have no idea about. For example I am getting a lot of email from Country A.

I do not know anything about this country A's education system and their grading techniques/processes. So I am unable to judge these students that may come from different institutes in country A from their GPA's. This is with the assumption that grading policies in different institutes will be different.

These are primarily undergraduate students but some of them have been exposed to research questions. This is evident from their CV's  that they have published some papers. However, the papers are mostly in regional journals and conferences. Also it is difficult to assess how much they might have contributed.

Many of these students need a RA or a TA and I have limited spots. So how do I decide?

One way to decide is to engage a faculty from that country and forward the students info to them to see what they think of them.

Any tips?