For those of you who are academics, when in the world do you find time to read articles, keep up with the literature, etc.? I could really use some advice here. In all honesty, I haven't read a journal article that I wasn't intentionally needing to cite in years. Years, I tell you.
Me no feel like a scholar.
Uh, no. The person I am doing a postdoc with reads everything. I don't know how he does it. He reads at least the abstract of every relevant paper that comes out in science, nature, pnas, evolution, am nat, and maybe some others. he is also up on the political situation of every country in the world. i feel like an idiot! I'm up on baby blogs and (occasionally) project runway!
ReplyDeleteI tried to comment on your last post while i was waiting for an experiment to end, but blogger ate my comment and i didn't have time to re-type it. But I definitely get the toddler rhythm, and missing out on that daily rhythm is one of my only misgivings about being a working mom.
I have two methods: one is during research lulls (when lots of things are running, but nothing has results yet), I will go on reading binges. My other strategy is to set up google alerts in Reader for the papers most likely to be very relevant to what I'm doing, which at least gets me to read abstracts.
ReplyDeleteOf course, as a grad student, I actually have lulls. But Google alerts work really well for me even when I'm swamped.
Well, yes, but my field is literature.
ReplyDeleteI do have a harder time keeping up with the theoretical stuff. Have grand plans about allowing "x" amount of time per day to reading. I did that fairly well before the Tiny Boy showed up.
Reading? HA.
ReplyDeleteI think the only way to do it is to schedule it, really ... and then do it like homework ... lock yourself away somewhere. Easier said than done, of course ...
I do the best reading when I write proposals. Otherwise, scan abstracts and figure from lots of articles that I either receive via email from group members or I select upon receiving email alerts (I am subscribed to alerts from probably 10 journals).
ReplyDeleteI think a good way would be to decide on 2-3 hours a week to just go over papers, and the rest of the week just try to collect them (subscribe to email alerts or RSS feeds). I haven't implemented this though, but it sounds good in principle.