Sara Billey's Advice Collection

• 7 Things I Wish I Had Known As A Math Major. Also, if you have some advice for undergrads, let me know about it. We can start a collection. Camila Vásquez has a really awesome advice essay along these lines to start off the collection!

• How to to get a Ph.D. in mathematics in a timely fashion. (still needs work, so I would be happy to get your feedback, same goes for the other bits too!).

• How to succeed as a Postdoc.

• How to succeed in Life..

• Read this! : My friend Cathy O'Neil (aka mathbabe.org) has a really amazing way with words and a very interesting set of experiences as a mathematician. She writes a great blog and wrote the very powerful book "Weapons of Math Destruction". I highly recommend both.

• Jim McGlaughlin's Rules on Volleyball (and so much more!)

• Ravi Vakil's advice for potential students. And some further pages I am cribbing directly from Ravi:
  • Steven Weinberg wrote a fantastic piece in Nature about graduate school.
  • Terry Tao's blog is essential, and includes career advice.
  • John Baez has advice for the young scientist, which includes advice on giving good talks, as well as an important discussion on keeping your soul.

• Igor Pak's Blog Post on Writing Math Papers Clearly And, check out his other posts too.

• Inside Out: A Value-Based Approach to Industry Job Hunting by Vrushali Bokil. I like what this article has to say about applying for jobs with your core principles in mind -- whether you go into academia or industry. What are the core values you want to adhere to in your future/current jobs? What are your strengths and passions?

• HOWTO: Get tenure Blog post by Matt Might, Professor of Internal Medicine and Computer Science, University of Alabama at Birmingham. -- My Comments: I loved this post! I don't recall how I found my way here, but so much of what is said here resonated with me. I too find it very hard to write down concrete advice for getting tenure. I thought my experience was unusual. I was a tenure track prof at MIT where 80% of junior faculty don't get tenure. I knew that going into the job, but of course I had some hope anyway. One week I was on a great roll with research, I had made 10 interesting conjectures, but then one by one I found a counter-example to each of them. By that Friday afternoon, I was spent. I laid my head in my hands and thought "Ugh, now I will never get tenure!". And, then the light bulb went on. "Oh ya, I wasn't going to get tenure here anyway! ... I'm going home early ... I'll try again on Monday." I stopped suffering over the tenure decision after that. It really helped me to enjoy the process instead of fear it, which was much healthier in the long run. Eventually more theorems were proved, and I got offered my current job with tenure. I ended up in a great place. Actually, the biggest disappointment of getting tenure was realizing that it didn't change the job at all, if anything, it got harder to select from all of the many opportunities I am offered including speaking engagements, committee assignments for important work, national and international conference organizing, and all of the interesting mathematical research topics that I would love to understand better. So, my only real advice on how to get tenure, is "find a way to enjoy the process" because that is what it takes to have a long an successful career.

• Advice for being Local Arrangements Chair(LAC) for a large conference or workshop from my friend Seth Teller. I need to remember this if/when I take on another big conference obligation. I also need to remember Seth. This is a touching summary of his life: In memory of Seth Teller.