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Some professional news ⤵️ For the last 9 months, I have worked as a pedagogical engineer and data scientist at my department. Today is my last day! My job consisted of running stats on the success rate of students, and to assist faculties with the online course platform. 1/nPermalink
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Mood +2 🙂
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I upped my R game *a lot* during this job, as I did everything with R. A major part was to merge administrative data that aren’t supposed to be used to run stats. In other words: they were messy. And scattered. I learned how to gather them, and to clean them up 🧹 2/Permalink
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Mood +2 🙂
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The second part was to present rich data in short documents, as faculties don’t have a lot of time. Some of them were even law professors, so I had to convey not-so-simple concepts in simple but meaningful terms. It was all fascinating! 3/Permalink
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Mood +7 🙂
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I mostly used graphs to convey the information they asked me to summarize. Those two are a good example of what I produced: clean, simple, easy to understand for non-specialists, but rich. 4/Permalink
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Mood +8 🙂
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One of those alluvial graph actually sparked a one hour long discussion with the dean of my department, who is a lawyer! 5/Permalink
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Sometime I also used tables. I am especially proud of this one, as it summarizes a *dozen* of pages in a couple of rows. Took me a bit of time to make it though! 6/Permalink
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Mood +2 🙂
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I did everything with @rstudio and RMarkdown. Those are extraordinary tools, I can’t recommend enough to use them! I also relied a lot on the humongous R community online. Not a single time I’ve found myself stuck because of an error I couldn’t solve. 7/Permalink
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Mood -1 🙁
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Assisting on the online course platform was a bit different. I had to dive quite deep into Moodle, which isn’t the easiest to use piece of software ever written… But I enjoyed discovering it. 8/Permalink
Mood +2 🙂
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Most importantly, I was able to help professors to turn their pedagogical ideas into real action. And because it was done online, students loved it – I know that because I polled them! 9/Permalink
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Mood +5 🙂
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I was also (sort of) in charge to coordinate various services of the university to use 360 iPads to run tests and exams. I learned a lot on how to navigate internal politics, it was also interesting. Even if sometime frustrating, or even infuriating, would be the word… 10/Permalink
Mood -2 🙁
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This job was the first one where I formally had a boss since I started my PhD in 2012. I was afraid of that, but it actually went pretty smooth! As long as I understand what I am asked to do, and the authority is legitimate, I’m fine. 11/Permalink
Mood +2 🙂
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I also was required to come to work at fixed hours, and frankly, I hated that. I like my schedule to be fluid. But… a good side was that once my job was over for the day, it was *actually* over! I liked that. 12/Permalink
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Mood +4 🙂
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Overall, it was a great experience! The salary was clearly not there (it’s a French university after all…), but I learned a lot both technically and on the sort of job I want to have. It was a perfect transition for my upcoming post-PhD career! 13/Permalink
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Mood +8 🙂
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Speaking of the devil… now that I’m done with this job, I will finish to write my PhD. I’m close, it’s just a matter of weeks. And I can’t wait to get rid of it and to do something else with my life. 14/Permalink
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Mood +1 🙂
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I can’t say much publicly, but I recently realized my PhD has been crippled with *a lot* of abuses. That’s why I want to finish. To end them all. And do something healthier for me. 15/Permalink
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Mood -2 🙁
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But on a shorter term, tomorrow I will go hiking on the Vosges Mountains, one of my favorite place! And afterwards, I will take a long weekend to recharge my batteries. I think I deserved it! Finishing a PhD while working on the side, trust me, that’s hard. 16/Permalink
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Mood +2 🙂
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Last but not least, I can’t wait for what will come after my graduation! I will attend @business_econ event in Seattle in Nov, I have created my own company, applied to a post-doc… I will see what works first! I am open for my future. 17/Permalink
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As a conclusion, many thanks to the people at my department who trusted me & offered me this job. It was underfunded, at times difficult, and the position won’t be renewed – no money. But I really enjoyed teaming up with them to try to do something! I am grateful 🙏 18/18
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Mood +9 🙂