By Stacey Patton - Chronicle Vitae. When we think of academe as “the life of the mind,” we’re obscuring one basic fact: Conducting research can take a real physical toll on a scholar’s body.
No, scholarship isn’t a dangerous factory job. But hours spent hunched over in library carrels, staring at computer screens, and pecking away at keyboards can cause any number of problems—eye strain, headaches, back and neck pain, repetitive strain injuries, and the like. More...

By Chronicle Vitae. Questions …
I’m First Author, But I Always Get Last Billing. Q (from zmartine): More than a third of my first-author papers are co-authored, either with one or two other people. Unfortunately, my last name begins with a Z, and the convention is to list co-first authors alphabetically, so I am always listed last among the first authors. My solution thus far has been to list authors on my CV in the order in which they are listed on the paper and include an asterisk by each listing leading to an italicized comment that says "Authors contributed equally." More...

By Jennifer Polk - Chronicle Vitae. I value the independence I have as a self-employed person. It was one of my favorite things about being a Ph.D. student, and later about being a freelancer. Although I considered working full-time for an employer, the closest I ever came to that was when I took on as many shifts as I could at the bookstore during my summers as an undergrad.
I love having the freedom to arrange my own life and labor. As long as the work gets done, the details are largely left up to me, always. When I work, where I work, how I structure my workday are all things I can control, and this has been true for me for many years. More...

By G. David Gearhart. The greatest international-exchange program for students and scholars in the world, the Fulbright Program, is in danger. President Obama’s proposed budget calls for cuts of more than $30-million in the program, seriously harming its ability to fulfill its critical international mission of peace through education. I believe everyone in higher education has a duty to oppose any decrease in resources for this cost-effective and highly valuable program. More...

By Jonathan Malesic. If it’s early May, then it must be time to talk about what student evaluations of teaching are worth. In a recent essay in Slate, Rebecca Schuman claims that student evaluations are “useless” in their current form, because they encourage students to punish rigorous teachers with low scores and mean comments (and, all too often, sexist or racist ones). The article has gotten a lot of attention from academics I know, who have shared their own stories of uninformed and upsetting comments. More...

By Sam Bell. The spring semester is coming to a close. That means students are trying to pull up their grades, professors are finishing projects and committee work, and almost everyone is running low on patience. On social media, I’ve seen an uptick in professors’ complaints about their students. Recently, I read a thread on a social-media site that minimized a student’s struggles because she had asked for an extension on a deadline. Faculty members castigated her and welcomed her to “the real world.” One suggested how to avoid dealing with her. More...

By Ellen Hazelkorn. As an observer of global university rankings, I’ve followed the debate about President Obama’s proposed college-ratings system with great interest—and growing incredulity. From a distance, the concerns about the plan are curious. While some are certainly valid, I wonder how American colleges did not try to create a system of their own, or at least to work with the government to establish one. More...