Selling myself

Something interesting has been happening at work for me lately. In the past couple of weeks I've had five or six undergrads ask me about the research that I'm doing in my lab and inquire about the possibility of working for me next semester. Now this clearly has no correlation to the course that I'm teaching, unless for some reason students like scoring below their expectations on an exam.

Actually the source of the interest is known to me, there is a new program that started this semester designed to get undergrads the opportunity to get into a research lab before they graduate. The students in the program need to interview a number of faculty members about their research prior to choosing someone to work for. So it shouldn't have been that surprising that I was talking to a number of students about my research, except that there are only about ten students in the lab, and they only need to interview a few of the faculty members. So the fact that I've seen more than half of them is really kind of surprising.

I've learned from the prof running the program that the students in the program were made to present their experience interviewing faculty members to each other in one of the classes. So it seems that I did a really good job impressing the first student I spoke with and the good word of mouth has paid off with more interest. Even the prof who is running the program has been very excited about how much interest I've managed to garner.

So I'm really happy to find out that I can sell myself and my research (at least to undergrads) rather well. After all, in academics it is your ability to generate excitement about what you are doing that will attract people and money to the lab. So here's hoping I can get this interest to snowball to even bigger things down the road.

On a completely different note I've recently installed a bike hook on my wall to secure my bike in a much more compact fashion. As you can see from the picture the bike is tucked nicely out of the way. The hook works really well, so long as you don't read the instructions that come with it. Normally I wouldn't have read them and I would have just installed the hook by instinct, but I figured it might need to be placed at a specific height so I should check the instructions. Sure enough, the instructions had a specified height for the top screw, 12 inches about the point of wheel contact on the wall. Unfortunately for me I decided to shut down my brain and trust the instructions, I never bother to think that 12 inches may put the hook rather high above the wheel. Sure enough, with the hook at that height I had to lift the bike 11 inches off the floor to get it hooked. So now I have a pair of extra holes in my wall, that will teach me to read instructions.