#academiclife — Public Fediverse posts

Another day at **ACM Hypertext 2026**! 💻✨

Today, PhD students learned how to introduce themselves in just 40 seconds and how to create an effective academic CV. 🎓

Meanwhile, other sessions explored Knowledge Graphs and Hypertext, bringing together ideas from digital media, information science, and technology.

Another inspiring day of learning, sharing, and connecting! 🚀
#ACMHypertext #Hypertext2026 #PhDStudents #AcademicLife #KnowledgeGraphs #Hypertext

🆕 The new members of the IHC’s governing bodies and the coordinators of its research groups were elected yesterday at the General Assembly. Rui Lopes, Assistant Researcher at FCSH, was elected President of the Board, alongside Aurora Almada e Santos and Giulia Strippoli (Vice-Presidents), and Maria de Lurdes Rosa, Sara Albuquerque and Carmina Yu Untalan (members).

👉 The full election results can be found here:
https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/en/ihc-renews-governing-bodies/

#Histodons #AcademicLife #AcademicChatter #CiênciaPT

Further Thoughts of Retirement…

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

from Little Gidding, Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot.

The start of teaching for 2026/7 is approaching at an alarming rate. new and continuing students are registering and today we had a staff meeting in the Department of Physics about arrangements for the new term. This all made me think again about retirement.

About three years, while I was in Barcelona on sabbatical , I posted an item about looking forward to retirement. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

The fact of the matter is, though, that I can’t afford to retire yet. I have a mortgage to pay and I’ve only had five full years of pensionable service in the Irish system, so won’t get much of a pension. I have the frozen residue of my UK pension, of course, but that is subject to an actuarial reduction if I take the benefit before I’m 65, which is also the standard retirement age for academic staff in Ireland. I can’t be made to retire here until I’m 70, in fact, but I think I’ll be well beyond my best-before date by then and am not keen to overstay my welcome.

So it looks like I’ll have to stay until I’m 65 at the earliest. In fact I won’t be able to collect the State Pension (SPC) until I’m 66, so I’ll probably have to stay until then. That means that when I get back from sabbatical I will have four or five years left until I can retire.

Since I posted this I made a firm decision that I will retire as soon as I’m able, which should be in June 2028. Having sold my old house in Cardiff some time ago, I have paid off my Maynooth mortgage which makes the financial situation much simpler. I am now quite confident that I can afford to retire before I’m 66.

I know many academics don’t like the idea of retiring. I suppose that’s because they’re afraid they won’t know what to do with their time. I’ve never felt like that. I’ve always had plenty of outside interests, but now there’s another factor. As I alluded to in an earlier post, and contrary to all my expectations of three years ago, there is another person involved. That person, whose name I won’t reveal, graduated this summer from an unnamed university, and is just about to embark on a two-year Masters degree (in a subject not to be disclosed) in a location I won’t tell you about. He will be finishing that course in the summer 2028.

For the next two years things for us will be pretty much as they are now: not living together, but spending as much time in each other’s company as possible at weekends and holidays. That arrangement suits us both very well in the current circumstances but we have already started discussing plans beyond the two-year horizon. Some of these are not at all serious, but amusing to think about. Others would be fantastic if they turned out to be possible. We have the best part of two years to decide what to do. In any event, I find it exciting to be able to think seriously of retirement as a beginning as well as an end.

Well, tomorrow I have a meeting with my boss to talk about prolonging my contract.

Right after I give a talk about how terrible the situation for #postdoc.s is (precarious work environment, high prevalence of mental health issues).

I can't decide whether the timing is great or terrible.

I made the talk with #Quarto, and uploaded it to #Github, so you can check it out at https://tsievert.com/au-section-08-2026/#/title-slide

First time I created slides in Quarto and first time I publish them

#AcademicChatter #PhDLife #PostdocLife #AcademicLife #earlyCareerAcademic #AcademicCareer

Whenever I learn about a new statistical method:

Do I know what I'm doing?
- Highly debatable

Do I hope for the best?
- 100%

It's not helping that I need to run things on an #HPC, so my failing forward is hogging resources.

I sincerely hope #Reviewer2 is not reading my toots, but at least the results look plausible.

#AcademicLife #PostdocLife #AcademicChatter #PhDLife #OverlyHonestMethods

Ok, so writing *is* happening. Not the way I usually spend the last week of my summer vacation, but perhaps I'll finally get this damn article out of my head…

https://hcommons.social/@fgraver/116998604392850496

#Writing #AcademicWriting #AcademicLife

Don't tell IT, but I just realized that my #rstats GAM/BAM only used a single core on the #HPC while I requested 128 🫣

Now I'm up to 4 cores at least, no idea why #mgcv isn't using more.

I didn't expect it to be this difficult to use more resources.

#PhDLife #AcademicChatter #PostDocLife #AcademicLife

Multitasking?
Of course I can multitask!
Look at me, waiting for my #rstats code to run and looking for new jobs, because my contract will end in 6 months and there hasn't been a clear commitment to prolong it, and drinking tea all at once!

#AcademicChatter #AcademicLife #PhDLife #PostDocLife #AcademicMastodon

It's only shortly past 8 in the morning, but I need to #vent.
I just overheard a new #tenure track assistant #professor talk about how they got there.
In a nutshell, they haven't left the department since their master studies and stumbled into the tenure process by accident.

I am (kinda) happy for them, but I am also so incredibly fucking jealous!

I have switched not only university but country after every degree/job, so by now I live in country number 5 since starting by studies.
The longest I've been in the same country was during my #PhD plus pandemic and unemployment for over a year.

Especially older #academics don't seem to understand this, because whenever I mention any of this I encounter completely blank stares. Note, I'm in a department where most senior staff is local and celebrating 15-35+ years at the same employer.

I'm in my mid-30, I don't want to move every few years when my temporary contract ends.
I want to be able to plan more than 1-2 years at a time.

I absolutely love doing #research, but I hate so many aspects of #academic culture or what has been normalized over the years for #AcademicLife.
I plan on staying in #academia despite of it.

#Rant over, time to calm down and sip my tea.

#PostDocLife #PhDLife #academicchatter #MyLifeAsAnAcademic #AcademicMastodon #tenuretrack

"So as I continue to book more shows, I better be seeing all of you in the crowd. (Joking, maybe...)"

https://jgmonger.blogspot.com/2025/06/balancing-my-dual-life-musician-academic.html

#MusicianAcademic #WorkLifeBalance #CreativeOutlet #MusicAndMind #PassionProjects #AcademicLife

"So as I continue to book more shows, I better be seeing all of you in the crowd. (Joking, maybe...)"

https://jgmonger.blogspot.com/2025/06/balancing-my-dual-life-musician-academic.html

#MusicianAcademic #WorkLifeBalance #CreativeOutlet #MusicAndMind #PassionProjects #AcademicLife

"So as I continue to book more shows, I better be seeing all of you in the crowd. (Joking, maybe...)"

https://jgmonger.blogspot.com/2025/06/balancing-my-dual-life-musician-academic.html

#MusicianAcademic #WorkLifeBalance #CreativeOutlet #MusicAndMind #PassionProjects #AcademicLife