User:Jacione

My name is Nick Porter. I'm a grad student as of summer 2021.

Working in the lab

 * Stop and examine your assumptions any time...
 * Your gut says something might be dangerous
 * You're about to start working alone in the lab.
 * You have to shift your hand position to get better leverage on something.
 * You've tried something twice without success.
 * You're about to touch something for the first time in 2 weeks.
 * You're surprised.
 * Never work alone on something that frustrates you.
 * While working on the computer, every 20 minutes, stand up, walk across the room, and take 20 seconds to focus your eyes on the farthest-away thing in your field of vision. The increase in stamina is worth 1/60th of your time.
 * Never work on the same thing for more than 2 hours without taking a 5-minute water/snack/bathroom break.
 * Set your goals at the beginning of a project and force yourself to stop perfecting after those goals are met.

Coding

 * Well written code...
 * has very little repetition. Repeated blocks of code should be consolidated into functions.
 * is heavily commented.
 * has unambiguous variable names ( is better than  ).
 * Always ask yourself if there is a more object-oriented way of doing this.
 * Any block of code that is more than 4-5 times bigger than what it would be in pseudocode should be offloaded into a function to make the main script more readable.
 * Always make sure your code catches errors and saves things before exiting. There's nothing stupider than a script that collects data for 2 hours and then throws it all away because of a raised exception.
 * Code that you haven't looked at in 3 weeks might as well have been written by someone else.

Writing

 * Never make the reader feel like they have to save face.
 * Avoid language that judges their level of expertise ("it will/should be obvious to the reader that...")
 * It is almost impossible for that person to determine how far beyond their level of expertise something is. Any time you cross that line, you risk losing the reader.
 * Know your audience, and write to a level that they could explain (not just understand).


 * Make it skimmable!
 * The conclusion should make sense to someone who only read the abstract.
 * There should be nothing important in the body of your paper that isn't also in the abstract and/or conclusion.
 * Caption your figures like they would have to stand alone.
 * Consistent writing is both better and faster than binge writing.