I have a few questions about applying for “advanced” AP positions. I know that’s not really a formal category. I just mean that I am in my fourth year as an assistant professor and would like to try for positions elsewhere.

1. How important are recommendation letters at this stage? My coauthors are all APs, so my potential senior letter writers are still mainly people from my dissertation committee.
2. If I know someone in a department where I’m applying, should I reach out to them personally?
3. How much importance do departments put on external grants? I don’t have one yet, so I’m wondering whether I should explain anything about that in my application.
4. I’m currently at a SLAC and mostly want to move to a SLAC with more research opportunities or an R2. I don’t think I have a strong shot at an R1. My publications are mostly in top field journals.

Would appreciate hearing from anyone who has made a similar move or been on a hiring committee.

(I added Teaching as flair because I don't see anything appropriate, thanks!)

I am curious about professional communication culture in Dhaka and other major cities in Bangladesh, particularly in academia, government, corporate jobs, and similar professional settings.

Recently, for some work related to Bangladeshi policy etc., I have had to contact professionals in Dhaka for information. I have noticed something interesting: I’ll send a fairly straightforward question by email, but instead of answering it, people reply with their phone number and ask me to call them.

These are usually not complicated questions. In many cases, the answer could probably be written in one or two lines in an email. So I’m genuinely curious why a phone call is preferred.

I may also be somewhat conservative about this. I’m not very comfortable calling unknown men on their personal mobile phone numbers when I’m contacting them strictly for professional reasons. Email feels more appropriate to me.

For people who work in Bangladesh: is this normal? Is email not commonly used for short professional exchanges, even in academia, government, or corporate settings?

And particularly for women professionals, are you generally comfortable calling male professionals you don’t know personally, or do you prefer to keep this kind of communication over email? What am I missing, if any?

I got an email from a prospective graduate student asking for advice for a master’s/PhD. Nothing unusual there. I don’t know this person; they simply found me online and sent me their CV.

The CV lists 27 published papers in 2025 and 2026 alone. They also finished undergrad during this same period. So basically, 27 papers while finishing or just after finishing an undergraduate degree. The journals seem to be mostly local journals in their country or region.

But what bothered me more was the email.

It was very obviously AI-written. I have absolutely no problem with someone using AI to improve their English, fix grammar, or make an email sound more professional. But this email went on about how closely their research interests align with my “expertise” and described me as working on things I have literally never worked on.

That feels very different to me. You are using AI to create the impression that you have looked at someone’s research, understand what they do, and have thoughtfully chosen to contact them ..when apparently you haven’t.

And honestly, the whole thing made me a little depressed. This person wants to pursue a PhD, where the entire point is supposed to be doing original research and developing your own intellectual judgment. Surely there has to be some minimum expectation of academic honesty even before you enter a PhD program.

I’m not against AI. I use it too. But there has to be a difference between using AI to help communicate your own thoughts and using AI to manufacture thoughts, knowledge, or interest that you never had...

This may be a slightly awkward question, but I am genuinely looking for advice.

I’m a female academic and researcher, a few years post-PhD, and I’ve been trying to build stronger professional relationships with senior women in my field. I would also really like to develop more research collaborations and coauthorships with women.

One thing I’ve struggled with, though, is getting these relationships to stay focused on research and professional development. In my own experience, conversations with senior female colleagues sometimes move fairly quickly toward personal topics—how I’m doing, whether I’m taking care of myself, stress, work-life balance, etc. Similarly, when I meet senior women at conferences, I sometimes come away having had a very supportive conversation, but without much concrete feedback on my research, publication strategy, or ideas for collaboration.

I know this is generally coming from a kind and supportive place, and I don’t want to generalize from my own experiences. But sometimes I find it a little patronizing, especially because what I am actually looking for is rigorous professional engagement: Tell me what is wrong with my paper. Tell me where I should send it. Challenge my methods. Tell me what research question you think I am missing.

I also want to make sure I’m not unintentionally contributing to this dynamic myself. How do I signal more clearly that this is the kind of relationship I’m looking for?

For women here who have built strong female mentoring relationships or successful female collaborator networks: how did you do it? Were there particular ways you approached people, asked for feedback, or turned conference conversations into actual professional relationships?

I would really like more women in my professional research network. I’m just trying to figure out how to build those relationships in a way that is intellectually productive as well as supportive.

One piece of advice for graduate school applicants that I don’t think gets talked about enough: pay attention to who your future fellow PhD students are likely to be.

I finished my PhD a couple of years ago, and one thing I have realized since then is how much your productivity as an early-career researcher can depend on the network you build during your PhD.

Your advisor and faculty mentors are obviously very important. But I think people sometimes underestimate how important your fellow PhD students are.

They can become your coauthors, introduce you to other researchers, invite you into projects, share opportunities, and connect you to their own growing networks. Five or ten years later, that peer network can matter enormously.

So, when choosing a PhD program, pay attention to the students - not just the faculty, rankings, or placements. Are the other students serious about research? You can get some sense from senior graduate students' job market profile. Are they ambitious about publishing?

If you enter a department where most students are actively trying to become strong researchers, you grow within that network. If most people around you are not particularly interested in research, you may have to build much more of that network from scratch later.

Choose your peer environment wisely. Your classmates are not just your classmates for five years; many of them will be part of your professional network for decades.

I have written a longer list before about adjusting to graduate school abroad, but I want to dig deeper into a few points, especially the academic environment.

This is probably the first major adjustment you will face, and it can become extremely frustrating if you are not prepared for it.

I am writing mainly for serious students who genuinely want to do well academically.

1. The speed can be a shock

In most graduate programs, your first semester will involve coursework.

You may arrive, and classes start a week later. Three days into class, you get an assignment you barely understand, and it is due the following week. Three weeks later, you have your first midterm. If you do badly on that midterm, bringing your grade back up can be difficult.

For students coming from Bangladeshi public universities, think about your previous experience. How many assignments did you actually have to submit on strict weekly deadlines? How quickly did courses move?

Even BUET, which is academically demanding, can feel slow in terms of scheduling compared with many North American graduate programs. In other universities, the difference may be even larger.

If your brain is not prepared for that speed, panic can set in very quickly. And once you panic, you may perform worse even though you are intelligent and motivated.

The problem is not necessarily that you cannot understand the material. The pressure is new. The deadlines are new. The exam format is new. The expectation that you will figure things out quickly is new.

2. Train yourself to solve problems, not just understand theory

The question structure can also be very different.

In Bangladesh, much of our education is still syllabus-based. You learn the material, and exam questions are often relatively close to what was explicitly taught.

Graduate courses abroad can be much more application-based. Knowing a theory and being able to apply that theory to an unfamiliar problem under time pressure are two different skills.

So practice solving problems.

Find practice questions from textbooks, old exams when instructors make them available, problem sets, online resources, or materials recommended by professors and senior students. Knowing the theory is not enough. You need to practice applying it, especially under time constraints.

Work with other graduate students too. Make a study group. You may have classmates from East Asia, Latin America, Europe, the US, or elsewhere who are already familiar with this style of coursework and exams. Sit with them. Observe how they approach a problem. Explain your approach to them. Learn from each other.

And one important point: do not copy someone else's assignment.

In our academic culture, students sometimes treat copying a friend's work as relatively harmless. In a North American university, it can have very serious academic consequences.

Someone else spent hours solving that problem. Learn from them, discuss the method, and then do your own work. The purpose of the assignment is partly to prepare you for the exam anyway.

3. Use office hours and your TA

Go to office hours.

Talk to your professor. Talk to the TA. Ask questions. If you did badly on an assignment or exam, ask what you could have done differently.

These support systems exist for students to use. Going to office hours does not mean you are a weak student.

You may actually save yourself five hours of confusion by asking a TA a good question for ten minutes.

4. Your TA/RA job also starts immediately

At the same time, you have probably started your TAship or RAship.

Be careful with your time.

If your TAship is supposed to take a certain number of hours per week, try to keep your work reasonably within those hours. Block specific times for teaching preparation, grading, lectures, and office hours.

Otherwise teaching can consume unlimited time, especially when you are new.

RAships can be more complicated because expectations depend heavily on the PI and the project. But you should still learn to think logically about time allocation.

Your coursework, research, TA/RA responsibilities, cooking, cleaning, sleep, and social life are all competing for the same 24 hours.

5. You need a system, not just motivation

You need structure.

Have a routine. Have a place where you study alone. Have another space where you can work with other students.

Structure saves both time and mental energy.

I personally always preferred studying at the university rather than going home immediately. It made it easier to stay in academic mode, use university resources, ask someone a question, meet classmates, or join a study group.

Figure out what system works for you and stick to it.

6. Programming can be another shock

Many Bangladeshi students are also surprised by how much programming or computational work is expected in graduate school, depending on the discipline. Almost all will require some combination of R, Stata, Python, MATLAB, GIS, or other tools.

AI may change how quickly people learn some of these skills, but you still need to understand what you are doing. Start learning before you desperately need the skill for an assignment or research project.

7. And yes, you need a life

Take breaks on weekends.

You need time for grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, sleeping, and simply doing nothing sometimes.

You should also socialize.

But I would strongly encourage new graduate students to build relationships with people in their department, not only with people from Bangladesh.

Have coffee with your cohort. Go to departmental events. Have lunch with other graduate students. Study together. Occasionally hang out outside the university.

I have seen many international students build their entire social network around their home-country community. Personally, my academic experience would not lead me to recommend that as your only social circle.

Your fellow graduate students understand exactly what you are going through academically. They can become friends, collaborators, study partners, and an important source of information about how your department actually works.

You can absolutely maintain a Bangladeshi community while also becoming part of your academic community. It does not have to be one or the other.

8. Protect your academic priorities

I am going to be honest here. One thing I have noticed in some Bangladeshi student circles is a lack of empathy toward people who are very academically serious.

If you study a lot, someone may mock you: “Arey, pore to fatay feltecho!” or “Eto pore ki Bidyasagar hobi?”

Recently, long after finishing my PhD, I met a Bengali woman at a conference who told me, “Arey, network kore to fatay feltecho!” Sometimes I feel Bengali as a language has some problem! We seem to have a phrase ready to mock people for doing anything...

Maybe they mean it as a joke. But when you already have three assignments, a midterm, grading, and an RA deadline hanging over your head, you may simply not have the mental capacity for these jokes or the pressure to constantly socialize.

Do not feel embarrassed about taking your work seriously.

You came here to achieve something for yourself. You probably invested years of work to get here. Your degree, research, career, and whatever goal brought you to graduate school deserve to be your priority.

You do not need to prove to anyone that you are sufficiently relaxed, social, or “fun.” Find people who respect what you are trying to accomplish.

At the end of the day, other people will move on with their lives. You are the one who will live with the outcome of how you used these years.

The main point

Graduate school is not only about being intelligent or hardworking.

You need a structure, a system, and a realistic understanding of what is being demanded from you.

Learn the system quickly. Practice solving problems. Ask for help. Manage your time. Build relationships with your cohort. Take care of yourself.

Then execute your plan.

Being a good student helps. But being a good student with a functioning system around you helps much more.

There are lots of posts about how to apply to graduate school, but not nearly as many about how to adjust once you actually get there, especially when you are moving to a new country with lots of academic pressure, a new culture, and a completely different professional environment.

A few things I learned from my own experience:

1. Before coming, learn how to cook and take care of yourself.

Learn some basic meal planning, grocery shopping, cleaning, budgeting, etc. In Bangladesh, we study a lot because it is a competitive environment, but we don't necessarily learn how to manage everything strategically.

In graduate school, you have to get your basic life stuff done while protecting enough time and energy for research. You need some strategy and a system for that.

1. Knowing how to cook also makes you less dependent on the Desi social circle.

This may sound like a small thing, but it matters. If you can cook your own food and build your own routine, you don't have to depend on Desi parties and gatherings because you miss familiar food or company.

These communities can be wonderful, but they are not always the easiest spaces for graduate students.

1. Observe.

Understand your department's norms. Attend seminars. Watch how faculty and graduate students ask questions, disagree, present ideas, and respond when they don't know something.

A lot of professional culture is learned simply by observing.

1. Meet seminar speakers.

If your department has graduate student meeting slots with visiting seminar speakers, sign up. Even when their research is not exactly your area, these meetings teach you how academics talk about research, explain their work, ask questions, and build professional relationships.

1. Be careful about developing a reputation for constant complaining.

One thing I have noticed among South Asian graduate students, including people from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, is that complaining can become a form of social bonding. Graduate school certainly gives you plenty to complain about!

But professionally, constant negativity can eventually hurt your reputation. Everyone around you is also busy and stressed. Learn the difference between raising a legitimate problem, asking for help, and repeatedly venting to colleagues.

1. Don't put too much emotional labor on senior graduate students.

Senior students can be enormously helpful, but they are also trying to finish dissertations, publish papers, find jobs, and manage their own lives.

Some students get stuck in a cycle of constant anxiety and need someone to reassure them over and over again. Your friends and senior students may not be equipped to manage that. In that situation, professional help may be much more useful.

1. Start going to conferences earlier than you think.

I started going to conferences in my third year, and I wish I had started earlier.

You don't necessarily need a paper to benefit from a conference. Go to sessions. Watch presentations. See how people introduce themselves. Observe how researchers talk to each other between sessions. You start understanding how professional networks actually work.

1. Your advisor is not your parent, God, or a supreme authority.

Your advisor is a professional mentor. They are also a human being juggling research, teaching, students, deadlines, family, and many other responsibilities.

Learn how to communicate expectations, ask for feedback, disagree professionally, and resolve conflicts. I don't think we are particularly good at conflict resolution as a group, and that becomes a problem when you start working on large research projects with other people.

1. Automate your processes. Don't depend on your memory.

Keep a research log. Maintain a task list. Document where your data came from. Write READMEs. Organize your code. Put deadlines on your calendar. Keep notes after meetings.

Your brain should be doing research, not trying to remember 47 small things you were supposed to do.

1. Keep some distance from people who expect you to take care of them.

This is especially important if you are a woman coming from Bangladesh or a similar culture.

You are not automatically responsible for cooking, hosting, organizing gatherings simply because you are a woman. This expectation will be much bigger if you are married. Be careful about your time.

Graduate school is already demanding. Protect your time.

1. Take initiative. Start thinking about Job Market from the beginning.

Don't wait for your advisor or department to create every opportunity for you.

Look for internships. Join a research group. Attend workshops. Participate in student organizations if they are useful to you. Email researchers whose work genuinely interests you. Learn a new method. Apply for small grants. Look for opportunities that actually help you develop professionally.

Graduate school gives you a structure, but eventually you have to build your own professional life.

1. Keep notes about everything related to your research and professional interactions.

Don't depend on your memory. Take notes during or immediately after meetings.

After important meetings with your advisor or other mentors, send a short email summarizing what you discussed, what you understood the next steps to be, and what you are going to work on. This helps you stay organized and also prevents confusion later about what was discussed or agreed upon.

1. Don't be too awestruck by Western faculty. Yes, controversial -

I think we, as Bangladeshi graduate students, can sometimes become very awestruck when we first meet Western faculty. "Oh, they asked me to call them by their first name! They're so nice and informal!"

Be careful about interpreting these things. Calling professors by their first names, being informal in conversation, or having a friendly interaction may simply be part of the academic culture. It does not necessarily mean you have developed a close personal relationship with that professor.

Observe how other students and faculty interact and learn the professional boundaries. Someone can be warm, friendly, and supportive while the relationship is still entirely professional.

1. Be careful with jokes and your sense of humor.

Humor does not always translate well across cultures. Something that sounds completely harmless or funny among your friends back home may come across as inappropriate, offensive, or simply strange in a professional setting. I was washing my face in a conference, and the Indian woman beside me asked "What's your age?" A big NO, don't do it.

Especially when you are new, observe first. Don't make jokes about people's appearance, relationships, gender, race, religion, sexuality, accents, or other personal matters. Don't say inappropriate things and then assume people will understand that you were "just joking."

You are building a professional reputation. You can be funny and have a personality without making other people uncomfortable.

I work in a male-dominated field and am a tenure-track faculty in the U.S. I need suggestions on dealing with volunteering or service in academia.

I understand that service is part of academia, but I increasingly find myself being asked to organize writing groups, community gatherings, and other social activities—requests I don’t seem to see directed toward my male colleagues.

Interestingly, all of these requests have come from senior female colleagues, including administrators. Meanwhile, I receive very little substantive feedback or mentorship on my research, and some interactions can feel quite condescending.

Am I overthinking normal academic service, or have other women experienced this kind of gendered expectation from senior women? Is it because I am doing something wrong?