@freemo That was absolutely something I meant to do, which somehow slipped my mind. Thank you!

@spinflip Its what I'm here for :)

@freemo hah, don't set your expectations too high but we'll see. Currently doing lots of analytical work and not as much synthesis, but feel free to ask any questions you might have and I'll do my best

@spinflip Both would be pretty exciting to hear about from a #chemistry noob like me :)

@black_sun hah, thanks. That thesis deadline is starting to get awfully close…
I honestly have no idea if I'll be looking for research work after my PhD or not, but so far I'm glad I decided to do it. Being given the time and support to spend a few years working on cool projects with minimal oversight is pretty great :)

@spinflip For me (I'm an assoc prof now) the real fun with science began after completing my PhD, when I started doing my own projects :)

@black_sun I feel that might well depend a lot on your student-supervisor relationship! Mine has been happy to let me pursue whatever seemed most interesting at the time, which has almost entirely been my own projects. With hindsight I really could have done with more direction, but I've certainly had an interesting time

@spinflip I was quite literally left by myself, with no practical or substantive support. However, it resulted in my independence and self-reliance, which according to a recent study are indicators of a good research performance :) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2018/08/18/independence-performance-researchers/

@arteteco @spinflip Yea I'm really happy with the recent surge in scholars and students from around the world!

@arteteco Thank you! I'm not 100% sold on subject-focused instances making sense in the long term (am I more a researcher, or a film fan? or should I self-sort based on my politics?), but maybe it'll help get M off the ground

@spinflip @arteteco We aren't exactly subject focused. We want a certain caliber of people that are rational people looking to learn and teach about the world. Critical thinkers. But we dont enforce any one subject in people's posts. You can post about whatever. But when you have high caliber people then the quality of the posts naturally reflect that.

@freemo @arteteco well, the website is pretty clear about the STEM focus (which honestly isn't always the most promising sign for critical thinking). Still, we'll see how it goes. Hopefully we'll be able to find things to talk about other than Mastodon itself

@spinflip @arteteco Yea we want STEM focused members but we dont limit the topic of discussion to STEM. Talk about whatever you'd like.

I haven't worked in STEM in over ten years but still are interested.
Sometimes people are more willing to discuss their hobbies than their job and are somewhat removed from it which helps.

@freemo
I would like personally if the instance were sciences focused in general, not just STEM (which as I understand is just some branches, we don't have such term in my country). But is just a personal feeling.

@spinflip

@arteteco @spinflip The S in STEM stands for "Science". So I'd say the instance is already the "sciences". It is just general enough to include engineering and technology and math which are sometimes excluded as a "Science" since they are application rather than research.

@freemo
Ah, I thought STEM was only for 'hard' sciences, and excluding for example social sciences. My fault.

@spinflip

@arteteco @spinflip STEM = Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

@spinflip I hear you, I also sometime feel that it may not be the best thing... but as you say, is a starting point to gather people, we'll see what comes after =)