academia
What Grinds our Gears: Poorly constructed scientific papers
November 30, 2023By: Daniel Salcedo Rubio, Features Editor I’m a grad student in STEM. I know — it’s my own doing, and there’s no one to blame but myself for having to read overly complicated scientific papers every week. What annoys me is not the act of reading, nor the extra mental resources I invest in understanding complex analysis, but how frequently I come across poorly constructed papers. I’ll begin with a bit of clarification: the complexity of the analysis or methods does not equal poor construction. Unless you have some experience in that paper’s specific knowledge area, it’s likely you’re going…
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Academia needs a lesson in simplicity
October 10, 2023By: Hailey Miller, Staff Writer We’ve all tried to read a paragraph in a text, only to go back and reread it, with no greater success in absorbing the information. Why is academia so convoluted? It doesn’t need to be…
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The quintessential curriculum you will encounter as an English student
July 17, 2022By: Kelly Chia, Humour Editor My fellow beloved English students, After having spent almost six years at this beloved institution, I have derived the perfect formula for the English class that everyone will experience in university. It comes down to…
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Bright-er Side: At some point, Wikipedia became a partially-reliable website
July 13, 2022By Bhavana Kaushik, SFU Student We’ve all heard the warning: “Wikipedia can’t be trusted.” At every level — elementary, middle, high, and university — we’re warned to stay away from the free online encyclopedia. And so we’ve sadly been slow to…
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Professors should be more compassionate towards working students
February 26, 2022By: Tamanna T., Staff Writer As students are getting burnt out by life in and outside the classroom, professors need to realize that — pandemic or not — not everyone has the privilege to only focus on academia throughout their…
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It’s time to get rid of academia’s grind culture
May 17, 2021By: Carter Hemion, Staff Writer These days, students are expected to prioritize hard work over all else. We grind all day, stay up late working, and skip meals to finish assignments. We are taught to give up everything for our…
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Black Academic Success in Sciences: A Conversation
March 18, 2021Written by: Charlene Aviles, Peak Associate SFU health sciences recently hosted Black Academic Success in Sciences: A Conversation where Black professors and students detailed their journey and resilience in the field. Moderated by Dr. Henrietta Ezegbe, the event featured SFU…
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STEM students need to prioritize academic interaction
February 22, 2021by Jacob Mattie, SFU Student In the 1990s, Dr. Mary M. Tai, a researcher working in diabetes care at New York University, published a paper highlighting a new method to obtain the area under a graph — useful for many…
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The secret life of a sessional instructor
November 21, 2016Sessional instructors, also known as adjunct faculty, are every university’s secret. We know they exist, but we don’t know too much about them, what they do, or why job security in academia is such a large issue. Don’t be surprised…
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A brief look at non-varsity athletics
March 7, 2016In the academic world, there are few rivals more bitter than the one that exists between athletes and non-athletic students. There exists a great debate of whether or not universities should fund athletics as heavily as they do, or if…
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