Category Archives: Alexis

On Facebook and Privacy

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I love Facebook and other social networking sites. They’re fun, and a good way to keep in touch with my friends. I have noticed, though, that sometimes I get more information about my friends than I really want. I’ve realized that if I want to share information with friends without sharing too much, I need to pay a lot of attention to my privacy settings.

Keeping track of who can see what on Facebook is tricky, because I’m not the only person who has the ability to post information about me. Friends can tag photos of me or write on my wall, and I have no control over what they say. I actually had a disagreement with a friend about privacy on Facebook – I asked that some photos of me not be posted publicly, and he thought that it shouldn’t matter to me. After all, would I really want to work for an employer who checks my Facebook and judges me for something seen there? The answer for me is yes. An employer checking my Facebook is a cautious employer who cares about the image employees project, not just to them, but to the world as a representative of the company, team, university or what have you.

Back to the problem of who sees what and who can post information about me. Although I can delete any tag of me, I can only do that after it’s already been posted, so others might see it before I get to it. On the other hand, I like and trust my friends, and I like that they can post those pictures and write to me easily. Because of that, I’ve worked through all of the privacy settings on Facebook and figured out what works best for my life in terms of who can access what information. I figured that since they can be a bit tricky to work out, I’d write a bit about what I’ve done and how I did it.

Creating lists or groups of people has helped me a lot. I took a screenshot of where these appear on my home page – you can see I have lists for people from middle school, from the Claremont colleges in general, and from Scripps in particular. I also have lists for family and people I know from certain geographical locations or certain communities.

Using these groups of people, I altered my privacy settings for each group. To do this, click on ‘Settings’ in the upper right hand corner, and then under ‘Privacy’ choose the ‘manage’ button. Using this you can choose who can see every aspect of your profile (including photos), who can search for you, who can see your news feed and wall, what is published to your news feed and wall, and what information is available to applications.

The last feature that I’ve found to be useful is the ability to customize privacy settings for each photo album I post. This can be done either when the album is created, or afterward by clicking on “edit photos” and then “edit info.”

Of course, it’s good to keep in mind that nothing on the internet is ever completely private – so it’s best if you avoid putting anything online which could be problematic if seen.

Settling in for the ride…

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With moving in and adjusting to a new schedule and new courses this past week I haven’t had much time to spend on job searching or GRE prep. I have, however, started to think about how all of my new classes will give me skills which are useful in the job market and in neuroscience research in general. In a lot of ways it makes classes even more exciting; in biostatistics I’m not learning esoteric ways of processing data, but learning real techniques that I will be using to analyze and assess my data before (hopefully) publication. In CS 5 I’m learning basic programming skills and ways to analyze step by step problems, which is sure to be useful later on in my career.

Thesis is the most obviously applicable course, since it is first hand experience doing research. One thing I’ve been trying to work on is presenting my research clearly and effectively. I’ve tried to practice on friends and family (when they’ll listen) figuring that it is important to be clear and confident when describing my research to potential employers. Today I had another great chance to practice at the JSD Summer Research Symposium. I get really nervous when speaking to a group, especially if that group is composed of people who have more knowledge about the topic than I do. In spite of that, I think my presentation today was at least coherent, and possibly even fun and interesting (I hope.) While I realize that it is a rare occasion that I will have to present a PowerPoint as part of an interview, I appreciate the chance to practice discussing my work in front of a friendly audience.

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Emails and interview

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Hi! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Alexis Nast and I’m about to begin my last semester at Scripps. I’ll be graduating in December with a degree in neuroscience, and I’m hoping to have a job lined up by the time I return home to Seattle. I’ve been emailing professors at a local university in the hopes of finding a job as a lab technician for the next two years.

The first email I sent was a bit of a disappointment; the professor I contacted was on sabbatical and did not know of any available positions. However, he suggested another professor I could contact, who responded to my inquiry 15 minutes later saying he might have a position opening up late this fall or early winter, and I now have an appointment to talk to him about working in the lab set up for tomorrow afternoon. I did not expect a positive response so quickly, especially after hearing about the perils of the current job market.

Brainstorming a list of questions I had for him was challenging. I wanted to ask about hours, responsibilities, techniques, and opportunity for independent work, but since it wasn’t a formal interview and I by no means have the job I didn’t want to seem too pushy. I managed to get a lot of information by asking about what the current lab tech’s daily work looks like. Apparently she has stayed at the job for a long time (much longer than average lab techs stay), which suggests to me that the working environment is very positive.

Overall, the lab seemed like a good match for me; I would be able to use skills I’ve acquired at Scripps to contribute to the lab, and would also have plenty of opportunities to learn new techniques and gain experience.

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