I learned some interesting things about being a grad student in China by reading this post from the Cadotte lab...two things jumped out at me. One, you can hire an army of farmers to do your fieldwork in China. That sounds awesome. Think of the large scale experiments that makes possible! That's certainly a different take on citizen science. Despite hiring armies of farmers (or others, I suppose), ecology is still not a popular or well-understood field to the public. Sounds like the US too. How many people do I meet who think "Ecology" means "recycling"? Answer: too many. Hopefully this and other blogs help...although since I mostly write about cool animals I'm not sure how much I'm helping...
The other thing that was interesting is that PhD students in China have to publish an article in an international journal as a requirement for graduating. While publishing is certainly ideal and a goal of most American grad students, it is by no means required. What would happen if it were required? Ha! I think we would have a lot more seventh and eighth year grad students...there has been an explosion of ecology publications coming from Chinese authors, and this helps explain why. I mean, the fact that China is the world's most populous country also explains why, but it's interesting. More pressure on grad students to publish while they're students, and not to wait until they're postdocs or beyond.
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