jeanqasaur

My advisor taught me how to put myself out there and how to fail. When I showed up to grad school, I was a major perfectionist. I was so unaccustomed to getting points taken off my work that it broke my heart to take off points from other people when I was a grader/teaching assistant. After I got to grad school, my advisor pushed me to put myself and my work out there every chance I got. He made me commit to giving talks and submitting papers at specific deadlines. It didn't matter if I was ready or not--he made me do it. As a result, I put out a lot of half-baked work that nobody really understood or cared about at the beginning of my Ph.D. Fortunately, my advisor also made me stick with it so I saw this turn into work that was more understood and accepted by the community. Because of this experience, I'm much less worried about putting work out that is not "perfect"--and I also understand that ideas often don't emerge perfectly polished and that's all right.

A related thing I learned was that commitments and deadlines are really useful for making myself do more work than I thought I could do.

Thanks, Armando. :)

Hi James! Thanks for doing this AMA. :) What is your top advice for giving humorous talks? Do you think it's different being funny as a black man or as some other kind of underrepresented minority (for instance, a woman)? Also, do you think humor in Computer Science works differently from humor in general (for instance standup comedy)?

James, what were the biggest obstacles you faced to get to this point in your career? How much did they think they had to do with being an part of an underrepresented minority group, versus other factors? Thanks!

Who were your role models growing up? (Please include non-computer scientists too if they are relevant!)

He only says it in the title and then as part of the questions he's happy to answer. He doesn't make the point very often.