Here at ProfHacker, we've previously polled you about what's in your bag.

Let's make the question even more basic: what type of bag do you carry for your academia needs?

After having two successive bags begin to show wear and tear within a month of purchase, I decided it was time to invest in something of better quality.

To help with the decision-making process, I made a list of criteria that were important to me.

Here's my list.

• Size: not too large, not too small. I wanted the bag to be able to carry a laptop, a legal pad, a Moleskin notebook, maybe a book or two, pens and pencils, cell phone and iPod Touch, a wallet, and a pouch that I use to store a Flash drive and some other miscellaneous small items. Clearly, carrying this number of items would necessitate the bag being somewhat large. However, I also wanted it to be small enough to look reasonably like a regular ...

Graduate school in physics is not known as a bastion of great developments in pedagogy. Sure, there is some fantastic work being done in physics education research, especially at the college introductory course level. But for the most part, my graduate courses were not especially noteworthy for their pedagogy. Except one.

One course in particular has really stuck in my mind as an example of how the simplest approaches can make for good teaching. The professor of this course didn't use any fancy bells and whistles - no blogging, no tech in the classroom at all, nothing. Just well-organized, straightforward lectures that would often leave me in amazement of the beauty of analytical mechanics. But what stood out to me the most in this class was his choice of grammatical person for course language. In every piece of communication related to our course, such as via email or in-class...

This spring semester marked the first time in my life I've ever resigned from a faculty job and taken on another. It was unmarked territory for me and I found there was not a lot of advice out there for the situation. Of utmost importance to me was that I leave my former employer gracefully and in good order. Here are some actions I found helpful in the process.

• Write a formal resignation letter for your supervisor. Mine included the following points: 1) That the transfer of my advisees would be completed by May 15 (the end of our academic year) and that I would have the opportunity to communicate to each advisee and their new advisor that they were being assigned to each other; 2) that a transition plan for a program I directed would be formulated and in place by May 15; 3) that my university email would be forwarded to an external email address for a certain length of time after May...

One of the many things I love about working in academia is travel, whether it be for professional purposes or for personal reasons, made possible by flexible scheduling. Web 2.0 and beyond has produced some great digital tools for organizing travel plans.

In this post I will talk about TripIt.com, a tool I've been using for quite awhile now. TripIt.com is a site that compiles travel itineraries. Sign up is very easy. At the homepage, simply enter in an email address and password you'd like to use.

[NOTE: click on all images in this post to enlarge them.]

You'll get a verification email and by clicking the verification web address you finish the sign up process. The site will then prompt you to enter in your name as well as other email addresses you might use to organize your travel.

This is what I love most about TripIt: you can enter in details by hand, but far and away the feature...

Here at ProfHacker, we've earlier held discussions on What's in your bag? and What's in your lunch bag?. Today let's talk about what essentials you keep in your desk (if you have one!), whether it be at home or work. Most of us keep the usual office supplies, but it can also be helpful to keep a few personal items on hand. Just as it is advisable to keep a stash of emergency items at your home, keeping a few necessities in your desk can save you precious time. Here is a list of a few items I have on hand in my on-campus desk, beyond the usual paper files:

Standard office supplies:

• Stapler/staples
• Paper clips
• Binder clips
• Official stationery
• Business cards
• Scissors
• Tape (with dispenser)

Personal items:

• Mints
• Over-the-counter pain medicines
• Antacids
• Deodorant
• Contact lens solution
• Cough drops
• Facial tissue
• Band-aids
• Antihistamines
• Dried fruit and nuts
• Tea bags
• ...

Conferences are important in academia and ProfHacker has given them attention in the past, such as Brian Croxall's post "How to Hack A Conference."   Attending conferences is beneficial professionally but can be tiresome personally. If you're not careful, you could return home more tired than anything.

There are many things you can do to take care of yourself while conferencing. Natalie Houston previously wrote about "Add[ing] Exercise to Your Conference Schedule." Keeping yourself nourished is important too, and I'd like to offer my suggestions for eating well while at conferences.

• Bring snacks. One option is to pack some with you, such as small bags of trail mix or dried fruit. Another idea is to stop at a grocery store once you get there. If you're conferencing in an urban area, sometimes grocery stores can be difficult to find within walking distance, but I've found that the little...

My first two semesters as a professor, I was swamped in paper, particularly because all my courses have an associated lab section. I was hired about a week before the semester began and took on my position while finishing my dissertation. I was desperate to get some semblance of lab sections going, so I culled together and roughly edited what had been done by my predecessor. The labs were actually pretty good, but all involved receiving multiple pieces of paper from each student each week and then returning them back in a (ideally) timely fashion. Each week I would take in about 60 lab reports and try my best to give back 60 lab reports. Everything – lab setup, supervision, and grading – was all me, as my institution has no teaching assistants. There was a seemingly endless traffic pattern of folders going in and out of my house on weekends as I tried to keep up with the grading....