hippyscientist

With you there. Our office is having a massive shake up with new faculty and new students, in addition to other tensions. It's going to be an interesting fall semester! Hope your office politics get resolved/calm down!

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny yeah I'm a first year (well almost 2nd year!) but we take our candidacy exams at the end of our 2nd or 3rd semester depending on how we're getting on. I'm looking at postdocs already because my advisor thinks I might be out in 3 years total, so that only gives me 2 years to figure it out. At the 18 month mark I want to have a list sorted, and know which conferences to go to to schmooze appropriately! The 7 papers are as follows: 1 where data is already collected, 1 which is a lit review, 2 which are from the same data collection which we're getting ethics for this summer, 1 is a collaboration with a bunch of people around the lab, validating new technology, 1 is a simulation study where I'll be starting to build the model, and 1 (from my masters work) is currently in review at a journal so I'm expecting to have to edit that a lot before it gets accepted anywhere. Was not my intention to make anyone feel inadequate, I'm terrified at the pace everything is moving. On a happier note, Switzerland and Austria will be fantastic, make sure you enjoy all the chocolate and that you have plenty of space for photos, it's stunning everywhere. Random question for you all, how is your workspace on campus set up? I'm really curious how it differs! Here, we have 4 or so PIs with their grad students sharing an office space. At any one time there could be 10 of us working here, but it's really quiet at the minute. It's kinda nice because we get lots of interaction with faculty who aren't our advisors so they all become kind of mentors.

Oh wow, envious! Summer is crazy busy over here, I'm working on 7 different papers, of which 5 or 6 I am expected to be first author. Just got back from a 5 day vacation though which was fantastic! Hit the ground running tomorrow with data collection in the afternoon. I'd love to have a bit of a longer break but going to try to convince my advisor to let me work from home a bit (when I'm on writing). We have a HUGE conference in August, and another smaller one in September so lots of prepping for that stuff too. I passed my candidacy exams so officially a PhD candidate now, and got to deal with all the responsibilities that brings. It's weird to think we've got newbies starting in a few months, and that was us a year ago! U Penn will be awesome! I'm actually looking at a lab there for a postdoc...yep looking at postdocs now. It never stops!

@rhombusbombus no I haven't been to trivia there, I think I'm joining the trivia team with my advisor in the fall tho (he goes to Ottos). We should grab a beer in Zenos when we're both in town!! Also Murphy's Law (which I only learnt what it was today, in the UK we call it sod's law) sucks! Good luck

So I got an email this morning saying I am a finalist for a New Investigators Award, which is amazing, but the winner will go to someone who is at the conference. Fair enough. I'm pissed because I can't go to the conference. I thought my old advisor would chip in maybe a few dollars, I had $350 from my current university for an international conference, plus I'd applied for funding from outside agencies. All in all the travel to the conference, plus conference fees themselves were coming out to be about $1500, and on my stipend (plus health and car costs I've had to eat this month) I couldn't justify the cost. My old advisor also told me that he was funding his two current students to go to the conference, even though they have no work that's being presented, and he couldn't give me anything. Fine, I understand that is the way academia works. I'm just frustrated because I'm losing out the opportunity to win a great award because I'm too poor to get to the conference. Agh!

NOooooo coffee, I must have missed your earlier post. I'm so sorry. Fingers crossed you find your cat and they just went on a misadventure.

Seriously, eff this effing week. I'm freaking out because I have an MRI on monday that I'll have to pay a bit for, potential surgery depending on the MRI which means I'll have to shell out for htat, and yesterday evening the transmission on my car went so that's going to cost a ridiculous amount to fix. I have no idea where I'm going to get potentially $5k + to pay for all this. I need to stop freaking out and wait for the diagnoses on the car and my injury but right now I can't. To top it all off I'm taking my candidacy exam in 3 weeks, and have finals this coming week. AGH

oh i feel the burn out lol

Oh trust me I half live in Zenos, love that place! Penn State is like nowhere I've ever been before but it's definitely infectious. I am blue and white now.

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny Lol I love saloon in winter! And I love a good pitcher but there's a time and a place!! We tend to go to the more grad studenty bars but still have to deal with the up-themselves undergrads who think they can hang out there (that came out wrong, it's more they have the attitude "I'm so mature I can go to the grad bars" but they still want to vomit at the end of the night). PSU has a party reputation and it's something the student body will not let anyone forget. If we slip in the party school rankings they will try to fix it. It's an interesting time right now with all the greek sanctions so the undergrads aren't as bad. But I have to say there's too many of them (undergrads) on campus!!! I just want to be able to get to my lab guys move!

Oh that sounds great! We have a week when they all come back during the summer and we have to deal with the drunken chaos again. But phew, time off of classes and 18 year olds!

Ugh I just graded my TA sections exams. I'm so proud of a lot of them, but there's a group who just f**ked it up, and they're the ones who I have to keep breaking up all semester, who've already been caught plagiarising. Like I know it's not my fault, but ugh. Anyone else looking forward to the undergrads disappearing and classes stopping for the summer? I can't wait! 2 and a bit weeks to go....*deeeeep breaths*

I have to do a group project and group presentation with undergrads this semester....I thought it would be awful with me doing all the work but one of them is really proactive and it's great to be able to sit back and just edit whatever they do.

Oh my goodness, today ahs been amazing. I had a great meeting with my advisor and I guess it was kinida a review that I initiated in a roundabout way (asking about making clear summer goals and a goal for where to end up at the end of year 1) and got told a bunch of really nice things. Oh it's exciting and i'm excited and he's excited and if I wasn't so exhausted I'd be bouncing with excitement

I mean I graduated 3 years ago so yes it does! But there was a speaker from the UK yesterday and I turned to one of my friends and asked whether I was that English because he seemed so foreign. Definitely become americanized, not in accent but definitely in mannerisms and phrases. It was very odd and made me think that it's been a while since I've been in the UK. Does feel like I've been here forever now!

So committees are interesting in our department. We have one made up from three faculty members who are the same for all students in our program and they are your candidacy committee. After you pass candidacy you form your own committee for comps, and this is 5 members, one of whom is outside department. How does it work for anyone else?

Neist good to see you're still alive and chugging along! Formal yearly status report? That sounds...intense? Me and my advisor have weekly meetings and I see my candidacy committee at the coffee machine pretty regularly so I guess we don't figure we need to formally update on progress. What do you even say in something like that? Still alive, developing coffee addiction, have less sleep now and work so much that sometimes I forget to sleep?

I haven't actually seen it before so I'm working through all the episodes. It's impossible to avoid spoilers this far out so I know what happens but I'm enjoying it anyway! And 45 credits seems like a high requirement! When I did my masters we did it in a year (technically 10 months) but it was structured very differently to US versions. It comprised 4 classes each semester with a 16 week original research project (i.e. come up with an idea, get IRB, data collection, analyze and write up in 16 weeks). Stress! So you have my complete sympathy with the accelerated masters!

Yikes 2 years is ambitious! We're going for 3 for the PhD, which means a bunch of research alongside classes but so far it seems manageable. Not a huge fan of border patrol shows, I've tried! But anything remarkably "basic" is right up my street!! I've switched to how I met your mother though and it's the perfect antidote to candidacy study.

There's a reality show about cheerleaders on Netflix that I've binged a crazy amount! Summer is insane here too, but not quite as hectic as yours - good luck with all that!!!! I'm exhausted hearing about everything you got going on

@Need Coffee in an IV, not really but I keep telling myself this is only temporary. I'm grateful for wine and ice packs and ice cream tonight! Tell me about it?! This year has gone so quickly and I can't believe the progress I've made since August. I feel like I've set off on a pretty good foot, and it sounds like a lot of the posters here are the same.

CONGRATS coffee! And there's always opportunities for funding

Screw being injured, it's been getting me down a lot today. Took a half day to read papers this afternoon because the pain was getting worse and worse to the point where I couldn't focus on the words. Start PT tomorrow, I hope it helps because right now I look like the worlds biggest slacker to all the faculty and other grad students in my department.

I'm sorry this has happened to you. I've certainly seen the effect of departmental politics on recruitment and admission and it definitely sucks. Hopefully you have other options that are equally exciting and what to take you on. Good luck!

Yikes, hope you didn't have to go out in that the day of. We got hit pretty minimally here, but still got a snow day which was nice - lots of grading got done in front of netflix!