ss2player

"An F, because it's a draft, not a final paper." I agree with Takeru: show them a grading rubric and an example of a well done paper. That plus your comments is more than sufficient and frankly is even doing some of the work for them. (i.e. I'm sure the course material has examples already)

Another odd first name person here, but have a very American/Anglo-Saxon last name. No one's asked me if I'm European or surprised I have an American accent, but since I'm not in HR of every place I've applied, I can't speak for their hiring managers. I have had friends deal with academia micro-aggressions; one of my old coworkers is Filipino descent but born in the States, and has a Japanese first name (she's 1/4). The health screening at our school assumed she had the BCG vaccine (which you only get in certain countries, like the Philippines) and wanted a chest X-ray even though her PPD was negative. She had to prove to them she was born in Connecticut!

On the flip side of this, I'm a large person (6'2", 220 lbs with big hands) so a tiny computer would make me feel like Gulliver in Lilliput! I have a 15.4" now, it's old and slow, but works for me. If I was buying again I'd go 13" and get an external 23"+ monitor for home like Fuzzy has.

I really want to try this now...does Tecate count or is that too gauche?

I think the lesson here is eggs + any kind of sauce + veggie/meat = amazeballs.

Don't meet with them, nothing productive will happen. You explained your grading, and WORD IS BOND; they need to suck it up and learn to not be such slackers in the future.

Did you go to Penn? Sounds like something they would do, but in my case we had to pay for all the tickets to things. But I also graduated in December, so I was outta there and working by the time May rolled around. Edit: nevermind, I see you went to Bryn Mawr. Close enough.

We had "Senior Week" with various events and housing for family to stay and celebrate with you. Of course you had to foot the bill, but plenty of people participated anyway.

I don't think you read TakeruK's post there, chief.

You don't need to apologize, this is grad school, this happens all the time. Thank them for the interview, don't mention the other guy/gal. You don't want a reputation as a pushover/apologizer. If they ask, say you're joining another lab.

Nah, I was a total slacker in HS, but still was in the top 10% of my class, which I attribute to our curriculum being awful (ranked bottom 20% in the state, WHAT WHAT!). I also derped around in college after transferring to a big university but got my shit together by the end. Nowadays I take my grades very seriously and have been called a "gunner". Feels weird, man.

HELL YEAH. One of my side projects will be how to safely sterilize myself. But actually I'm just waiting for Vasagel to get approved. If that takes too long I may plan a trip to India for RISUG.

Hopefully not this one: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2014/04/14/one-hurt-in-aurora-motel-explosion/#22443101=3

Agree with everyone else, go to George Mason! It's never worth getting into 3X the debt unless the school has 3X the opportunities, which isn't true in this case. Plus, with the money you save you can visit Nawlins at your leisure!

Solidarity as the same thing happened to me last year, also did not apply there this year. Too much bureaucracy, I think.

Awesome, great choice! We actually met on the ABBS interview, so I'll PM you sometime soon about our future city. Very excited for all these changes!

"BITCH I'M DONE!!!!111!!" *drop the mic, back away slowly* In all seriousness, I told my boss immediately and am helping him find a replacement to train. Wrote a resignation letter with my last day on it and various "thanks for everything" notes (I just copied this from a google search...don't judge me!).

As someone who will be 32-33 when they graduate, that's adorable. But I agree with everyone that it sounds like day to day life at UCSD would be bad for you. You can't be at the beach all the time, broheim! Better to have a good working environment than not, plus it's not like Chicago is Timbuktu, it's a fabulous city in its own right.

Only the professors would know their own grants. Try calling the ones you most want to work with and ask them straight up "So what kind of grants do you have and when do they last until?"

Yeah, college towns can be fierce with the housing since most people living there are students. It's actually easier in a big city cause of the variety of folks and their various occupations. I'd get started ASAP, Vene!

I interviewed at Einstein; pretty sure you are guaranteed money for 5 years from the program and the hefty stipend combined with the cheap on-campus housing, you'd be raining $$$. I mean, Penn State is fine, but it's really not a competition in my mind.

I prefer large cities due mainly to the variety of people you will find there, so an isolated location would be too homogeneous for me. For example, one place I interviewed was in a Midwestern college town, and I feel going there would be disastrous for my social life as I couldn't relate at all to the locals/townies. All my other interviews were in places with at least 500K people, so while I loved that school and the research, I couldn't see myself somewhere with 1/10 the population.

Great advice, but as a Rutgers alum, I would advise against going there over UIUC just because the amount of incompetence can be staggering. They don't call it the "RU Screw" for nothing! Also, central NJ where Rutgers is located can be expensive to live in, which is likely why the stipend is higher. Maybe things are better since they merged with UMDNJ, but my experience there on the research side was underwhelming at best.

Nice, congrats! Let's be Houston buddies.

Cool topic! I volunteer as a counselor in my city, 3 hours a week. I find it fulfilling and a nice change of pace from highly detailed science thinking; your EQ really needs to worked as much as your IQ. I also enjoy TAing as a way to be more interactive and keep that ol' knowledge fresh.