Arrowfletch

My first grade is an A-, and I don't have terribly high hopes for the final I have tomorrow in my one other class, so we'll see. That A- is in a class that was essentially pure grad school hazing, though--I was told that the professor was disappointed that this year's TAs didn't make anyone cry--so I'm feeling pretty good about it on its own.

No papers for me. Just one more test on Wednesday, which I'm taking tomorrow to study for, and then two and a half days of being in the office that I need to fill somehow before I can go home (I'd love to leave after my final, but have very limited vacation days). I'm more worried about filling that time than anything else--I don't want to just sit in the office and goof off, but I'm a bit stuck on my project right now and haven't been able to ask anyone what I should be doing. And I need to talk to my advisor before I go, but he isn't super approachable. Besides, all I really want to do is stay in my apartment and rest...

I think I'm in about the 40-60 hours category with this being my first semester, but it's hard to take a guess when I don't keep track of studying time. I'm not doing much research right now because of how timing has worked out this semester, but I probably have about the following: In class: 8 hours plus extra time for after hours lab work and exams (~14 hours total) Actually teaching: 6 hours plus 2 office hours Grading/Planning: 4 hours Studying: at least 25 hours, probably more some weeks Research (reading, prepping, running experiments): less than 10 hours including weekend work and weekly meetings So about 55-60 hours, most of that spent on classwork and teaching. Next semester should be balanced better since I won't have this insane lab course eating all my extra time, but I'll be hurting for research time to catch up on everything I haven't had time to do yet so the hours themselves might expand.

Very much so. Especially with research: I have honestly managed to do very little, starting with a struggle to get people to take the time to train me, followed by never really having decent blocks of time to actually run any experiments. I have not talked to my advisor about research since my project was assigned, largely because they don't ever really come through the lab, and I've heard both that no one expects much to get done this semester and that previous new students were asked to leave because they hadn't done enough. So no idea where I stand on that at all, though I'm hoping after my tests next week I'll have time to poke my head in my advisor's office and ask to sit down with them to go over what I've done and what needs to be done.

Ask. Send an email saying that you're concerned about the class and would like to speak to them about it, get a meeting, go in and try to have a conversation about what's going on. Take the form with you so if they agree you can get it all done. The longer you put it off, the less likely it will work out--you'll want to check right away anyway to see if there's a drop deadline that has already passed, since often after midterms it is no longer possible to drop a class without penalty. If you feel you can articulate well what's going on to the professor, you might be able to ask for incomplete instead so that you can take the course again at a later time and delay the grade. You'll need to find a good way to phrase things, though, because honestly, going to them at this point in the semester and telling them for the first time that you're struggling is not going to earn any sympathy from them if they would have to make a special arrangement to help you.

I don't know that it would be too different anywhere else, except the issues with that one professor. I sit in on a class twice a week, and teach discussion four days a week, plus planning and grading 180 assignments every week. I'm a first year, and partly because of this I haven't had time to even start research yet. I would keep in mind, though, that once you get into the upper years you might be able to get an RA position and not have to teach at all--here a lot of students only teach until they finish their own classes.

I didn't start getting imposter symdrome until I actually got placed in a lab--now it's pretty full blown. I haven't done a single thing yet. At all. Not even training past what I was initially shown...and that three weeks in. I don't feel like I'm slacking--I'm working on class work and teaching all the freaking time and barely have time to sleep--but I'm getting really, really anxious about the fact that research just isn't happening. I've been told it's fairly normal for this stage, but at the same time I am expected to have made pretty significant progress by next semester--enough to submit a detailed report that proves me dedicated and working above an undergraduate level. Because my project seems kind of simple anyway, it's going to look really bad if I haven't just about completed it by then.

I don't really see any reason to avoid mentioning a degree-- phrased the right way, the completion of multiple degrees could be an advantage. You just have to address clearly why you did those, how they relate to this new program, and why you wamt to get a third degree. They will wonder why you are doing multiple masters and not a phd, but that doesn't have to be negative. If you don't mention it in your statement, though, I definitely wouldn't outright lie by saying this would be your second one. That could be a red flag unless they somehow never find out.

I do want to get started soon, and once I can I will--I'd rather screw up and have something to learn from than not do anything, and at least then it would be evident that I'm trying to put the work in. I do have a bad habit of being passive and waiting for things to happen when I first start in new groups, and I'm trying to break out of that--I've actually written down in my daily plans the things I need to talk to people about to get things going to try and force myself to do it. I did manage to get someone to do some more training with me today, at least, so I'll have that to work on next week even if it isn't my project yet. Since I'm just starting out, I'm not really supposed to try things completely unsupervised just yet (or so I was recently told), and it's turning out to be difficult to find an open time slot when people are there but not using the stations I need to practice on. I'm aware that is partly a communication issue, and will work on it. I also have no work space yet (waiting for some leaving people to actually clear out so I can move in) so that's more of the awkward waiting game (and I have talked to people about that, there's just nothing for it right now). Right now, I'm hoping that I will be deemed trained enough to start trying some real work by fall break. As long as I get the go ahead to use the equipment on my own, I can spend the first weekend and few days of that week on real stuff before heading home for the holiday, so that I have something to show at the end of the semester (it's a bit doubtful that anything will happen between the end of that week and finals what with teaching, proctoring, and my own biweekly tests at that point). I have at least been told by older students that it isn't unusual to only get about a week's worth of real research in during the first semester, and if I can actually have some solid days of work without running off to class at odd times I know I could get a lot done.

My advisor doesn't generally do anything in the lab anymore, so right now it's more on the other students to help me get started. When I talked to my advisor about the project I would be doing, they helped me set up a couple training things,and just implied that something concrete needed to be happening during this first semester (in that previous students who didn't stay with the group hadn't bothered to really start until their second). From what I've heard from the other students, the slow start is normal--it just feels weird, I guess. I know the first, really simple step of the project and should at least be able to do that much by finals, I hope, but it's still a matter of making the time once I'm actually confident in the techniques. Honestly, my only expectation for myself is that I manage to get through this tough first semester and get more comfortable with everything, including the lab group, so I can have less general anxiety when I start in earnest.

The way things work at my school, I didn't get into a lab group until about a month ago. I'm in a group now, and I have a project, but nothing has happened since then. I've had a single training session on how to run one type of experiment, but there are other things that need to be done first for my project that I still haven't been shown. Beyond that, there are all sorts of little details about things as simple as the sample prep that I can't quite figure out from what I've been given. I know I'm expected to accomplish something this semester, but there are really only a few solid weeks left and there's no way that I could start, even if I had the time--and one of the classes I have this semester is a crazy lab that takes pretty much all of that already. I feel like there isn't much I can do about it right now, but it's all really weighing on me.

I'm certainly not intending to ignore feedback, rising_star, and I've mentioned a couple times that I have several changes in the works already--I'm just allowing myself to feel good about how the second class reacts to me. Small victories are important. danieleWrites--that's where I'm at right now: deciding what weight to place on things and what the real issues are. There were definitely several categories that either are not in my power to fix or really just needed more communication--some things will be easy fixes now that it's actually been brought to my attention, for example. It's helpful that these forms include ratings for the class in general, which involves multiple sections and teachers, so I can also see if they like class but not discussion, or dislike the entire class. Official evals are at the end of the semester, and go through the office first, but these are just something that the professor likes to do. It is really helpful since my students rarely speak up about issues directly to me--I never did either as an undergrad.

It's not that they don't think I care about the material, but rather how they are doing with the material, which I think is more concerning. Whatever it is, I'm not seeing the same trend in the evaluations from today's group, at least not the ones that were handed in already. These were more what I expected, and the lower scores are mostly in categories that I completely agree I need to work on more. Granted, I only got about half of them back today since we ran out of time, so we'll see--the disappointed students may well be the ones who took it home with them. Honestly, I didn't find the workshops put on by the teaching center here to be very helpful--we attended several days of them before classes started, and they were very repetitive and usually not very applicable to this type of class. I've only taught for one semester before this, at my undergrad, and the general vibe was very different there. Not to mention that I had a class about 1/3 the size, so I was actually able to interact with them. Now that my own things are settling down a bit, though, I'll be able to work on improving things--that's not to say that I haven't been putting an effort in, just that it's very hard to make the time to really think about how things are working and problem solve when I'm also trying to set up the path for the next several years of my life.

In my opinion, it depends on how "factual" a statement can be assumed to be. You can make statements that might not seem right off the bat, but you should be able to support it in some way that the reader can end up agreeing with you, even if they had to think about things in a unique way to get there. For the example of fossil fuels vs. nuclear energy, you can want to say nuclear energy is cheaper but if you don't actually believe it is, that lack of belief on your part will come across as you write. But if you make cost into a more complex definition so that you can believe what you're saying--a combination of economics, environmental concerns, work and processes involved, long term cost vs gain, etc--then you can still be convincing. For the "who won a war" example--you can totally say the south won, if you define winning in such a way as to make that statement true, though it might be difficult to do so convincingly. For some topics, that's a completely legitimate strategy for creating a really interesting essay. In other words, I would avoid making up numbers or trying to pass things off as fact when they aren't, because in order to be convincing you need to believe what you're saying. But being unconventional with the way you define ideas or consequences is fine, even interesting if done well, as long as the reader isn't drawn out of the argument by obvious fallacies. Now, if you know nothing about a topic that you're given, making things up might be all that you can do--you just still have to make it convincing on some level.

There's also a search tips section on scholar that might be helpful :http://www.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html. In general, I would try what pears mentioned, or try putting quotes around the terms to return only exact matches, though sometimes that's too restrictive. Alternatively, there is a drop down menu on scholar on the results page (shows as a downward facing arrow in the upper left until expanded) that can get you to advanced search: the advanced search has categories to limit articles to ones containing every term put in, exact phrases, without certain words, etc.