GeoDUDE!
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Posts posted by GeoDUDE!
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Do you know anybody who has gotten a job before defending? Were they successful or did it drag on because they couldn't get their revisions done?
Its very common in geology, at least it used to be when there were more jobs around. You just have to be diligent in getting it done. This also happens for PhD students, who often get postdocs and TT positions before they formally defend.
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Do you feel that doing minimal school work comes with negative consequences?
I don't think the amount of your publications is really indicative that you are making the correct choices. Some of the most successful modelers I know take years before they get their first publication, but it happens to be high impact and well written papers. I'm not saying yours aren't, I'm just saying that a lot of people work on problems that don't lend itself to quick manuscripts, and a well designed MS project should lend itself to quick publications since its much shorter amount of time. It is also important to note that when you are looking/comparing yourself to other PhDs in your program, know that most of them won't make it into an academic job, but a small fraction. So the comparison is really not a good thing at all.
I also do research with people outside of my subfield. To give you a picture, I work with 3 labs outside of my program, and I'm the only one in my subfield. What is the point of modeling if you are only using it in modeling papers? Seismologists, tectonists and petrologists (all outside of my field) are much better at getting and interpreting observations than I am, so I'll work on projects with them and the relationship is symbiotic since I am much better at designing simulations.
How much can you really impress someone in class anyway? The problems you solved in class are very canned. IE, there tends to be an obvious answer to the instructor.
I think the first year of classes when I was doing my masters was a bit helpful for me as I had switched to a field where I had not taken any classes. After that, I always felt that classes moved to slow because I could learn the important things faster than the course would allow.
You won't be getting recommendations from people you ONLY take classes from. If you have to get recommendations from people you only take courses from in graduate school you probably aren't competitive enough research wise for an academic job. If you are going for a nonacademic job, the quality of your recommendations does not matter as much ( you might even be able to use reccomenders from your MS program, but if you are going for an academic job, unless you continue a lot of research with your former advisor, you will probably never use those recommendations again.)
There are programs that expect you to get all As in your classes, and I'm sure those are different than the Earth Sciences which seems to almost universally think that classes are antiquated by the time you are a strong enough scholar to get a PhD.
Thats not to say i'm so arrogant to think that I can learn everything without help. But what is more impressive than doing better in class is asking someone outside of your field a question about your research that overlaps, even if it has a simple answer.
Also, publishing is only half the equation. I also advise undergraduate students and write grants for my own money. Plus there is outreach.
Personally, I think of masters students (even when I was myself) as undergraduate+. You are basically doing undergrad with a heavy research component. But a PhD student has much more they need to do to be successful. By the end of their degree, they must prove they can build a lab. That means mentoring students, winning money, writing manuscripts and doing outreach/committee stuff. You really aren't judged in the same light.
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Of course it's not impossible to land an academic job working 40 hours a week, but it's a question of likelihood and the competition you'll be facing. My point here isn't to call people out for not working enough/tell them they're doomed. But when we're discussing working hours and the PhD then you have to at least consider how this might impact you professionally. In any profession you're going to have to put in more than 40 hours a week if you want to be competetive, especially early in your career. And just like in any profession there are gunners that you're going to be competing with. This isn't unique to academia.
Sure, if all you're working on is research (writing and presenting, or points 1 and 2 in your post), then you can probably fit that in 40 hours and do a good job of it. But you left out the more time-intensive activities that grad students are also responsible for (again, I'm speaking mostly for the humanities here because of my own background and because OP is in history), namely coursework, studying for comps, learning languages when necessary, and (the biggest one) teaching, along with various kinds of service to your department, university, and/or discipline (organizing conferences or symposia, sitting on committees, reviewing submissions, etc.). Now I'm not saying these are the most important aspects of the training, some of them are actually pretty trivial. But these are just things that you're expected to do in the profession, and they take time. I would love to be able to only dedicate my time to research! But that's just not the case (neither for grad students nor for professors), and people should know what they're getting into. But if you're a micro-managing genius and can do all of that in 40 hours, then more power to you. In my experience it's very unlikely, something has to give and you prioritize. But I'll leave it there because concepts like "success" and "priorities" are very personal.
Its very interesting. If I wanted to get all As in my classes, I would probably would hve to work a lot harder. But I spend a fixed amount of time on coursework: i'll spend 3 hours outside of class per class. So this quarter my classes only take up 6 hours of time (since I only have 1 class). that gives me 34 hours a week (if i only did 40 hours, which I do closer to 60, but thats for other reasons). I have turned in incomplete problem sets, and not my best work because of this, but also I really dont care as long as I get a B. In fact, I'm in my advisors class right now, and I don't work to hard in it.
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If you are interested in computational fluid dynamics and nonlinear dynamics, have you ever thought about going into Earth Science? Oceanography, Atmospheric Science, and Geophysics all involve a great deal of that. And, you will probably stand out with your strong math (and hopefully computer) skills as there are far less people with that in the earth sciences than there are in engineering.
Just a thought.
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Why aren't you asking them?
- fuzzylogician, hgp, MidwesternAloha and 1 other
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I think there is something not so good about intending to enter a PhD program and wanting to leave with a MSc. MScs are often consolation prizes for students who fail qualifying exams.
Another thing is that if you don't get letters from Minnesota you will not get into another PhD program. People will wonder why you don't have letters from them. You should be worried about getting them because they will be able to speak to your ability as a graduate student.
If you ended up in as a terminal masters (something I did) its looked well and I think you would be able to find yourself a more competitive applicant. But Minnesota is a good department, and people will wonder why you want to leave, and you'd better have real reasons to do so.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to leave a program. I think planning to not complete a contract (which you sign) from the get go is a really bad attribute to have.
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How would A force you to go to A? Why can't you accept the position at B? What force, gun, legal contract is stopping you ?
- MidwesternAloha and Ellies
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It depends.
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I'm a 3rd year graduate student in Earth Sciences (2 year masters 1 year PhD).
8am - Wake Up/Eat/Shower
9am - Arrive at Work
9:15 - Noon: Reading Email, Reading Articles, Going over problems from day/night before
Noon - 12:30pm:lunch !
12:30 - 5pm: Research/Meetings/Committee Stuff - Things I need to be in the office for
5pm - 10pm: Dinner, Happy Hour, Video Games, Tv ect (this is a 5 hour period where I can do what I want every day)
10pm - 2am : This is my most productive 4 hours. This is where I soley do writing or coding. The morning after is used to fix problems from the night before, this time is completely intended for NEW work that I produce. Be it setting up an algorithm, fixing some math, or even working on a manuscript/talk/poster.
2am - 8am: Sleep
So as you can see I do a lot of work during the week. On the weekend I do 5 hours a day. so doing the math I typically get about 10-12 hours of production a day, + 10 hours on the weekends so anywhere between 60-70 hours a week. I think this is a bit accessive to be honest, I could probably graduate doing half that amount of work. Sometimes I'm less productive. There probably will be a time when 60 hours a week will be too much, and i'll go down to 40. When I'm dating, reduce that time by about 15 hours a week. I'll still work on weekends (sometimes more) but my nights tend not be as productive and things have to get shifted around.
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Numerical Analysis is learning how to design algorithms to approximate solutions to equations with no real solution (Like Navier-Stokes in 3-D).
I haven't taken an undergraduate real analysis course, but I have taken a graduate level one and if thats any indication, real analysis is a much much more difficult class. I pulled 2 all nighters a week getting the problem sets done for real analysis, where as i was sleeping just fine during numerical analysis.
My impression is that if you got less than a satisfactory grade in real analysis but feel you learned a great deal from it then you will be just fine in complex (as far as fine is in these kinds of courses). Just make sure that you go in knowing why you got that grade and what you can do to make a difference in complex. Perahps, even talking to your teachers/advisors about this may help you a great deal.
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I have both. I enjoy using my messenger when I'm biking and when I have light loads. When I have to carry books + laptop, which is rare, I use my backpack. I think its important to have nice carry items, as they last long periods of time and protect/transport your most important stuff ( your work!)
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I think the honest truth is that a lot people expect grad school to be paid for fully, but it is more competitive than people think.
I don't know what people think. My stats were pretty mediocre and I found a way in, twice.
Thats not to say you shouldn't take the offer. 10k Debt isn't a lot when you compare it to the national average for students, and the market might rebound in a few years.
That being said, it really depends on WHAT you do with your masters. People with geophysics backgrounds are still getting hired, but I think its a bit worse for geochem, tectonics and economic geologists.
Also, i'd be weary of placing a lot of faith on connections: usually people with good connections to industry also have funding through said industry to give their students.
It is really important for anyone to have a plan of how they want to achieve those goals before they enter graduate school. It's not only important for making a decision about where they go, but so they can convey it to their advisor/program so that they can help you achieve these goals.
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It means that your application is going to go through the adcom again when compared with other applicants.
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Fwiw, Davis is an outlier. LA is the biggest car market in the world. It has no rival, even with cities double its size.
This is really a food/meat/climate problem.
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so is the "drought" more of a byproduct of climate change, or water over-usage, or both?
because I don't understand how this seems to be happening just in the Central Valley, but not elsewhere... that I know of.
Its both, but its largely a product of wasting food IMO. Meat and Dairy take up ~50% of California's water budget, but the average american wastes 40% of their food. I don't think droughts in general are a product of climate change, but the severity of this drought is probably has to do with climate change. It also probably has to do with California's incredible population. The state has to support more people than ever before.
Sure, people will say becoming vegetarians or eating less meat is a great solution, and it might be, but I suggest we at least try and waste less food before we start completely changing our diets.
The drought is a climate problem combined with our need to extract an extraordinary amount of water from the ground.
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Says the geophysicist haha but seriously those skills can probably make you more marketable
Well my biology friends have the same problem. Industry, for the most part, wether its oil/gas/mining,defense, tech, or engineering is based on quantitate research and undergraduate geology, biology and psychology degrees are descriptive degrees. They teach you, for the most part, how to qualify their fields, but not quantify the fields. By contrast, physics, mathematics, computer science, engineering and chemistry is heavy in quantitate methods, but light on qualitative descriptions.
When each of those people go to grad school in the earth sciences, those things converge: Most of my skill building has been about learning how to qualify my research as I learned most of the mathematics and computer science skills in undergrad. By contrast, graduate school is the first time a lot of geology majors take a quantitative methods course. My office mate (who is coming from a geology degree into geophysics) is taking linear algebra as a graduate student.
I wasn't trying to suggest that one method is better than the other, if anything they are similar, its just that unless you are mapping, knowing some python is probably more important than taking a petrology or mineralogy class in industry.
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While we have had droughts before, this one has the potential to radically change california's environment. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/14-333a_0.jpg, we have probably all seen the water/gravity map map of California. The water is being extracted at a rate that damages the porosity of the ground. Why is this important? Because it makes it more difficult to replenish the ground water when your medium is less porous. Rain water will stay at the surface and evaporate instead of finding its way deep recovering aquifers.
Perhaps our plans will work, but that doesn't stop the environment from radically changing. Something has to give somewhere.
- mandarin.orange, knp, TakeruK and 2 others
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Research fit is very important, but that has more to do with being interested in the topic and being able to work with the PI. The likelyhood of you not changing your research interests over your career is very small, especially if you are a good researcher, so I don't think doing exactly what you want to do in a PhD is very important as long as what you are doing is in the ballpark.
IE i'm interested in geodynamics, mantle flow and modeling. I could have chosen to study many different localities, or aspects of plate tectonics, but none of that really matters because i'm getting myself into the field of geodynamics and my education will prepare me to answer any question in those fields I want (within my intellectual ability).
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Also, Don't you already have a MA? Why would you get another one?
Go teach.
UC Davis 2015
in Meet and Greet
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If anyone is looking for a place to sublet (furnished or unfurnished) in a primo location this summer (july, august, with the lease being over august 31st) let me know. Note you must be a graduate student or incoming graduate student.