Shamrock_Frog

Third.
 
The assumption that the predominantly African-American parts of any town or city are, by default, the Bad Part Of Town. 
 
 
The seemingly automatic inclination to default to chain restaurants rather than supporting local businesses (unless, of course, I want my coffee and people are dithering and asking for frappucinos). 
 
Assumptions that non-standard English implies lack of intelligence. 

My friend in the Ph.D program takes naps every day.  So does my dad, who is a Ph.D.  It really depends on your circadian rhythm and how you work best, I think.  If I don't have class in the middle of the day, I will probably take a nap, because I know that I am least productive around that time. I'm a morning person, and a night person, but from around 1-3 I am useless.  I need around 9 hours of sleep to feel rested, but I think 7 hours at night and 2 during the day will be what I do.
 
The cool thing about the Ph.D program is that to some extent, you get to work according to your how your body functions instead of when the boss says be in.  My boss would not be happy with me napping from 1-3 every day, haha.

Mine is crazy because I commute 70 miles each way and my husband works nights so we don't have daycare which means I have to be home by 4 pm.

For my MS, I front loaded and took 12 credit hours and only did literature research and minimal lab work my first year.

Semesters with classes
Wake up at 3 AM
Arrive in campus at 5.
Do homework and study
Classes 9-12
Grade
Leave at 2.

Beginning summer after classes were over:
Wake up at 3am
Get to campus at 5
Run experiments until 2 with a break for lunch (teach 2x a week and grade while NMR was running)
Leave at 2.

Wash rinse repeat daily for two years. I just defended Friday and was unanimously approved. Now onto a phd program where thank god we'll be 3 miles away so I won't have to rush out every day at 2. I loved coming in early cause I got so much shit done before other people began trickling in at 9-10. I'm most likely going to continue early mornings for my phd. I love feeling so productive and having the lab to myself for hours when everyone else was staying late nights.

A solid state drive is a nonmechanical hard drive. On mechanical harddrives, data is stored on a metal platter and accessed physically where as on SSD it is storred on flash memory, similar to your cellphone (but much higher grade). This allows the data transfer speeds (read and write) to be much faster. A 7200 rpm harddrive can read/write ~ 80 mb/s where as SSDs can read and write up to 1 GB/s (over 10x faster than mechanical harddrives). Because of this your boot times will be faster, and load times will be faster. Saving will be faster. Basically it makes every thing you do faster with the exception of calculations.  My 2011 Macbook pro hard boots in 12 seconds. WHen it had a mechanical drive, it took about 1 minute. 
 
Another benefit is that because the SSD is not mechanical (no moving parts) it is much more shock resistant.  They also draw less power, so you will get a 1-3% improvement in battery life. 
 
THe reason why SSDs are expensive in general is because they are more expensive to manufacture at this point. MLC ( Multilayered flash) that is used to make these SSDs have not been manufactured as long as Mechanical Harddrives so the efficiency is down. ANother reason is there is greater demand: They also use flash for cellphones, mp3 players, RAM on computers and pretty much any electronic device that has non mechanical storage. There is actually a flash shortage, causing the prices to go up.
 
Its important to note that when I bought my 512 SSD 3 years ago it was ~500 dollars. So getting one for ~350 is still a pretty good deal. 

Well, it is that time of year again for our office- Goal setting for FY 2016.  So of course, I jokingly filled out the form with my goals for the Ph.D program instead of my job.  I'll fill it out in earnest for my job in a little while.  Anyways, I thought it was a good exercise, clarifying some of the things I need to do for my Ph.D program, and so I thought I'd bring the question to you.  What are your goals for 2016 and how will they be achieved?  My work also has a format, so I'll use that.
 
Goal 1
State Goal:  Refresh my understanding of linear algebra, calculus, and intermediate statistics.
 
How does this goal link to career growth and/or personal performance?  A better understanding of these three topics will help me in my research and perform better in my Ph.D classes.
 
How will it be measured? Complete MIT open courseware classes on these three topics.
 
 
Goal 2
State Goal: Become more familiar with current research in the area of accounting, specifically auditing.
 
How does this goal link to career growth and/or personal performance? This will help me to understand what the hot topics for auditing are right now, which can then give me ideas for my own research.
 
How will it be measured?  I want to develop a habit of reading at least one or two journal articles a week, outside of my
coursework.  I also need to familiarize myself with the top journals in my area.  Measuring this should be by counting how many outside articles I read each month, with the goal of 6.  Or by reading and journaling for 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week on research articles I read.
 
 
Goals 3 &4 are just to perform satisfactorily in my doctorate classes and budget my money wisely.   I think how it helps and how it will be measured is pretty self explanatory. (3.5 GPA and little or positive budget variance)
 
So, what do y'all think?  Do you have any goals you want to share?

Also I am getting sick of how TV portrays 22-28 young adults. I get it we're millennials but that doesn't mean that everyone of us can't think of outside of the box/know about the past or are slaves to our smartphones & social media. 

I don't know if there is anymore advice that we can give you. You know what you have to do. You say you want to be a tenure track faculty member and that you are not interested in industry. The biggest issue for you is your Undergrad GPA. You can't do anything about the GPA now so you have to do a masters or a Post-bacc. Since you've been out school for a while I don't think you will qualify for most post-baccs. That leaves a Masters. You have 2 options: a coursework based masters or a thesis based masters. The latter will help you more in grad school admissions. With your uGPA you are not getting funded for the masters unless you know the PI you want to work with. That means at least 50-60K in student loans. After you've completed your masters you are going to have to be selective to where you apply. You can't apply only to top tier schools this time. You're going to have to apply to some less competitive programs. I would also suggest applying to Umbrella programs as their admission standards seem to be less strict than straight neuro programs. All you need is one school to accept you that you are willing to go to. You have a long road ahead of you but other students have been accepted into grad programs with sub-3.0 GPA's (there's a thread on it). The other option that I suggested earlier in the thread is industry. Your uGPA won't matter as much. Med schools like Stanford/Davis/UCSF/USC/UCLA always have SRA positions open. There are more jobs in the bay area for biotech than on the east coast.

I'm not sure if that was a genuine gratitude or a pure sarcasm, but you appear to be completely clueless about ERR_Alpha's main point.
 
Here is an advice - if you hate the feeling that people are getting sick of you, try to write polite posts or replies with better attitude that could prompt a more constructive response. It's really no brainer.

I think people overestimate the importance of gre scores

I applied to mostly top 10 programs as an international who studied in an unknown state school and was able to get into half of the schools I applied to. Also, during my interviews I met many people who were from state schools, unknown liberal arts schools and who had no publications whatsoever, very rarely would I meet someone who had published. Publications aren't a requirement to get into top 10, 20 or whatever schools  IMO.

Good luck!

I second whoever said research fit is the most important. I cast a wide net last season with really no goal or direction. I lucked out that Penn State happened to like me at a pre-interview weekend and was looking for more students fresh out of undergrad. If I did it again, I'd reach out to profs beforehand and look for programs where I could be in the biochemistry program, but still research with chemistry profs.

It would probably have helped if I didn't spend half of the Baylor interview violently sick to my stomach due to the utter delight that is having IBS that manifests primarily in high-stress situations.  Part of their interview is taking students to the Rush Record Neuroscience Forum they hold every year, and I spent almost the entire first day running in and out of the bathroom, which might have been interpreted as inadequate enthusiasm.
 
I really have no idea what adcoms think when interviewees get sick, and I think it's a worthwhile thing to consider at least somewhere in the big Grad School Applicant Discussion because it definitely happens, and it can happen when you don't even expect it.  Maybe you don't have a chronic condition like I do, but what if you get some kind of bug or the food doesn't agree with you...

This is so annoying--it really bothers me that my undergraduate experience is like night and day to mostly everyone else I know.

Grades completely took a back seat after I found something I was truly interested in and the majority of people around me did the minimum possible to get into law school, mba, or make lots of money.

I'm not sure what makes them so entitled, but I DO think the focus on money or a graduate career that will ultimately make you money (law school) makes average students feel deserving about grades because they have a career goal/lifestyle goal that requires it.

All I have to say is WATCH OUT for me as a TA. That shit will not fly when I am grading papers.

College is about disorientation, rethinking and challenging much of what we assume to be "true" and "real." I can't think of 3 other people in my undergrad who shared this view.

So did you get accepted anywhere? Are you just projecting your frustration onto others? You come across as self-absorbed and entitled. Interesting, considering what you accuse others of doing. You seem to have a lot of growing up to do.

I think we are all self absorbed, on all "sides"
 
Lets all remember that people are people are people.  There are monsters in the world, but lets not create more because we aren't getting our way.   Most people aren't hanging on several acceptances because they want to torture those on the wait list, and the people on the wait list aren't less qualified, and may have the same credentials as those considering multiple acceptances.  It is the luck of the draw. 
 
Those with several acceptances- Be considerate, if you know you aren't going to accept, then tell them so.  Those waiting- be patient and don't create villains where there are none.
 
It is a long and painful process for everyone involved.  Lets not make it more painful by attacking eachother.

not expecting anyone to consider my opinion... just saying that there's a lot of selfabsorption in the room. how quickly we forget what it's like to be on the torturous waiting end! these are the kinds of attitudes that carry forward into academia and shows how profs can completely guiltlessly put applicants thru hell during app season.
 
apply your very powerful brain for a day or two, consult everyone you need to consult, and make a decision. because of this dawdling and "WEEEEE I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DOOOOO HEE HEE!" some people will have to make the tough choice of turning down offers to gamble for a wait list offer that may come after april 15. 
 
it's awful.

Bananasinpajamas: I think I remember seeing you post on the South Bend forum. If that's you, then I can totally identify about moving so far away -- South Bend will be far away from home for me too! I officially committed to Notre Dame today...so many emotions! 

So you're expressing dislike of people considering opinions from others that may or may not be relevant when making one of the biggest life choices ever by...expecting these people to consider your opinion that may or may not be relevant...

Okay.

"Dream school" =/= right choice. They aren't gross, selfish, or awful by carefully considering their opinions instead of pouncing on an acceptance out of emotion/excitement.

yaaa no.... people in this thread are saying that "they know they should pick their dream school" but insist on being neurotic and beating the question to death by asking everyone and anyone their opinion. even when all of those opinions align with "pick the dream school" these people STILL don't decline offers. you people are gross, selfish and awful.

It's a big decision, one that affects the rest of your life.  They have earned the right to not take their decision lightly and their deadline is April 15th.  

seriously? you all got into your "dream school" yet you still drag it out your decision until april 15? so unneccesarily cruel to other applicants. 

You come across as entitled and very full of yourself.

Yeah, it is.
 
There's a difference between confidence and entitlement.

You come across as entitled and very full of yourself.

You come across as entitled and very full of yourself.