Neist

They are going pretty good, thanks! However, we're covering ancient, western science in my graduate survey, and it could not be topically less relevant to my interests or less attractive. We're reading a lot of works by classicists and philosophers, and I find such scholarship overly erudite and tedious.

Nice to see you back! And sorry about your car. How long are the semesters at UCSD? You're starting a solid month after I started.

I sort of think that my professor is playing some joke on we graduate students. A quote from this week's reading: "The objection might be made that this interpretation of form in nature seems to substitute determinism for intelligence. Form determines which actions occur but not because these actions are ‘good for’ achieving the end. But surely, actions are not genuine means without involving this evaluative conception of the good. It is true that this account of form in nature is incomplete without the terms involved in final causality." I'm not really sure what I'm reading at this point.

I've accomplished some of my best work while in bars. I've experimented with my writing productivity while mildly intoxicated. You do write more, but there are quite a bit of typos, so.

I like Paperpile. It's not a well-known program, but it completely integrates into Chrome/Drive. Automatically sorts them, too. Like it a lot.

I got my first graduate school essay back. I got an A. Yay! At least I know that I'm on the right track when in regards to my work standards.

Unfortunately, I don't think that'll ever be my decision. I have to go by the standards of the instructor. If it were completely up to me, I'd write few comments on the papers and tell them to schedule and appointment with me directly if they were interested in feedback. I bet a dollar that 90% of them would never schedule anything.

I'm grading my first wave of papers. Oh my... I've been a grader before, but I still don't consider myself efficient at grading papers. Hopefully I'll improve a bit this semester.

Two weeks of grad school complete! Achievement unlocked. It feels like such a long time ago that we all applied. So much happened since then.

That's what I've felt like at the end of the day every single day thus far. Graduate school is exhausting! I love it, but it certainly is exhausting.

I have a growing inclination that this is me. I certainly empathize, but remember, you're there to grow as a scholar. I think I'll have cordial relationships with fellow graduate students, but little else. Perhaps this is a flavor of impostor syndrome? I've never experienced it, but I might call what I'm feeling now as a variation of it.

Haha! That's great. Thanks for sharing! Also, if anyone ever notices an oddly quoted text from me, it's a bug from Grammarly. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to correct it unless I turn it off.

Perhaps this is obvious to others, but I just realize that there are several 'right' ways to do assignments as a graduate student. Of course, they want me to fulfill certain requirements, but I don't gather that they care as much in the specifics, as they might when teaching undergrads. Guess I'll see how it goes after this essay gets graded.

We have entire streets here labeled as pedestrian crossing areas, which means someone could randomly throw themselves in front of my car on an ordinary city street, and I'd get charged for it. I hate driving around here. Also, speaking of gender fluid individuals, I saw a trans woman on campus today and, being the bible belt, I expected people to stare, at the very least. I'm happy to state that no one cared at all. Yay for liberal college campus enclaves! The state of my birth has always bothered me in regards to such issues, but I'm a pretty left-seated egalitarian.

I'm writing one for an article, albeit a dense article written by a classicist (classicists and medievalists are super hardcore, I find). And my professor seems to expect pretty much what you mentioned. I'm meeting with said professor tomorrow morning to clarify because a precis can be a relatively straightforward summary, but he seems to want at least some analysis. I'm not sure if I feel stupid or smart at this point, but generally, I feel pretty stupid. The one trait that makes me a bit of an outlier is that I read probably far more than I need two. I'll re-read articles/books several times if doing so will provide a better understanding of the text. Also, were you ever required to write a precis before graduate school? I feel like someone should have better explained what one is at this point.

So, I'm writing my first graduate essay, and it's a critical précis. Anyone here ever need to write one of those? I certainly haven't, and I'm not entirely sure of its formatting, standards, or content other than what I've Googled. I'm going to meet with the professor Monday, but I'm just going for it. #YOLO I think I need to be a little bit accepting of the fact that I really have no idea how to be a graduate student, and I need to be accepting of the fact that I'm probably going to screw a few things up until I get it down (and I need to be okay with that). I hope my professors understand that I'm not exactly a veteran graduate student. If they don't, I'll just have to live with potential harsh criticism.

The first week is over. It has bee a whirlwind. I should write an essay tonight, but I'm falling asleep. It is time for bed. I hope everyone's week went well.

@MarineBluePsy I just stuff wads of food into my cheeks like a hamster. I usually swallow it afterward, though. I've been known to eat two meals, back to back, if there's free food. It's probably the not the most healthful of practices, but it's practical. @sjoh197 Sounds about how my semester is seeming to turn. I hope the faculty members here realize that it's the first graduate semester for many of us. I know that there's going to be at least a small-ish transition period for me. Things are already intense, and I'm probably making a poor decision to attend a meeting over the next two days for a consortium that's actually pretty relevant to my work; it randomly just happened to be at my university this round, and even though I have a ton of work to do, I think it'd be foolish not to go. I might never get to go again unless I'm presenting. Edit: Also, I might add that Premium Grammarly is super awesome. Best time-saving investment I think I've ever made. Yay!

Don't we all. And congrats! In other news, I'm reading what must be the most arbitrarily dense journal article that I've ever seen. I think this is going to have to require several passes to work through...

I think it's at least partially a millennial thing. I guess that were all more or less millennials here, even if I'm a little bit of the earlier period, and I've noticed several changes in freshmen over the long course of my college education (I began school in 2001). For one, while I wouldn't call the current wave of freshmen spoiled, they are certainly far more hand-held than I ever was. This year, when moving into the dorms, there were entire teams of people who unloaded all of their belongings for them, organized those belongings into labels tubs-on-wheels, then unpacked it for them in their dorm rooms. They didn't need to think about anything throughout the entire process, and while I'm certain those freshmen are incredibly thankful (I certainly would have been), these hand-holding measures probably impair their progress towards becoming independently-thinking individuals. I wouldn't be the free-standing person that I am today if I didn't have to figure out a mountain of stuff out on my own, and doing so granted me the willingness to always attempt new things, even if I have no clue how to do them. That's my random musings for the moment. Back to reading.

You use Canvas, too? OU is transitioning over this school year. I like it far more than what we had before. Also, I'm not taking the weekends off, but I'm definitely taking the evenings off. I'm an early riser, and I can only work so long before all productivity vanishes. Besides, my Pixel C with keyboard game in today and I've been "setting it up" this evening. In all seriousness, though, I really do think this will improve my productivity a bit.

So, I'm taking the evening off. I plowed through 11 hours of work today, but I need rest. Tomorrow's agenda includes the university's first association meeting for my discipline, and, well, I think that's it. Probably include reading. Lots of reading. I have to write an essay, too, but I like writing much less than I enjoy reading.

@hippyscientist I saved myself the trouble of never watching TV anymore, so. TV is definitely easier than reading, but I find reading far more gratifying. I don't even have Netflix. I'm pretty lucky in that graduate school won't be a huge adjustment for me. I have little hobbies else than reading, and I pretty much read the same sort of books I'm going to be forced to read.

Oh, my. I learned that the department here has iPads with Kindle libraries on them for graduate student use. Yay for frugality! Of course, I'll still have to buy some books, but I'm very appreciative. And on topic, I love Amazon Prime. True, it's overly easy to buy more than one needs, but the education-affiliate price of prime is minimal, and I probably would spend more than the cost of shipping over the course of a year.

Thanks! I do care. I definitely have a genuine interest in helping people perform better. I just hope they take advantage of my time. Haha!