Eigen

Maybe I misunderstood, but in your original post you said you were interested in genome editing or single molecule imaging. Now you're interested in bioorthogonal chemistry, which is a quite different field, and not something that would commonly be found in a biochemistry/biology graduate program. I was referring to advanced coursework in biology, since your initial interest seemed to be very heavily molecular biology based (genome editing, single molecule imaging). The most important thing is that you have a targeted idea of what you want to study, and how your background prepares you for that. For instance, graduate work in OChem is not good preparation for going to graduate school with a focus on genome editing or single molecule imaging, but it would be good prep for doing work in a synthetic group focused on bioorthogonal functionalization and tagging.

I would say you're thinking way too much about funding, way too early. Looking at grants is good when you're deciding between schools that have made you offers, not where to apply this far out. I think you'd have a hard time getting into a graduate program in biology/biochemistry with your background (although you don't say how much advanced coursework you have). As mentioned, I think moving from OChem into a sensor design group, and then into single molecule imaging is your best bet. In my opinion, PI personality (and your fit with them) is the single most important factor in grad school. It dwarfs everything else!

Not a shoe-in if awarded the grant. It only covers a small portion of the costs to the school for your PhD. It can certainly help, but there are places that won't reverse an admission decision even if you win one. Additionally, you generally find out about the NSF awards after most graduate admissions decisions have been made (late spring). To accept the award, you will need to have already been admitted to a school. In short, applying for grad school admission and applying for the NSF are two totally different things, although the latter may help the former.

Look at top-tier journals in chemical biology. Note faculty doing research that interests you. Apply to those schools. Rankings really aren't worth all that much- find someone doing interesting work that consistently publishes and you're likely going to be going into a successful group.

This. Pretty much what everyone I know does. I wear shorts and a jersey in, then change in my office. My old department chair used to have an entire close rack in his office for this purpose.

I'm really not sure what you're looking for. You asked people to let you know what they thought. Then when we did, you got mad at us. Why post this and ask for feedback if you didn't want feedback?

It's been a while for me, but most of the word substations don't seem very difficult from skimming through them- most of them have one clearly correct answer given the context. Their placement in the sentences (and the sentences themselves) seems awkward in cases, which increases the difficulty but not in any useful way.

You can't really do two PhDs in the sciences. You can't do them concurrently, and having a PhD in a related field (usually very broadly defined) will make you inadmissible to other PhD programs. Thats just not how a PhD works. After you get one, you transition fields of study by work and publications, no by another degree.

Yeah, I have to agree with bhr. If people are falling asleep and staring into space in a lab meeting, I'd be starting to strongly consider whether or not those people were deserving of research funds for the next semester. At this stage in your lives, you should be able to sit and do something you don't love for a couple of hours. Is it the most productive use of your time? Maybe not. Has the person who is paying your salary decided that it's how he/she wants you to spend your time? Yes. Accordingly, spend the time in the group meeting, and spend it as a productive, mature, participant. Pay attention, take notes, and be an active part of the lab meeting. The person talking deserves you taking it seriously, and the person *paying you to be there* deserves the same thing.

I hesitate to say there's no such thing as too many questions (because I've experienced some fringe cases), but it's usually pretty easy to read when you're pushing someone to that level. In general, I think it's worth erring on the side of more questions rather than less.

Word with DropBox/Box is pretty good at version control/remote writing. Be very careful of typing things you want intellectual ownership of in Google Docs- the terms of use are pretty slanted towards Google having pretty broad usage rights to what you put in there. I may be a bit paranoid about this, but some of the clauses in the TOS (i.e., maintaining use of things you upload even after you no longer use the service) worry me a bit given their track record at selling/using user data.

For honorable mentions- I would definitely include them. I know people who have those, and have had them commented on as achievements by committees. They help. As you go further in your career, you start to have multiple CVs.... You have the base one, that you never remove anything from. Then you have the CV you use for job/fellowship applications, where you remove some of the less pertinent/older things. Generally, I'm at the point now where I have almost nothing from my undergraduate career except for publications/presentations and graduation awards. As I move on, I'll likely remove some of the less pertinent presentations from both undergrad and grad school. Then you have the one you use "internally", like for Tenure & Promotion- this one you put everything on, often including things you applied for but didn't get. It's pretty common to see grant applications that were denied on most faculty CVs to show that they are continually applying.

You should have asked before you agreed to it. Always discuss authorship at the beginning of a project, including what conditions (e.g., work shifting around) will cause a change in authorship. It's not a PI's responsibility to decide before you started, although it's something I'd recommend to most PIs to save problems down the road. It is, in the end, the PI's responsibility to decide authorship based on who they feel contributed the most to the article. This kind of situation is really hard with authorship, TBH, and clear cut majority/minority contributions are much easier. Not having first author papers isn't a reason to get first authorship on this one- to get first authorship, you need to legitimately do more than 50% of the work on the paper.

I personally like to separate my work from my personal life as much as possible spatially as it helps me keep them separate in my head.

I try to mirror how the person addresses me as much as how they sign their name. For instance, most of the search committees I've been communicating with start off formal in requests for interviews "Dear Dr. Eigen", and then sign their first name. In responding, I can use the same formality "Dear Dr. XX", and then sign with my first name. Almost always this transitions the next email to me by first name with a more causal tone, and I can respond in kind. That said, I did have one chair that no matter how many times I kept the formal address and signed with my first name, always referred to me as Dr. Lastname, and signed her full name. So, even after 10 emails back and forth, that's how I left it- some people are just more formal. I highly doubt the lack of formality will have any lasting implications for you (you weren't rude), but as mentioned I'd transition back to a slightly more formal tone next time- there's "professional casual" writing and "I'm writing a friend casual" writing, you went more towards the latter and should move back to the former.

For me, it all pretty much falls under one category (although there are many flavors): Not listening to advice because you're sure it doesn't apply to you. There's the variant of asking for advice and ignoring it, then wondering why things didn't work out. There's telling everyone you're different (and special) and you're going to do things differently/you're own way, despite all suggestions to the contrary. All older grad students and faculty aren't infallible, surely, but there's pretty much always advice worth listening to from people who went through things before you did, and can speak to either success or failure.

Sounds good. Here's some really good, relatively recent advice on a similar issue from the CHE forums: http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,192963.0.html When I've asked senior colleagues for advice before, they told me to either rely on my cover letter/recommenders (which is what I chose) or do a more skills-based CV, and have "grant writing experience" somewhere on there in more descriptive terms. I do something similar for research projects that have been successful but not lead to publications, mostly to show a range of collaborations and research skills.

I usually find it's easier to cut the text I like into a new document rather than cut things I'm not going to use out into a secondary one.

Short answer: If you're not listed on the grant, it can't go on your CV. Long answer: This is a really common position to be in- it's happened to me a lot of times over the years. If you write large portions of the grant and aren't a PI, or co-PI due to your status as a grad student, that's well understood. Rather than being a CV entry, this is something you discuss in your cover letter and your advisor discusses in their letter of recommendation. Personally, I have a section of my cover letter that discusses grant writing experience in terms of major contributions to successful grants, as well as things like the NSF fellowship that are grant-based funding. Even if other people list similar things on their CV, I'd strongly recommend against it. As some general background, usually the reason grad students can't be listed on grants as PI (or co-PI) stems from the fact that most agencies significantly limit funds that can be used towards the salaries of PIs (or co-PIs). I have had friends that were in the position of either getting a release from the school to be listed as a co-PI (and limited to 2 months of funding) or getting the normal funding and not being listed on the grant. NSF and NIH are both quite strict about this, and it encompasses all other funding sources from the agency as well. If you're listed on ANY grant as a co-PI, you cannot be getting more than 2 months of salary from any other grant (at least at that agency)- it invalidates your ability to be a staff/graduate student/post-doctoral researcher, as those are not considered PI positions. This also means I'd be very careful to explore how it will impact you in the future to be listed on the grant during your time off.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but is this a graduate class? If so, it's even less common. More common would have been to go to the faculty member early on, and say you had a topic you really wanted to write on that couldn't be adequately covered in 10 pages, with an explanation of why. They could then either let you turn in the longer paper, or advise you pick a new topic. Part of grad school is learning to write with short page limits- grants, journals, and many other venues for your professional writing will have them. Mid your topic is too complex to discuss in 10 pages (although this seems unlikely) then you need to think more carefully on topic selection in the future.

I've been mispaid at least once per year all throughout grad school. At big places, it happens. It also has nothing to do with the department, it's someone in Payroll Management who screwed up. Different programs at the same university frequently have different stipends. Paying up front is normal, and will be throughout grad school. The problems with the classes and faculty might be a bigger deal, but it's honestly hard to tell how much relative to your general since of dissatisfaction with other small things.

So as the season is drawing to a close, I thought I'd bump this back up to see how everyone's doing.

I think the other, more important point, is that aside from how much or how little you should develop other areas of expertise, classes are rarely the way to do it. I'm an organic chemist by training, but my research is highly interdisciplinary and extends pretty far into molecular biology, biophysics and computational work. I didn't, however, take any classes in any of the latter fields to develop that expertise- I collaborated with people, learned from them, and read a ton of journal articles. Classes are rarely the best or most efficient way to learn something. They are how we teach, and how we develop at the early stages of our career (undergrad, early grad school) but as you progress as a scholar you need to learn how to teach yourself a new area by some other means than taking classes.

You'd be surprised how many people just want library access and an affiliation when applying for positions.

Definitely a research affiliation, but still absurd. I feel the same way about the postdocs I see paying less than an average grad school stipend (saw one requiring a PhD plus 2-5 years of industry experience paying 18k in New York City recently.