Eigen

Endnote. By far the most robust citation software I've tried, and also one of the most widely used. I will, however, recommend that in the sciences, you use what the rest of your research group/advisor use. That gives you easy imports of their citation libraries, and makes co-writing papers a heck of a lot easier. For data plotting, Origin is what I use, although I'm thinking about trying out Prism. For writing, Scrivener is great for getting thoughts on paper, but I end up doing most of my actual compiling in Word still (again, it's what other people use). For everything, a full copy of Adobe is a godsend. Managing almost everything in PDFs is really easy with it. For figures, I make most of mine (painstakingly) in Illustrator- CS5 has a lot of nice upgrades over CS4, imo. Otherwise, see what your department provides, and your advisor/labmates use.

And another example of someone asking for opinions, not liking them, and getting pissy. Paulis advice was very good, and quite politely stated. Your response, on the other hand, not so much.

I can certainly see that perspective on the thread. It's just not how I read it, and I would assume by ANDS!'s response, not how they read it either. To me, it seemed like a "usual" case of someone asking a very open ended question, getting one of the two possible answers, and then disagreeing with it. Which is frustrating. If you have a specific opinion, why not state it in the original post? A pattern of asking for (and then disagreeing with) the opinion offered is kind of annoying, and it seems to happen a lot at this time of year. I don't see the sarcastic reply as rude, and in fact, it made me chuckle, but I can see why it might have set the OP on edge, just as I hope they can see why their posts have done the same to others. But it's not good form to ask someone to not reply to thier posts if they can't do it according to specific guidelines. Just like it's not generally a good idea to ask questions to which you want a specific answer.

Most people overestimate the inspiration that's required for graduate work, and underestimate the perspiration. You need to have a solid mind, a good grasp of basics, and some original ideas... But that's often overshadowed by the huge mountain of work that you need to slowly chip away at. You can get a lot farther in graduate work (and even acdemia) by being hard-working and just "pretty sharp" than you can by being brilliant but less motivated.

And my counterpoint would be that the original post in this thread did not foster a respectful environment. It did not invite discussion and discourse, but rather was phrased as a slightly paranoid-sounding rant following an ultimatum. There were several posts in this thread that weren't particularly respectful, granted, but I'm referring more to other recent threads. See ANDSI's responses in the thread posted by the OP. They were not rude, or overtly harsh. Slight bit of biting sarcasm, perhaps, and fairly blunt. And they had an emmense snowballing of downvotes. Perceived "unsupportiveness" on these forums at around this time of year results in a dogpile effect unlike any other, and I'm not just talking about this thread.

And yet, people only seem to really complain when it's this particular kind of issue. No one seems to have a problem with poor grammar, and typical "internet writing" (at least not to this degree), nor do people have a problem with the profusely positive-yet-unhelpful comments, or even the enormous threads of "pass your time playing word games". It's just when someone bluntly states an opinion that they didn't want to hear. And then there's a long discussion of how this board should be "positive, and supporting of our fellow grad students and applicants". And honestly, I don't think any of ANDSI's posts in the initial thread were out of line, and given they hugely over-the-top title of this thread, I don't think many of the posts here were either. If anything, this board goes towards a snowball effect of down-voting on anyone that doesn't rain sunshine and rainbows on the OP, often enough.

Actually, it's frequently not the STEM professors that skew things as much as professionals. Business schools, programs with JDs teaching political science, and clinical programs (counseling, etc) tend to pay a lot to compete with industry. STEM salaries, while higher, gave up trying to compete with industry a while back, and are instead all about a different lifestyle and career path. Just from what I've seen.

I feel for you. There are some excellent PhD comics on the exact issue, and it's not an uncommon one. Many of the "great points" in a PhD (Quals/Orals, Prospectus, Defense, Dissertation) are certainly landmarks, but not always things you feel like celebrating. I know as many (or more) people that wanted to burn their dissertation in effigy than wanted to celebrate right after the fact. It's also good to remember that there's a huge emotional crash right after these things- you've studied hard, stressed, stayed up nights, and then when you're done the adrenaline wears off and you crash, contributing even more to the depressive bent you might be on after already going through the emotionally draining process of Quals.

As evidenced by the linked post, I think you are being quite sensitive. And as to old threads being randomly up or downrated, that happens all the time. Sometimes it's someone stalking you, but at this time of year the board is also flooded with lots and lots of random people reading old threads and deciding they like or dislike posts. I'll also note that you (at least in that post) took the attitude of telling someone who's been here a good bit longer than you that they were "going against the theme" of the message board. Lots of the most valuable advice you'll find here are fairly blunt (and sometimes lightly sarcastic) posts when people are being told something they don't really want to hear. ANDSI in the thread you linked was one of those. Many of the "newer" posters seem to have the idea that this board should be all about support, good vibes, and positive thoughts, whereas I'm of the opinion that it should be a place for advice, whether it's what you want to hear or not.

Our PI isn't as strict about notebooks not leaving the lab, but it's definitely the case that when you leave your notebooks stay for the next generation to use. That said, I have several different notebooks as well- one I was keeping at our medical school campus to document all the cell work, and another that I was keeping uptown for all of my synthetic work. Even after I moved most of my biological work back into my lab, I kept the notebooks separate, and it's really helped keep things straight. All of my syntheses are neatly organized in one book, and all of my biological assays in another- it really helps knowing where I should go to look something up. Also, no matter what system you use, actually keep up with your table of contents. It doesn't seem like a big deal at the beginning, but when you're several years in and looking for some particular piece of information from 3 lab notebooks ago, you want to be able to find it pretty easily. I completely understand the OCD nature- it was something I had to get over. Similarly, I had to get over worrying about filling up too much space- It's worth it to fill up a notebook and move on, and make sure you get all the details. I do keep a separate 3 ring binder with all of my spectra, certificates of analysis, and data analysis. I keep it ordered and tabbed, and each page is referenced to a specific page of a specific notebook- I prefer this to taping things into my notebook directly.

One of our labs has a strict "notebooks don't leave the lab" policy. But yeah, each PI will have their own ideas about this, and likely supply the notebooks. You're going to want a hard copy notebook, very few people deal with digital copies, from my experience, outside of industry. Remember that you aren't writing things down for reference In a few days, but rather in a few years. You never know what data you might need down the road, so keep all of it documented now- not just data and observations, but also trains of though/decisions pertinent to your research. Also, remember that these aren't just for you- but for every grad student that follows after you to have a reference back to your procedures and work. So write them so they can be read and followed by a 3rd party. It takes a while to reach a flow, but it's totally worthwhile.

Ok, thanks guys. How much did you focus on research progress vs broader impacts in your progress reports?

Short answer: when you start bringing in your own funding. Or when you are mature and knowledgable enough in your discipline to convince your PI that your research idea is a viable use of curt funding, assuming it fits under the grant criteria that are being used to pay for it. That, or convince them your project is worth writing a grant for, and then write large portions of the grant and then have it funded. In Chemistry it's all limited by what the funding is for. You can't use money from one project to pay for another project unless the two are closely enoug related that you can write up that other project in yearly progress reports for the grant.

I'm not sure about the DDIG question- I know I had an internal fellowship overlap my first year, but I took an "off" year for NSF funding. Not sure if you could do the same with the DDIG. Thats pretty much what I figured about the report.... I'm doing mine at just under a page, and tying to minimize jargon. Really hard to do with synthetic biological chemistry, though.

Mostly, it just seems to make you nearsighted. Too much time reading computer screens/books, and other such excercises. About half of my cohort went from OK vision to needing glasses our first semester, myself included!

With some of the variety of responses, I'll also suggest that there's a midline. I was able to start early, but not work the whole summer- I took May and June off, and then started in July. It was a nice bit of time off, and then I got a month or so to acclimate to the new city.

Start early. For me, it was arriving early and being familiar with the department and city that made it worthwhile. Not to mention having been checked out on all the instruments, already on payroll, gotten keys, library cards, etc. before the fall rush. It was really nice to get a slow and quiet start to things.

Don't worry, we crossed. I meant to upvote it and actually downvoted it. While not the most tactfully written piece, I think the OP does have a valid point: It's really not professional to guilt someone else into rushing their decision so you can take their place. And I think a lot of the rancor generated has to do with the "not good enough" idea posited. I think the point that was trying to be made was that, given funding restraints, schools will make offers to those they feel would best fit the school. If you were waitlisted, it means they liked you and would like you to come, but not as much as someone not on the waitlist. It's not that you aren't good enough to go to the school- in fact, there are lots of people that get rejected every year that were more than "good enough" for the school, but admissions are competitive. In this case, "not good enough" means that you weren't as good as other applicants on the list. In general, I think everyone in here is way too worked up and needs to calm down a bit, and not see each others posts through such personally tinted lenses.

I'm in grad school at Tulane now- I sent you a PM. Feel free to ask if you have any more specific questions about housing, I've been helping the last several years of grad students find places, so I've been keeping up pretty well.

This is something you should ask people in your program for.

And just to comment, you should have waived your right to see the letters, so you probably can't request them from the school anyway. But Rachel is definitely correct in that you'll need to have the professors submit the letters to the new schools directly, so you'll need to ask them to write another/rewrite the letter for you. And either way, they'd need to be re-written, since they'd need to reflect the new school you're applying to, something that only the professor who originally wrote them can do. I'm a bit confused on this from your post, since you mention in point one that they'd be updated, of course, but then ask whether you'd go to the school or the professor... And for them to be updated, you'd have to go to the professor.

Not sure. But if you have pre-existing conditions, all the more reason to have your own health insurrance. Once you're insured, you don't usually have to undergo another physical (at least I haven't in the last 10 years). But if you go from school healthcare to employer healthcare, if you're ever not employed and want to get your own, you'll have a harder time if you're in worse shape (pre-existing conditions or otherwise).

I'm a fan of getting your own insurance independent of the school. Our student health plan isn't bad, per se, but I much prefer having my own. It gave me a lot more options shopping around, and I was able to find one that really met my needs instead of the "all in one" plans that are generally offered to students.

I'll just note that you might have to dig for it a bit, but at our institution it's really easy (e-mail and request a password) for any graduate student in the physical sciences to get access to both our school resources (computing clusters, supercomputer) and our big, state funded supercomputer via a fiber optic line.

Also, probably institutionally specific, but how much heavy lifting (ie, simulations) are you going to be doing on the computer vs. on a local cluster/supercomputer?