yoyo17

Well I think my tolerance for this software is running out. Unless there's some miracle hidden folder with my library stashed somewhere, Endnote just went and deleted a library that took weeks to assemble. With all the highlights, annotations I made and references gone with it, I'm ready to switch to another citation manager. So some background, had a library with 130 references in it, highlighted, labeled, and grouped, nice feature I like a lot. But if the Endnote application is open, and you take your USB out before closing it, Endnote goes nuts, even if you put the USB back in unlike MS Word. So I started to always close the application and then take the USB out. Well I did just that and this time Endnote/Windows came up w/a message. Didn't read it (thought nothing serious) and when I plugged my USB back in, the library was gone. Completely gone. I mean deleted, vanished. I searched everywhere using search function, I looked for .enl files, nothing. Opened up Endnote and looked at most recent, still there but opened and no pathway existed. Went on my computer hard disk, nothing. Went in recycle bin, nothing. Weeks of effort now flushed down the drain by endnote. Sigh so all I have left is a synced online library but the original is gone. Thank GOD I synced the one I lost and not the others because Endnote conveniently gives only one library that can be synced at a time and no others. This is a very common complaint I find as many researchers manage multiple projects. So I'd like to know how to export that online, synced library back to Endnote and make a new one. Also how to export those references and groups, annotations, highlights to a different citation manager. Is there a manager that lets you highlight, make notes/annotations on the files? I hope to God this is possible. i can't believe Endnote would do this to me. Am I the only one to have experienced this frustration? This isn't the first time I had a problem. Though I managed to fix previous issues somehow mysteriously. Otherwise, I have to start from scratch manually again. I'm just really pissed right now and want to smash something.

Kind of minor but pretty annoying. So somehow, whenever I open Endnote, it opens to show only the middle bottom section and the big white section on the right about the article details. The column (in light blue) under My Library, and the box where you can search Author, Year, and Title are made invisible. Every time I open up Endnote or change libraries, I have to manually drag from the left to the right to see the groups I made and drag down to see the search function. The part where it shows the article, author and title have somehow been expanded. This is quite annoying and frustating. I don't know how this happened, it just randomly one day decided to do this and I can't fix it nor find a way online to fix this or explain it adequately. I have to do this every time I use the software and would like to just see everything when I open up a library. Does anyone know how to restore back to defaults or fix this? Thanks! Okay, no idea what I did but somehow fixed it for now...but if anyone knows the cause and how to fix, that'd be appreciated...

Yeah you can only avoid the W and get a full refund if you drop the class a couple days before class starts. If I were to drop the class now, I would only get a 50% refund after the first 2 days. thankfully I'm a TA so it was free for me. Not so lucky for others. Yeah my institution is pretty greedy, it's public too... I'm just worried how a W might affect my chances for applying for external funding in particular but any other consequences would be much appreciated.

I'm currently a PhD student and I am enrolled in a summer class. The problem is that on the first day, I realized that I won't have time to meet other obligations (research/teaching) while taking the class. Also the class goes over advanced material that I'm currently not prepared for but with time I can easily handle. It's just right now there's a lot on my plate. So I'm wondering what are the repercussions of withdrawing from the course and having a W on my transcript, preserved forever in my student record. Is it really bad in terms of graduating from grad school? How do fellowship application comittees or employers look at a W? What are the adverse consequences? Need a decision, soon, only have until 7/8 to make final decision but would like to hear the bad things that might happen even if responses come late. Thanks!

Wow thanks for the reply! I've heard of Mendeley. Are there pros and cons of Mendeley vs Endnote? From what I heard, Endnote is better for Citing While You Write. What are your experiences and thoughts between the two? Example, I'm having trouble synching Mendeley's Groups from my computer to the cloud. It takes the references well but I'd have to do the Groups all over again. What are your thoughts on hard copy or why do everything electronic? Aren't there risks to keeping eveything digital?

Okay so maybe it's not bad as other people I've seen. But I have a hard time lately managing a lot of papers/references. I'm learning and working on 2 and maybe 3 projects. I'm trying to keep all my references separate and divided by topic but still...incredibly difficult/painful to do this. First what I did was use Endnote and search up references. I would read and then import. Then use the "Groups" function on the left to divide it up. Problem is this...I can't make notes on it, highlight or write comments on it and not as flexible to write on it how I want. Even if I find the pdf on Endnote, it's kinda hard to read as it only looks at a screen shot of the paper and not the whole paper like a printed copy would. The other problem is I really like paper format. There is something therapeutic about flipping a page, writing on the margins that makes absorbing the information much easier. It also allows me to focus better and not get side tracked by being on the computer and wandering off. It also gets easier to lose track of all the refernces and finding them..i don't know. Then I printed out all the articles but this becomes a waste of paper and money. It's also difficult to organize because some papers fall under multiple categories. But I feel so much better and get more out of reading a hard copy. I can also bring a hard copy anywhere like lunch and read it. I can't bring a computer everywhere and read it. Hard copy for me is much more flexible. So how do you organize references? Is there a way to "star" references on Endnote as being important to use and look back on? A way to at least organize my groups and pdfs inside on computer hard disk and not just on Endnote? How do you organize? FWIW, I'm a science research background. I'm open to all others, just I don't know if there's differences in how humanities/social sciences do things versus science. But I'd like to hear from everyone. Thanks!

Thanks for the responses everybody, it was all very insightful and things are clearer now. I have a lot of work cut out for me it seems. I suppose as one keeps reading the concepts, terms, and understanding start to get stuck in your head. On a related note, are there any words of wisdom older students or even those who graduated have for younger students? Are there habits you have now you wished you had earlier or vice versa? Is there anything you wish you knew before that you know now? Thanks again for the tremendous in helping guide me what are some of the expectations. Grad school should be a lot more hard work than I'm putting into it and I guess the hours really are supposed to be long and tough.

So read, read, read seems to be the most important thing I should do to understand what I'm doing and learn my field more and make less mistakes. Would you say reading is the most important thing to do during grad school and life? How important would you rate reading? It seems a lot more of this is self-taught then I thought. Lab members have limited time to discuss things and don't always seem approachable. Would you say most of your education is self taught then by using Google? There's so many things for which I'm not sure what the proper way of doing is. There's no crash course on what to do and expect in lab. Does it take a long time to learn all the ropes of research such as the background science, how to do experimental design, important considerations when doing certain experiments, publishing, grant reviews, submitting grants, insides on doing literature searches, primer design, etc? Or should I expect to learn all these things in due time and don't rush and read? There's so many things to know and it boggles my mind how others just "know" everything. And there's no one right answer to every question. And if you read something and don't understand it, look it up and learn the background on it?

This semester I've been much more productive (at least doing some experiments than none) and cut my hours at 1 job while unfortunately suffering an increased TA load. Still I'm doing more and feeling better. But the problem is that I feel stupid and lost especially compared to others in my lab. I'm in a cancer/molecular biology lab so I'm hoping to receive responses from people in a similar field. I often ask, "How do you know how to do it this way? Or add that much reagent? Or seed that many? Why do you have to do it this way and not that way? How do you know? HOW DO YOU KNOW?!" I'm not quite sure I have a lot of confidence in my project either. My PI has asked many people in my lab to do a certain project but everyone's ignored him. So now I'm stuck working on it, in part to be on his good side after wasting a semester, in part to practice my skill, learn some techniques but I really want to publish to apply for a fellowship and I'm not sure this project will take me there. Maybe, maybe not I don't know. I'm afraid the reason everyone ignored it and did something else is because they know it's a waste of time but no one really wants to tell me that. I don't have a clue why they ignored it, I don't have the knowledge to think why it might not be a good idea. So of course I'm doing it as the newest youngest student in the lab. What also gives me anxiety is my general lack of understanding of science and the theory in our lab's experiments. Are there any tips from biomedical/cancer/health related students about how to understand more about my lab and learn all the science? So often I feel like the emails and communication is in another language and I'm feeling it shouldn't be that way. - Are some things I should've done much earlier like read ALL not some of the papers published in lab? - Read more papers regarding topics in my field? Like a lot more? - How to learn the science and mol biology? What are good references for learning? I heard youtube is great but nothing I learn on the web fits perfect to what I'm doing in lab. - What are ways to remember everything being taught to me in lab? I'm typing up the protocols so anyone can understand them and I'll know what to do later and write as much down. - Am I expected to teach everything myself how to do things? I feel like I ask too many questions for a phd student I'm currently reading "At the Bench: A laboratory navigator" by Kathy Barker but wondering if there's anything wise words of wisdom to be successful in scientific research.

I'm quite surprised you were not made aware of these boundaries when you were appointed as a TA. They mentioned it to me when I became a TA. In 1 course they said don't date students until after they finished the course. The other course said don't date at all. You're not supposed to give personal info either, your school has some pretty bad TA training. You have to be careful, there are websites telling students on "How to date a TA." I would definitely wait until after the class is done before you continue pursuing this student further. As mentioned above, just say according to university policy, you cannot continue this type of relationship while she is a student. Your job and funding I think should come first. Though not the same vein, I always have some students who try to sweet talk or start conversation and get on your good side. But I'm a very impartial, fair grader and the students are aware of this. Even the ones who try to sweet talk get bad grades if their work is not to par with students I rarely interact with but do well. This helps to set the tone in the whole class that while I will try to be friendly and engaging I won't hesitate to apply fair grading and make it clear that their learning comes first. Teaching isn't as easy as I thought and you really have to be focused if you know what I mean! We're all human but we all know what is probably the right course of action. You OP seem to have taken a step back and look at this before it got worse and you seem to know what's right and what you have to do. Good luck.

Thanks for the responses everyone! I feel reassured knowing I'm not crazy in my thinking. I'm not in danger in flunking out but just want more productivity and speed things up. Will cut hours to once a week, better structure my TA and since I'm better at it now I'll have more time. That'll leave a lot more time for lab and hopefully for normal life. During the summer when I stop teaching, I'll just pick up more hours like teaching or keep it low and try to be more productive.

Thanks for the responses everyone and warm/professional welcome! I accepted the offer without funding and found the TA on my own. So I could technically drop it and just work but my schedule would be more flexible and unpredictable and it'd pay for tuition and stipend. It's just I'm so used to getting "free" tuition I don't really want to have to pay for it so I'll probably keep the TA. The job I have is related but not exactly the same industry. The job is practice in the field, my phd will go towards the study/research/development in that field. The job is also very difficult to find and saturated in my area so if I were to drop I would likely have a tough time finding another. My thinking was that having a job keeps the knowledge more fresh (after having studied for it for many years) and work experience shows potential employers that someone took a chance on me and that I could be trusted, as well as desire to continue working that job to keep my license. By "doing nothing" I meant not publishing/presenting/heck even researching/experimenting as much as I should. I'm thinking dropping my hours down first in half and add 8-12 hrs more for school and then see if I should do every other week. I could always pick up more hours during summer or holidays when there are no classes or TA. Wondering if this is a good idea for now? Other professors/students I know worked much less hours, maybe every other week or only during holidays. I am "a little addicted" to making money but I have to set my priorities straight and deal w/it. In my lab no one works outside of their work but my professor understands it, I'm just afraid of missing expectations because of the job hindering my research/degree progress. Further comments would be much appreciated, thank you!

Wasn't sure where to post as I just stumbled on these forums but let me explain my situation, I'll try to be brief and I welcome all face-punches. I'm nearing the end of 1st semester and feel like I've done nothing. Mainly because of these 2 jobs I'm juggling with grad school. One is a TA covering tuition and has stipend, the other is a healthcare related job that per hour equals the TA. Problem is I cannot do both and I really wasted a whole semester I feel like. My question is should I drop one of them? (probably, but I really don't want to as the money in both is really good...someone fix my mindset!) The healthcare related job is actually related to my phd program in a way pretty heavily and I plan on working that same field after graduating at least per diem or part time (and could help career prospects), whereas the TA isn't going to get me anywhere but covers my tuition (which I like). If I kept the healthcare job it would actually equal my tuition and stipend. So 2 choices, 1 is my job which is very much related to my field and could help in future phd degree, but is less stable, company can close down, not always fixed hours, but pretty flexible in I can ask for what I want/handle. Other is TA which cover tuition which I really like and don't want to give up but more demanding than I thought, decent stipend, health benefits (not all too concerned here). I was also thinking of finding another job but halve the hours in case the first goes out of business. (I feel it's important to work this other job for licensure reasons and knowledge ties into my field in many ways). I'm leaning towards cutting my hours at the job and picking up more in summer for now, would you agree? It shouldn't all be about money. On a related note, how many phd students work on the side? whether teaching or another job to support yourself, how many hours do you think you could handle? obviously some phd degrees are more demanding than others and im in the sciences so i would imagine it's more demanding? not trying to be obnoxious... Also in the lab is there such a thing as asking too many questions? Thanks for reading this far.