Genomic Repairman

It doesn't matter if you are a grad student yet or not, do you display the requisite Sisyphean traits of a gunner?

So are any of you folks gunners? If so are you naturally like this, are you insecure, do you wish to draw the wrath of fellow classmates, etc? Don't know if you are a gunner? Then lets go over the symptoms: 1. First person in class always? 2. Pre-highlighted notes? 3. You train like a triathlete so that when the instructor asks a question your arm shoots up first like one of NASA's new prototype rockets? 4. Do your classmates roll your eyes at you during your off-topic questions? 5. Do you stalk professors like wild game to ask them a question? If you answered yes to some or all of these, you might be a gunner. Seek help please.

I remember those stressful days of waiting for acceptance letters or emails. My roommate setup a jar where I would have to put a buck in if I checked the mailbox. Needless to say by the time I got my last acceptance we had enough cash on hand to throw a rocking party when I left. My old laptop has the command and the r key permanently worn down from me refreshing the screen on my email inbox waiting for those acceptance emails from program directors.

Okay since no one is posting new stuff, I figured I'd hop on it as a forum with posts is about as intriguing as a stripper without clear heels. So what do you guys do to escape from the stresses of grad school? My cohort and I play basketball once a week and I have recently taken up spin class in the morning. I have no aspirations of racing the Tour de France or becoming the successor of Lance Armstrong, I'm just trying to stay in shape and have a period of time where my mind is not focused on the daily minutia of being a grad student. So come on you guys must do something?

No sadly he is mediocre at best, I think the PI who handles the educational side of the house didn't feel like dealing with the paperwork and the shame of having a cheater that was rotating in their lab. So now we have a secretary sit in with us when we take exams now.

Sadly that is all that happened as a student in the lab and another PI pulled me aside to tell me. You would be surprised now by what grad schools let slip through the cracks these days.

Have any of you guys encountered cheaters yet in graduate school? I had my first experience with one in class last semester as I have previously blogged about. It really was sad to see the administration sit on their hands and turn a blind eye because the student was international and they didn't want to kick the kid out of school and get him deported. And for a guy who has sat on the honor board this really chapped my behind.

You are probably right about the chairman trying to help you but just in a somewhat unorthodox manner. Remember these folks are busy and have no time to schedule being vindictive and mean to you in their schedules, they save frequent acrimony that for their colleagues and coworkers. Go solicit some other opinions.

Some of us have no teaching requirements. I just have to be a lab rat

Sigma chi

First off what are you writing for (institutional fellowship, training grant, NRSA)? I've got a good powerpoint on grantsmanship that walks you through the NIH process and you can use as a springboard to get your own proposal off the ground (I used it to write my F31 that I have). Email me if you want it genrepair@gmail.com

2400, forget the snide comments by the department head, was the criticisms to your proposal valid. Maybe those are things you should change or need to be reworked. Run your proposal by another professor and see what they come up with. If they feel the same way then maybe you need to change directions. I've seen other grad students get stuck in endless crappy projects that go nowhere, contribute nothing to science, and ultimately end up wasting their time and the dept. head might be trying to prevent this from happening to you.

Alex if you promise to supplement your beard with meat and testosterone we will give you provisional acceptance to the Brotherhood of the Beard.

Friends, Romans, Beardsmen, I beseech the! You may grow a beard in graduate school but you must accept the task at hand. For you shan't just have any beard, it must be a manly beard. A beard which inspires other men to cheer and women to swoon. It doesn't matter if your beard looks like that of Grizzly Adams, Blackbeard the pirate, or one of those half-naked Greeks in 300, the only requirement for the beard is that it must convey your badassness to all. To those of you with patchy, wispy beards, shave that shit off for you cannot compete with the true bearded men, and we True Beards do not take kindly to imposters and shall hold your bitch-ass down and shave that pathetic shit off. Now throw your razors in the trash and someone fetch me my mid-afternoon beer for it is time for data analysis. So says the Gospel of the Genomic Repairman.

First off make sure its a lab that you are interested in, you don't want to loose interest in your work half-way through your studies. Next, is the PI a decent person to work with. You don't want a tyrant but on the other hand I don't need another damn drinking buddy. You want a mentor, one who will bust your ass and put you back in your place when you need to be. Another big question is funding. It is really hard working for a broke ass PI, you have old equipment, lesser resources and reagents. And the lack of funding on the PI may also show that they are not doing that great of science (they suck at grantsmanship, field has passed them by, etc). Also the money issue becomes really important based upon their funding source (NIH vs NSF). Other issues to consider: -Size of lab (small [3-4], medium [6-10], big [10-15], mega-group) -Status of PI (new PI, mid stage, established, aging old codger) -Publication record What are they publishing in? An occasional high impact journal or a steady rate of pubs in field specific journals. I'd go with the latter, a slew of publications in your field can establish your eminence in your field. Save the vanity shit for when you are a postdoc trying to get a TT position or early stage PI and need to get through T&P. -Where do there former lab members go? Good postdocs, good jobs, into a cave, etc. Before I set foot in the lab, I knew my PI's funding situation, I knew that he had the funds on hand to support me for at least 3 years (give me enough time to get a fellowship if funding became an issue), and I found his work exciting. One more issue is how do you fit with the lab (especially the lab manager), are the kind or more reminiscent of Attila the Hun?

Sac the hell up and quit being so sensitive. Not every professor has to like you. Just get another professor to write the letter for you and don't even bother talking to the other one. If they asked, just tell them the deadline past or you couldn't wait on them any longer and went with another prof.

Your grades don't matter as long as you pass, its the data and science that you turn out is what matters. I guess that makes sense if you are in a science field, if not then choke on a nutsack. Hook em horns!

Man what the hell did you do to rack up 230k, where you buying blow for the entire college campus. Dude you better start buying lottery tickets and hoping like hell you hit it big. I'm surprised the private lenders would even keep giving you a loan, did your parents co-sign? You are left with two options, you either have to be the best drug dealer ever or fake your death.

Some schools do acceptance pending interview, some accept before interviewing, while my institution does an informal acceptance but brings you out to interview. If you are a reject they will send you the evil form letter. This happened before to a candidate last year.