Genomic Repairman

Dude, I'm pretty sure Nebraska isn't a sausage fest so you can find some sentient female life forms to go out on dates with. Don't just bury yourself in the books, start going on dates or going to places where you can meet new people. Word to the wise, don't date anyone in your program, it usually ends horribly. Don't even make out, grope, or whateverthehell "hooking up" means this week with them, it didn't go well for me and it probably won't for you. She's old news man, move on and meet love of your life 2.0, the new and improved version? Life is too damn short to dwell on the ghost of girlfriends past.

Keynote baby! Love it and you can easily export to ppt when you have to use it.

You have to let it happen organically, you could just drink booze in the lab and offer some up to the janitor, public safety, or the hobo trying to steal shit from the lab whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Um more than just a few of the journals I read are published weekly (Nature, PLoS family, Science), and I use pubmed or web of science to scour for stuff that is epublished ahead of print, I don't wait for them to show up in the paper copy. The pubmed searches help you to be proactive on a topic so that you see it as soon as it epublished, which can sometimes be up to 6 months ahead of print depending upon journals. As far as searching one database for those of us in life sciences, PubMed is pretty much THE database to use. Also we do pass along interesting articles between one another, I didn't say this was the only way I searched, just a good way to cover a good amount of the literature in a short amount of time.

I find plenty of time to sit at the altar of Cathulu in my apartment in worship him. Seriously though, its good to find time for your faith if that is important to you. Grad school is beneficial that is forces you to prioritize and get really good at time management. I learned to cut a lot of crap that was not important or necessary in my life out or prioritize it way low down the list. If its not immediate, I'll get to it. I think a lot of newer grad students have an issue where everything at first seems to be the most important thing ever and has to get done now. Not really, it just feels that way, and when your are stuck in this cycle you have yet to get a good grasp on balancing school and life. Now if you spent 40 hours a week at church, grad school may force you cut down on some of the time you spend, but not cut it out completely.

You can bug out with a masters and make some money but if you really want to run a bioinformatics core or ever hold your own grants and make serious money, you gotta get those three letters after your name not two. So it really just depends on what you want.

You better be setting up weekly/monthly pubmed searches based upon keywords or prominent authors in your field and subfields. I do this because it helps me to catch a lot of the science that comes out sometimes in journals that I am not looking at. I don't have time to scan the TOC of ~25 journals a week, I let the NCBI do all the hard work for me. And I get a nice email in my inbox every Monday morning with the results for each search.

You might find this project or projects frivolous but your PI may be emphasizing them so that he can churn out some published or preliminary data in order to get a grant to study what is going on. You can and should carry more than one project, you can get your name on another paper (wherever in the authorship list it may be) and it allows a project to get wrapped up and not go cold. Plus it will serve as an extra chapter in your thesis. As far as projects go, remember your PI is your boss and what they say is law. If they tell you to do the project, do the project. If you really feel this isn't a good thing for you, its time to switch labs and do it quick, don't waste even a single day.

You have to make time for some type of friend outside of your classmates, you know normal folks. They help to keep you grounded and give you a sense of perspective that is lost in the lab grind by the rest of us. For instance, I used to drink beer with the night janitor while getting my MS. When 11pm rolled around, I'd stop what I'd be doing and we would walk the halls drinking Bud Lights in koozies, bullshitting, and I'd help him empty the trash. I'd tell him about my problems, he'd tell me his, I'd explain my project to him, and he would ask me why I was doing something. I still miss our evening constitutionals, where we discussed life, science, why the PI down the hall was such a bitch, and whose turn it was to buy beer. Moral of the Story: Make some damn time for friends. You are never going to have balance all the time in your graduate career. At some points you will feel like you are spending too much time in the lab or too much time on your personal life. That's fine, just let it balance out in the long run. How many scientists were there 200 years ago? A shit ton son! How many can we name? Not too many. Science is not your life, its something you are passionate about and do to live your life. Enjoy the people around you and let them enjoy you. Now get your ass out of the lab and make friends. Oh and study too.

If the teacher isn't going to push the issue, just keep giving them 0's, if it keeps building up, let the prof know at the end of the semester. Hopefully the cheat will self-select themselves out of passing the class by acquiring enough 0's so that you don't have to fail for the issue.

Yes, we have had a couple of grad students get bounced out for grades. I like to think that grades can only hurt you, not help you. And what I mean by that is in graduate school (in so far as the sciences) you are really gauged on how productive you are, not how good your course work was. You just need to do good enough to get by so far as grades. If you tank a class and go on academic probation, so what, just repeat it. It sucks, but it is not the end of the world, even though it may seem as much right now. Keep your chin up.

Dear sir or madam, your noobness is showing. The point of the coursework is to lay a basic foundation of knowledge, you just don't go into the lab and do science with a specious level of understanding of fundamental concepts. As someone who has wrapped up classwork and is post-candidacy, I can tell you need those courses. My belief is without those courses you would probably only have an in depth working knowledge in only your own subfield. I'm not saying saying you have to be an expert in everything but with the transition to interdisciplinary science you have to know a little about a lot. As far as jumping into grad school because the economy was shit or doing it just to get a job, those are the wrong reasons. Training in a scientific discipline, learning critical thinking, and advanced analytical skill are good reasons. Sounds like you may be in for all the wrong reasons. And if you don't want to go to class. Maybe its time to get out, before you waste your time and the resources of others.

Let them know ASAP, your project may need to be modified. Some PhD projects do not make for good MS projects, for example you need a project that is going to generate data in a shorter amount of time. If you don't want to be there long term you don't have time to craft a really intricate story. You just want to learn and do enough to bang out a publication or two to get a reputation for yourself. Plus you don't want to look like it took you 3.5 years to get an MS in biomedical sciences.

From my good friend and co-blogger Prof-Like Substance... http://scientopia.org/blogs/proflikesubstance/2011/10/25/what-am-i-looking-for-in-an-undergrad-applicant-for-grad-school/ Go take a look, he is honestly telling you what he looks at to evaluate you, what he thinks matters, and dumb stuff that folks do that drive him up a wall (ex. initiating your personal state with a tale of your bucolic childhood experiences).

Well then, in that case Montblanc.

I blog with FSP and many other profs over at Scientopia and they routinely bitch about the email form letters that clog their inboxes. Be specific and concise in your email.

18 months, that's it? Sometimes stories don't develop until year 3 or so. Its not your fault, its the natural evolution of a project.

Free ones, I don't buy pens.

Profs hate these form letters, you want a short letter of inquiry and from there you can get down to the nitty gritty. A long form letter will only end up in one place: trashcan.