[Telling a Professor you no longer want their rec]

I am in a similar position right now, however, I asked the head of my department for an LOR a few weeks ago. He agreed to write the LOR and asked that I send him a copy of my grant proposal, which I am still working on. Yesterday in class, the dept. head, who teaches one of my courses, ripped apart my essay and told me I would never complete my phd with my current dissertation ideas. The dept. head was also really condescending and basically treated me like an idiot.

My grant app is due in two months. Since this person is the dept head, I need to handle the situation tactfully. I don't want this prof's LOR anymore since I am sure it would not help my application. Do any of you have any advice?

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.

[Facial Hair, Shaving & Grad School]

I was considering growing my "patchy" beard out until I was put in my place by the Genomic Repairman. How emasculating.

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

[Facial Hair, Shaving & Grad School]

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.

[Advice would be appreciated]

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?

[Telling a Professor you no longer want their rec]

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.

[Discuss: How much do you think grades matter in grad school?]

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!

[$230,000 in undergrad debt!!!]

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.

[Interviews before or after acceptance?]

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.