Merlin

No dice. VG/VG, G/VG, VG/VG.

On the flipside though, if GRFP results were released earlier, then graduate schools might base admissions decisions on who got them, which would be a double kick in the crotch to those who don't get them.

My default is "Dr. Lastname", unless I hear from them or someone else that they prefer to be addressed another way. One of my professors has a last name that's a euphemism for lady parts, so he has people call him by his first name.

So, I've been reading a lot of funded proposals, and well... does anyone else feel that no matter what they do or plan or write, they have no chance of succeeding?

Not female, but curious - are you distinguishing between different subgenres of metal in your survey? It seems to me that someone who believes that symphonic power metal had a positive impact on their life would be a bit different than someone who believes the same about death or doom metal.

From what I gleaned when I visited for interviews, a car is by no means a necessity, and parking in Ithaca/on the Cornell campus can be difficult and expensive. I will be bringing my car, but that's because my research will be based at the Agricultural Station in Geneva, about an hour to the northwest. There seems to be enough public transit available in Ithaca. As for housing, I'll be living off-campus. I assume there's at least some on-campus housing for grad students, but I wouldn't know enough to compare advantages/disadvantages of both.

Thanks for letting me know. Just set mine up. As for nematodes, I'm more interested in biotic factors affecting their efficacy and persistence in soil (like the presence of predatory arthropods).

Okay, that's cool. I was hella into Ancient Greece as a kid. My work will be on the ecology of entomopathogenic nematodes, tiny, soil-dwelling worms that infect insects with deadly bacterial diseases, and that are used in the biological control of soil-dwelling pests.

That's good. I was wondering when I'd get my NetID. So birchleaf, what specifically are you interested in/going to be studying?

It's a decent-sized city, and the community is very active. Though I'm from a town of 500 (and my house is out in a dirt road in the middle of the woods), so maybe my view of things is distorted.

I'm from Northern MN, which gets way colder than Ithaca (-30F without wind chill is easily achieved most winters, and -45 is not unheard of, esp. in low-lying areas), but Sweden would certainly have more darkness (but is it clear or cloudy during winter? Ithaca is supposed to just be really cloudy and damp during winter.).

And really depressing in the winter, hence the safety nets under all the bridges. I've been told to invest in full-spectrum lighting.

I graduated last fall, so I'm living at home, relaxing, working on a paper based off some undergrad research I did, and preparing to move out to New York this summer so I can get a head start on my research. I guess I'm technically starting in the summer.

I don't have experience with this yet (I will be starting research and lab work this summer), but I can answer your second question. Basically, I just e-mailed my advisor and asked if he had funding available for me to start in the summer. I brought up some ideas on how to start my thesis research, and mentioned that it would be a big help to have another field season. I've heard mixed things about starting in the summer too; on paper it looks good, especially for fields where season matters (soil science, ecology, hydrology, etc.) and the fact that you're getting an additional summer is more important than the three extra months. I might be a little different than most grad students, as I graduated with my B.S. last fall and have had this semester off, so I've had my break and my time to relax, and now I'm eager to start research.

I'll be 20 when I start my M.S., turning 21 soon thereafter.

That's awesome, and I've noticed this even within some natural science classes that include people from different fields (geology/biology, chemistry/biology/engineering, etc.). Fair point, although Diamond did acknowledge the north-south spread of crops like corn; he just claimed that it took longer (admittedly, I'm unsure how accurate that is). And with regard to potatoes, the potato is an extremely adaptive plant, growing both in tropical lowland forests and high in the Andes. As far as the geographic determinism argument goes, you're right that having the guns, germs, and steel does not mean that one must use them to conquer the world and enslave/genocide everyone else. I think Diamond's argument was more along the lines of "this is why Europeans had the ability to do it" instead of "this is why the Europeans did it". At least, that's how I interpreted things. To say that cows and wheat made a bunch of white dudes sail the seven seas and commit horrific atrocities in every other part of the world is ridiculous, I agree. But I digress. I've looked elsewhere and seen the firestorms GG&S has created, and have no more desire to jump in.

I go to great lengths to avoid using "hard" and "soft" sciences, as I feel they're pretty loaded terms. I can understand why a sociology or anthropology person would get angry if I referred to their discipline as "soft science". At the same time, there are stark differences between the natural/physical and social sciences; many of the experiments entomologists do on insects would be Class A felonies to perform on people. Social sciences can give us explanations for human behaviors that would make an evolutionary biologist scream, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT'S NO WAY TO PASS ON YOUR GENES". I'm by no means a pacifist in this "battle"; I've poked a few jabs at some social science major friends of mine (pointing out how surveys can be designed to produce the result that best fits your ideology), and they've accused me of being an unfeeling robot who would kill 1000 people to save one species of springtail from extinction. I've also gotten into many a nature-vs-nurture debate/poo-flinging war with said social science major friends. And I think in that aspect, the natural and social sciences will always be at odds where they produce differing explanations for things, namely human society and behavior, at least until we get some decent interdisciplinary research that reconciles them. Last summer I was part of a group of biology undergrads who had received summer research fellowships from our department. Every week we would meet to read and discuss Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. At one of these meetings, the professor leading the discussion mentioned that Diamond's work had received criticism by historians on the grounds of it implicating environmental differences in causing differences in the development of human society and technology. That really stuck in my mind, because as a biologist, it's a no-brainer to me that the environment (environment in the GGS case mostly meaning resident flora and fauna, i.e. the presence of nutritious crops and domesticable animals) could and would influence such things.

Couldn't find a 2015 thread for Cornell, so I figured I would start one. I'm a Biology B.S. from Minnesota who will be starting at Cornell as an M.S. student in Entomology. I'll actually be moving out to New York in late May/early June to get an early start on my research, but that will all be up in Geneva, not Ithaca. Any other future Ithacans about?