hippyscientist

@Lexie16 all those options are great, but due to time differences and the fact I live in the middle of nowhere anything public is long closed by the time I need to be on skype. Think I've found a patch around though panic may have been averted. @rhombusbombus CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!! @rosali I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT"S GOING ON?!?! Stop randomly tagging rosali?!!? and posting before I finished writing. AGH

all those options are great, but due to time differences and the fact I live in the middle of nowhere anything public is long closed by the time I need to be on skype. Think I've found a patch around though panic may have been averted. @rhombusbombus CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!! @rosali

@katpillow I love that cartoon! It so accurately depicts my feelings right now. I'm getting really concerned now about the skype thing. I don't have an ethernet port on my laptop (thanks Apple) and can't afford their stupid attachment. Now I am reduced to wifi or finding a computer with webcam. AGH! I suppose if worst comes to worst I will have to pre-empt it. None of my professors are willing to let me use their offices (yep I asked), none of my friends have good enough internet (they're all campus wifi or stupidly slow) and it looks like I gotta shell out £40 for a piece of shit adapter that I'll only use once which means no food for 2 weeks. AGHHHH. @rosali what fancy recipes are you thinking of cooking? When I get stressed I cook...super elaborate stuff too

@haltheincandescent I shall see if I can get an ethernet connection. I don't have it at home but not sure about in the library. Thanks for the suggestion. @rosali distract yourself. At least you'll know soon enough!!

You'll be fine in that. I had an informal interview with a PI the other day and had to put my hoodie on half-way through because it was so cold (my heating is broken). Not that I recommend that, but your shirt sounds good. Relax.

sorry for double post but I just remembered: I have a Skype interview next week, and when I had my pre-interview, Skype dropped 6 times in 30 minutes. I have an issue as the internet I use at home is the same as that on campus, and with the time difference no public internet will be accessible. My friend said I could use her internet but it's worse than mine at home. Any suggestions? At the minute I think I'm going to have to pre-warn the interviewers but that looks terrible.

@DrZoidberg, @sjoh197 that's definitely more the kind of rent I'm used to. Before I moved to my current university, I was paying best part of $1000 rent to sleep on a sofa. The fact that I might be able to afford a studio in grad school AND run a car is just amazing. @Pink Fuzzy Bunny $550???? You can't get a shoebox for that where I live now, and I'm in a cheap area. Oh UK house prices. Hopefully it just means I'll be pleasantly prepared for US life! One of my schools admission status pages has updated from my details like references, GRE scores etc. to "we have a decentralized admissions process. Please contact your department for further information" and nothing else. Guess they're looking...

Oh i feel you with this. I have become queen of time zones. One of my best friends is 10 hours ahead of me, another is 6hrs ahead, my boyfriend is 5 hours behind (as are 3 of my schools), and my final school is 8 hours behind. At any point in the day I have a reasonable idea of what time it is in all these time zones. It can get pretty confusing!! At least it worked in your favour!

So I'm sorry if this isn't around where you are but I'm loving a 2014 chilean cab sauv at the minute "los vascos, domaines barons de rothschild [lafite]" It's far too drinkable! And it wasn't overly expensive (~£8/$11 when I bought it in december)

@rhombusbombus I have a pinterest board for "grad school" everything from supplies to outfits to home decorating on a budget! It's such a good time-waster. I have warm weather stuff and cold weather stuff and cool diagrams and teaching ideas and stuff. It's a right almagamation of everything grad school related. So absolutely make a stationa(e)ry list @gingin6789 welcome back to being so busy you forget to panic! Oh wait that happens too. Sorry to hear about your upstairs neighbor, when I used to live in noisy places I'd tell myself the noise they made was like white noise, and that actually helped. Focusing on the noise became a hypnosis type way to get to sleep.

We willl stay sane (or as sane as can be reasonably expected)

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny just like sjoh197, my deadlines have been all over the place. From 1st November to 1st Feb. Weirdly it's the 1st December deadline (my top choice) that I've heard nothing about. Both the november (interview) and february (fellowship nomination) ones i've heard exciting things from.

Seem to be fulfilling the whining portion of the thread today so apologies! I'm so envious of people who know they have somewhere to go. I just want to know now. My apps have been submitted since mid-October. I'm tired of waiting! I also get the rest of my Semester 1 results this week so I'm a ball of nervous energy. Well actually, I'm a ball of apatheticness currently. I should be appreciative of the lull in my craziness but I want to get working again. Believe it or not, thesis writers, I'm a little bit envious! My research doesn't start until March and I'm sure I'll be complaining on here by then about how much work I have to do but agh i can't even formulate sentences today.

Oh if only i could have pancakes and bacon! Doesn't fit into my programme at the minute though. Oh well that's what heavy weights and shooting games on the playstation are for!!! It's so awesome to be able to come here and know you guys get it

Sheesh man, good luck!! I have woken up freaking out this morning, convinced that I'm not going to get in to my top choice so think I'm going to be spending most of today in the gym....ahhh.

@nightfarmer The community on here has really helped me feel less alone during this application cycle, and you all seem cool My mom doesn't get it and thinks I spend too much time on here (which I do), but it's what's keeping me from driving everyone in my non-virtual life up the wall with application stuff. Do what's going to be best for you. My netflix seems to have got a tonne of awesome shows recently and "my list" is getting pretty full. Lots to watch with long nights in the lab data processing

Okay so I just had a look at the undergrad classes some of the departments I've applied to provide. Maaaaaan, okay! I can TA those now I feel like I could maybe lead some of them and I don't have my masters yet!! Thank you UK education for (despite having horrible grading systems) teaching me awesome stuff. My panic about having to TA has just subsided dramatically!

@123hardasABC put some music on, and just write. Anything. Seriously. The protein moves like this, and crosses that and this is where i'm going next and i know this paper is important so i'm now going to summarise it.... then when you have words with fill-in-the-blanks you reward yourself with a drink (tea/coffee/beer/wine/tequila your preference) and then get on the reading/related papers. At least that's what works for me

Oh yes, absolutely. I train in an S&C gym at my university and we have the elite athletes (Olympians) training alongside joe public (admittedly most are better than joe public). You see some horrible mechanics going on. I have a terrible habit of gait analysis too, so I can walk behind people and spot the muscle imbalances/injuries going on. It's gotten pretty bad! Unfortunately people think they can get away with winging it, or "just trying it out", but without proper instruction and/or kit you can do some lasting damage. Everything should be eased into slowly! Okay I've rambled on enough now about training and sport - it's a great distraction while waiting for grad school notifications!!

@artsy16 that's cool because athletes have worked up to that tolerance. Also, look at their careers. More often than not, a professional athlete is done by the time they're 30, overuse injuries galore and with a whole host of problems. Any athlete will have an off-season which is time for their body to recover. To non-athletes, this might seem like insane levels of training still, but to an elite performer who has trained many times a day, many days a week they will be reduced, lower-intensity sessions. For the average public person, "training" 4 times a week plus staying active and moving throughout the day is going to be much more sustainable and better for their long-term health. Athletes work completely differently (and are incredibly interesting!). A lot of my research is on the differences between elite and recreational athletes, as well as those living sedentary lifestyles, and often the mechanics differ as well as physiological tolerance (and I'm not going to touch on the psychological aspects because that's too far out of my comfort zone!). Congratulations on making it through interview week!

Okay so that's where training before work comes in Also make it a date. I always schedule in my gym time, it's an appointment/meeting with myself and my fitness. If you like training with people (I don't most of the time), you can replace a coffee date with a workout - or if that doesn't appeal maybe a hike or a climbing session or something. And oooohhh Granada is lovely! Excellent wine and food to celebrate (let's think positive!). Ugh, I need to go read papers but I've been incredibly lazy so far this morning. Time to get a wriggle on.

Ugh so in my pre-interview skype session last night the internet kept dropping, and it was really frustrating. I have no idea where to go to have my proper skype interview as I was on the university network (it covers home and uni), my friend's internet is worse than the uni's and there's no safe public space open at the time I will need (thank you time difference). Ugh, it would be so much better if it was streamlined internet. I think I'm just going to have to apologise in advance but I think it looks bad.

I put in retainers for my nose ring and tong ring (the little skin colored plastic things). It was then clear I had made an effort to tone it down for schools but wasn't up for getting rid of them. No one said anything.

@Neist wow that's beautiful. I really miss the US for the outdoorsy stuff. Where I live at the moment has town (where you're overdressed if you go in with a full set of teeth), the university (where I spend all of my time), and muddy fields. I don't have transport so I'm stuck to where my feet can take me, but it's led to some interesting adventures just setting off with food and water in my backpack. Ended up walking to the nearest "city" (it has SHOPS! I really live in the middle of nowhere lol) which was about 15 miles away. Thankfully managed to hitchhike back. @rosali working out every day isn't good for you! Do scheduled exercise (like gym/swim) 3 or 4 days a week and the rest just throw in active recovery. Things like yoga, hiking, heck putting on music and having a good old dance while you clean. The trick is to move, it doesn't have to be a chore, and the more exercise is a chore the worse habits you'll get in to. When were kids, being told to go outside and play was the best thing ever, and it was almost impossible to get me to sit still (you had to give me a book). So I try to use that ethos as an adult - if I'm not working or reading, I'm moving. Sometimes I'll move while I work (thank you speech to words software) . Sorry I've gone on, this is a big chunk of what my undergrad was about, and l'm definitely invested in getting everyone moving more. Okay, I'll stop now! Oh man, r/gradschool is great, as is r/gradadmissions and r/askacademia. Loads of interesting information on there. I mean I also like r/awww and r/backpackingdogs (some of the most beautiful dogs and scenery ever on that one). I'm definitely feeling apprehensive about hearing from schools now. One of my lecturers graduated from my top choice (in 1999), in the PhD I want to do, and it doesn't help that he puts photos and videos from there on his lecture slides, saunts around in the university's apparel and generally seems to inadvertently rub it in my face that I haven't heard from there. 2-3 more(ish) weeks I expect. (it's totally fine to get to the end of admissions season without fingernails right?)

@rosali that's where lifting heavy things comes in. I love it, it's such a good stress reliever and I've got an awesome community in my gym too. It's a good time where I can hang out with people not in academia, or put my headphones on and lift heavy things and zone out, or can mix and match it. Workouts definitely don't have to be high impact to be effective. It all depends on your interests - I tried the treadmill/bike approach and didn't enjoy it. I love martial arts so when I'm not injured I train that twice a week and gym thrice a week and do my yoga twice a week . It's amazing for keeping everything in check (moods, hormone swings, food cravings, weight gain/loss). Sometimes I'll throw in some surfing and rock climbing if I have the time, hiking when I can get out and general "adventuring".