hippyscientist

Finals finish a week Friday, but then my advisor asked that I be around until December 23rd and back between Xmas and New Years and then back on the 2nd so it's not so much of a break! But my gosh it's needed. So good to still see a bunch of you loitering around on here - I love hearing how your semesters are going!

These long days are getting to me. I've been pulling 12-15 hour days regularly and today I stayed late for a group project meeting which ended up getting cancelled anyway and then I had to go to the store and get my weekly shop and now I'm cooking dinner which is the first thing I've eaten since 11am and I'm so hungry I'm actually faint and I realized I need my glasses full time right now and I just need sleep. Sorry, stream of (sub)consciousness.

Exactly - add each thing in for a day, stop eating it for two and see how I react. It's going to be great in the long run but worst timing! Fuzzy, the gym is wonderful and helps energy levels & concentration and all that. It's great!

Unfortunately this is on doctors orders, I've been dealing with gastro issues for ages (read 2 years) and it hit breaking point over Thanksgiving. It's time to get to the bottom of it, but this is the worst time to be doing this. I have SO much on these next few weeks, as I'm sure we all do. Grad school stress has just hit!

If it helps I'm giving up everything as of today. Elimination diet time no caffeine, dairy, gluten, soy, corn, root & nightshade veggies etc. I think the worst bit is no alcohol! My grad school socializing revolves around beer! Agh

That makes me sad! I've been binging gilmore girls in the hopes of finishing before the reboot happened. As it turns out I'm halfway through season 4 and looking forward to seeing what they come up with. Based on your comments, I'll temper my expectations.

Yep cadaveric feet. I look and work with ankles, looking at the effect of total ankle replacements now. The feet we can rig up to "walk" and look at the forces, stresses, strains etc in different movements with different loads applied. It's really freaking cool but it's a little bit disconcerting. We have 3 fridges full of feet and a license plate on the wall that reads "DED FEET". Nerd humor! @Neist you have a superpower! That's just insane! Insanely impressive. No wonder you're tired. @Pink Fuzzy Bunny Fuzzy , I do a whole bunch in biomedical engineering too so if you wanna chat let me know!

That's amazing!! We just have a coffee maker and a broken skeleton and a fridge of dead feet.

Thanks @Pink Fuzzy Bunny it feels pretty good Hope you all are doing okay and are looking forward to thanksgiving! I just got to new york to pick my mom up from the airport - I haven't seen her since the end of July so I'm looking forward to it too. Trying to ignore the ridiculous amount of work that needs to be done this week!

I GOT A DISTINCTION ON MY MASTERS and it's thanksgiving break finally. Today is a great day!

Intense - yes! Good way of putting it. So my lab is averaging 88 on the first two assessments, then dropped down to 66 on the third, and I've held their hands a bit for the fourth to help bump them up again. Those grades seem very high to me anyway, just I disagree with the grading system in the US and it's very very very different to what I'm used to. No I'm not giving you more grades, I'm going to advise you on the first assignments, wake you up on the third to kick you into gear, grade acceptably for the next and then end on a high. Maybe throw another scare tactic grade in there if necessary. None of this stupid A-s aren't high enough for me. Okay sorry, rant over. But I had a great day today, got a bunch of code written and managed to troubleshoot a bit of it too

Being able to bullshit, juggle 10 things at once, drink like a fish & not look like you've been dragged under the bus seems to be the main expectations in my grad program. Oh and "I want this draft code by wednesday" when it's friday afternoon. And all sorts of stuff. I gotta say, I freaking love grad school.. Just throwing that perspective out there because I so often see doom and gloom on forums re school. YEs that's important to know too but so is the good stuff! @Pink Fuzzy Bunny one of the classes my friend is taking has an average grade of 4/10, and he's scoring like 1s and 2s. Apparently the prof eventually curves up but yikes. Actually that's one thing I find challenging TAing is the grading rubrics are pretty vague and I seem to be grading everyone about 10-20 marks lower than the other TAs for my course and the students are starting to complain. The head teacher is going to just curve my lab up at the end but I don't want to give grades I don't feel people have earned. I know if I become a full instructor in charge that my class will be one of those ones students bitch about because I don't believe in 90s being the norm. 70s is excelling

1000% with you on this. It's not that I've given up but my research is my primary focus, I have qualifying exams coming up and honestly the assignments for class that I can swing to meet my research get attention and the rest get a slap-dash approach. @pterosaur congratulations! I get my grades next week. I love grad school though. It's the best fit. I'm sorry to hear that a bunch of you aren't finding it as fulfilling as we thought it might be a year ago. Hopefully as we start to find our feet and places it gets more enjoyable!

Hey that sounds to me like you're on the precipice of something excellent and he wants to give you some pointers. Whether it's constructive criticism or full out praise it's a good opportunity to learn! My advisor found me today and notified me that he's nominated me for a prestigious grad school fellowship within our university and I need to fill in some paperwork. I have to write a combined research and personal statement for it. Pretty cool but I have no clue how to write it!

So much this. I really don't care that much about my classes. At the end of the day I'll learn what's important by doing it as part of my research. Classes are just fulfilling a requirement for my college so they don't get a huge amount of attention. I do enough to get by and I've specifically picked classes that are useful so I quite enjoy applying what I learn to my research. Basically, I guess what I'm saying is classes aren't my focus, and I make sure the attention in those classes is focused towards my research interests. It seems to work.

This sounds about right. I think all of my cohort have one class that just kicks their butt. Study groups and asking questions and not being afraid to ask for clarification all seem to help.

Is freshers flu doing the rounds where y'all are? I swear I've spent the last two weeks sick and I woke up this morning with no voice. This is not fun! I was on top of everything until I got sick and now there's a bunch of stuff I need to do this coming week. Not to mention, I got a date tomorrow and I currently sound like darth vader. Not a good look. I was nervous how my background was going to be changing countries and all, and it's scary how much stuff I've already covered. I'm grateful because it frees up time to become au fait with coding and some new skills, but it sure is nice getting work back with 100% at the top. Guess it's going okay lol. In two weeks we register for spring semester classes and my advisor is already encouraging me to drop down to part-time classes and up the research time. That's so exciting to me.

Agreed! Everyone I've met has ben awesome, although we might have started a bad habit of alcohol consumption more regularly than I'm used to. Hope everyone's week are going well

That's so exciting though! The presentation was amazing and we ended up having dinner and drinks at a professors house with the visiting researchers. The researchers are 3 prominent figures in the field and it was amazing to be able to talk to them about their experiences, their knowledge and their advice. Plus, drinking with them was hilarious. Watching them all do vodka shots was one of my highlights. My day started at 7.30 this morning with TAing, and I just got through the door at 11pm. Had to drop some professors off at their houses though! Very funny!

Eeee so I had an amazing meeting with my advisor today, despite the fact I've been sick all week (I passed out in the grocery store on Monday evening). Looks like he wants me to start taking dissertation credits from Spring, which is exciting and crazy and fun and so many emotions! I had some training on some lab things today and I think it hit me that while others are super far ahead of me in some things (like coding and simulations) I've got the leg up in other areas. We can all learn from each other! One thing that I'm struggling with is one of my lab mates seems to have a crush on me, and she's definitely hit on me a few times. Like I get on well with her in the lab, but that's as far as it goes! I think she's getting the message but it's definitely a bit awkward right now, especially seeing as we've got the next 3-4 years to work together. I don't know, it's just a bit awkward. We have our first conference thing on Friday which is going to be really interesting. As grad students we get to take the presenters out for lunch (paid for by the department) to discuss their work, their careers and get some advice. I think that's awesome! We then get a roundtable discussion in the afternoon. I'm really looking forward to it. Not really sure what the point of this was, but it feels good to write it all out! (Oh and I just made some baller fajitas. Mmmm tasty)

I do this too! I reckon I'm averaging 40-50 hrs a week, take 3 classes and TA and am part of journal club and two seminar series. It doesn't seem overwhelming, but when I'm on campus, I work. I'm in the office 8am - 4/5pm every day (excluding the stuff I've had to do to set up) and I take a half hour for lunch. I refuse to work at home. Home is for me. Although I didn't get home til 7pm today. BUT I got my drivers license YAY! Oh and @MarineBluePsy I agree, meetings just seem pointless! I have 3 hours of meetings a week which isn't too bad, but one is at 9am on a Monday and seems to be for my advisor to tell us how much work he's doing! I'm not complaining though. I feel like I'm being productive.

Go and if you don't like it, you don't have to go again! I'm all for trying everything at least once, especially in this sort of scenario. Who cares if you're the "oldie"???

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny my lab are pretty good at doing the socializing thing but I didn't realise how much of a good effect it would have on me. Yay! Go do things!!

Yep I have truly taken that on board. I feel SO MUCH HAPPIER than when I was doing my masters, where I really wasn't social and didn't have a life outside of studying and the gym. Who knew that having social interactions and a hobby would be good for your mental health? Apparently, everyone!

So in my department comps are exams to prove you know enough to be doing a PhD, normally taken after year 1, and quals are to show you know enough to do your dissertation full time and normally taken end of year 2-3-4 depending on how youre getting on (effectively, I'm sure there's more nuance than that but whatever). Congrats on finishing your read through and unpacking!