FoggyAnhinga

Never skip your breakfast! I've had a few days when I had breakfast but ended up having very light lunch (if you could call eating an apple and a small orange lunch lol) or dinner (sometimes it was no more than just a simple bowl of rice). Even if your later meals were light if you had breakfast it'll go a long way. Granola bars are great, and fruits, especially strawberries work well for me. As for leafy greens I've been eating a lot of kale salad recently, which is definitely an improvement from an occasional fatty/greasy food I used to purchase lol. I too drink a LOT of coffee, but I've been cutting down on caffeine recently since the acidity of coffee (I only drink black) has produced a cavity not too long ago (first one in my life!) which was unpleasant to deal with...

After I finished my undergrad, I spent the three months of my summer (before starting my master's) abroad in east Asia, conducting ecological research at a government agency there. I returned from Asia less than a week before my master's program started so it was quite a packed summer lol... For this summer, if I am accepted to a Ph.D. program for this fall's admission, before enrolling I plan to continue tutoring my students and volunteer at a local church for several more months and embark on a summer trip to Australia in June. I also plan to backpack across Oregon and Washington after I return from Australia. Oh, and perform my duty as a groomsman for my best buddy's wedding too, haha.

I relied very little on US News or other website rankings of graduate programs - rather, I asked my former advisor and other professional contacts to seek their recommendations on good graduate programs in my field to narrow down my choices of schools to apply for (in the end the schools they recommended based on the professors they knew turned out to be well-ranked programs). I also used Google search, which is not always helpful, but you do end up with a wide array of webpages to various programs in your field. I tried to avoid any graduate programs with websites that appear outdated (e.g. past deadlines), poorly designed/not easy to navigate format, and have insufficient information regarding admission, deadlines, etc.

plastic bag

Speaking of blizzard, NYC is about to be hit with one of the worst blizzards in the city history as many of you might know, so I guess I'll have to deal with nastiness for the time being while waiting for the schools to respond this makes me even more impatient during this waiting game, since I really hope to end up somewhere with a milder climate lol

One of the programs that I had an interview with doesn't have any recent results (the most recent being 2011, which is pretty surprising considering that the size of this particular EEB graduate program is quite large).

Well right now there's a severe blizzard hitting this part of the country so I am spending a part of my time scheduling when to shovel outdoors lol.

lousy score

voracious eater

film review

Hahaha wow, holy mackerel! That almost sounds like a verbal harassment from your student. Did you actually end up responding to her via Facebook? I also had one student who turned in his assignment and his friend's assignment, but upon closer inspection I noticed that the handwriting between those two assignments were identical. I gave him a warning the first time, but I ended up catching him the second time doing that (and the other TA also caught him doing that too for another assignment). Unfortunately the professor was way too generous and just told me "oh, these kids are young, don't worry" instead of pursuing any disciplinary actions. Ridiculous...

Probably my biggest resolution is to eat healthier (I do eat healthy for the most part, but I can always do better). Another huge resolution is to use my time effectively, which means even if I am done with all the school/lab work I needed to accomplish for the week, don't use the remaining free time just to chill or relax and watch movies in the apartment (I will admit, sometimes it's kinda nice not doing anything for a few hrs or even a day haha), but instead use that time to go sightseeing on short trips, play my violin (as long as it doesn't annoy my neighbors), and maybe join a local chorus group.

When I applied for master's I only applied to 4 schools, and luckily it worked out - perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was my qualifications (though they were minimal at the time since I was finishing up my undergrad). It completely depends on the field. I applied to more schools for PhD since getting into a PhD program in ecology has so many random factors, hence it's best not to rely on only a handful number of schools for a guaranteed admission.

I was 23 when I started my master's, finished when I was still 24 (just a month away from turning 25). I was definitely the youngest out of my cohort in my field since I was the only first-year master's student who came straight from undergrad (everyone else took at least a year or two, or even more years off before entering grad school). I think the average age of the students in my cohort were 28-31. I'm 27 now... I greatly miss my early 20s...

whole wheat

I'd definitely say this is cheating - it is VERY unfair for the students around her, and most especially for the students in other lab sections. I'm very surprised that the professor decided to let this go! If it was in my undergrad school, this form of cheating will 1) get the student an automatic F in the course, and 2) even a suspension from the university for an ENTIRE semester! (all the cheating penalty warnings were probably why I was SO paranoid about not being accused of plagiarism whenever I was completing my lab reports, even though I never cheated haha). Speaking of which, a friend of a friend actually tried this form of cheating once during my fourth year of undergrad. She was repeating a course after failing it the previous year. While completing one of the weekly problem sets, she decided to refer to the old problem set solutions from the previous year to speed up her progress in her assignment. The result? The TA who graded her problem set didn't write a total score on the top, but instead wrote "It is obvious that you have copied from the previous year's solution set for these questions. Please go see professor X about this." I guess the professor is leaving up to you to decide on whether to discipline this student or not. If I were you I'd give the student a grade of zero for that lab report, or if you are feeling really generous, possibly give her only a half credit and warn her not to do that again.

puppet show

Everyone seems to love Duck Dynasty - I've watched a few episodes and I'm not exactly sure what's so fantastic about it lol...

Yep, during my TA experience I often wondered how these kids even got into college in the first place (I've had students who made numerous spelling/typo errors on MS Word when all they had to do was a simple spellcheck, if they were really lazy). As for that student who complained that I was unfair, the prof ended up giving her points (for what reasons I have absolutely no idea), and she went on to send the prof a thank you email, which she CC'd me and other TA (a passive-aggressive indication saying "look, I still got the points anyway, so screw you")

pumpkin pie

My biggest vent is that SO MANY SCIENCE FACULTY do NOT understand the strict eligibility policy that NSFGRFP has. NSFGRFP is an outstanding fellowship without a doubt, but they have this ridiculous rule which states that only the applicants with less than 12 months of graduate education are eligible (as many of you science folks will know). This 12-month includes ANY graduate education, including non-degree seeking, part-time, etc (furthermore, they explicitly state that if you have a master's degree that took over 12 months to complete and are currently applying or pursuing PhD program, you are not eligible, unless you took at least two years off after your master's, which is not what I did). It is so frustrating when I email prospective POIs with my CV (which clearly state I have a master's degree that took two years to complete) and so many of them reply back to me saying "you should definitely apply for NSFGRFP" or "why didn't you apply for NSF?" I wonder why so many of them are completely unaware about this eligibility issue? When I replied back to one of the POIs about this (I'm no longer interested in this POI thank goodness haha), his response was "are you sure about that...?" *Sigh...*

I was TAing an undergrad bio course and one of my students emailed me letting me know that she didn't turn in her extra credit project because according to her, "I lost it" (too bad). BUT, even though she didn't turn it in, she says she still deserved those extra credit points because she put her effort into doing it. When I told her that makes absolutely no sense because if that was the case, I'd be awarding extra credit to everyone in the class regardless of whether they turned in their assignment or not. She then went on trying to reason me with this, complaining to me that I'm being very unfair, and vehemently claimed that she still deserved the points. She even decided to take this issue to the professor by cc'ing her in the email.

Thanks I think that Northeastern EEMB program has an interview/recruitment day for top applicants and I guess based on the results, someone received an invitation via email - I hope not being invited doesn't necessarily mean my prospects are doomed (if so, I guess I still have other schools to hear from, fingers crossed...) Best of luck to you too!

duck meat

The first time (and the last time) I applied for EPA STAR was in November 2012 for the 2013 award consideration. I wasn't successful (I received the panel's feedback and rejection letter as a postal mail in early 2013), but it's crazy how some of those applicants were receiving notice that they were awarded as late as early 2014!! Since then, I've been checking the website frequently to see if EPA has any new award announcements since Fall 2012, but nope, that's their most recent award according to their official website... does anyone know what is exactly going on with them? Have they canceled this award for the time being? It seems like EPA has been hit quite hard with that government shutdown in late 2013...