vpaglioni3

If you're fuckin with me I'm coming for you Edit: they were not fuckin with me. Not selected - best of luck to the rest of you. ~December Gang~

Thanks for leading the charge!

This was a point of contention for me the first time I saw it, in my last performance review before I quit to attend grad school. I can't even remember which one is used now. They mean the SAME THING, right? I think all of us can agree that there is at most a minuscule difference in what they mean. But for some reason, the DoD changed their performance review structure to rename one to the other. Literally no reason I can see other than a style change. Edit: I understand how unhelpful this is, and I'm really sorry. I can't really think of a better way to explain my thoughts, but suffice to say that the benefits afforded to those of us with prior DoD experience, with respect to writing the essay/report/application, are mostly tangential and will likely not make a huge difference.

Nothing that would make a significant difference, but once you're around the DoD space for a bit, you start to pick up on specific language and formatting that is used in presentations/documents/etc. For instance, a lot of DoD management like to see charts & visuals, even in shorter documents - that's not necessarily the case elsewhere, where people may think you're just 'padding' your document length. I don't think I can explain it much better, it's just stylistic choices that are prevalent around the DoD that don't necessarily show up elsewhere.

It was definitely helpful to have the insight, and I feel like it really polished the final product. But it will never cover up a bad/irrelevant project.

My adviser worked for a DoD lab, and I had DoD production-level experience, so we were able to use specific DoD language (i.e. 'objective' over 'goal', 'task' over 'step', little things like that), add in some informative graphics (quad charts & Gantt charts run the DoD in some areas), structure the essay sections to flow like the DoD would expect (no examples off the top of my head) like I said, the best it would get you is a tiebreaker, but it's something

I don't think we'll be able to say definitively that a DoD connection helps directly or not. However, there are indirect benefits to having worked in/around the DoD space prior to applying. You get to know the language they use, what they like to see in reports, how to structure your report for maximum impact, etc. Tangential benefits that can maybe get you over the finish line, but won't run the race for you.

We used to fax stuff all the time (naval shipyard) - it was kind of weird. I expect the rest of the DoD still uses faxes too (probably not a lot though) One time a new engineer got ribbed hard for faxing a blank sheet. He had never used a fax machine before and put the pages in upside down lol We had a LOT of trouble getting passes to work remotely, even on unclass "low-side" work. So unfortunately even low-side, completely unclassified stuff like our applications may be difficult to access if their offices don't have established remote work procedures/capabilities.

That's what I read, yeah. Sucks to be us I guess.

God hath spoken

same situation here haha, just got an email from a Conference accepting my paper and it got me excited for a second. The wait continues

I emailed the generic contact email given on the website about an hour ago - I'll report back when I hear anything

Every word in that statement is a lie lol

When I get my hopes up that today is the day

Alright, sports fans - is today the day?

Email your adviser/PI, and even other grad students in your soon-to-be cohort, see if they can send you some of their current research and previous publications. I know that a lot of biosciences do lab rotations for the first semester/year, so a good option might be to look up research from each lab in your rotation and get an initial feel for what you might want to do. If you've been out of school for a bit, it might be worth going over the basics and/or taking a Coursera course to bring yourself up to speed.

It would be incredibly shitty if a bunch of us applied to BAA's that didn't even have funding - I really hope it's not that, for all of our sakes. I guess we will find out soon (hopefully) what, if anything, the dates mean. As of right now, I truly can't tell. It would make sense that the later your update, the further you made it, but the size of ~December Gang~ makes it seem like this may not necessarily be the case.

I'm gonna take this time to plug an awesome project that is trying to bring young students (middle/high school) into STEM fields by giving them a place to publish research! It's an awesome way to use our knowledge and skills to develop the next generation. It's called Journal of Emerging Investigators (https://www.emerginginvestigators.org/) and was started by a group of researchers at Harvard Medical School. They are always looking for volunteers to review papers. It's super easy and is a good opportunity to add a 'service' component to your CV...

yep. I just want to see "Sorry, you didn't make it" in my inbox so I can move on with my liiiiiife

ooof, it's not looking good for the 'dates are meaningless' theory.

Of course. I'm working on the prestigious TGC grant. $5.2B over three years to develop next-generation social networking devices

oh no, no, no - definitely not. Like a drunkard walk, I sometimes stumble in the right direction, but I usually find myself going in circles. Usually, I can blame it on coursework, grant applications, etc. I'm not sure if 'helping make history on an internet forum' holds as much weight as those two

11:00 EDT and nothing yet. The wait continues, as does the path to 2000.

If we want to do it - we have to commit to it. I'll do what I can, but at a certain point 'trying to top the TheGradCafe leaderboard' won't qualify as progress in my PI's eyes

That's a tough ask - we're only at 1200 and change right now.