Arcadian

I have more free time in grad than undergrad. I pretty much do whatever I want whenever I want. Livin the life!

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up... :/ but if I could do aaanything... 1. Research scientist - maybe I can do this with enough work. 2. Film or video game music composer - I have no credentials in music, but I am a decent composer, so maybe a long shot. 3. Musician in a symphony orchestra - I haven't played my instrument in years, but I was once a top tier player in high school...also a long shot. 4. Author or journalist - I enjoy and have always been praised for my writing ability, but not even sure if I would really want this as a career. Bonus choice - Unemployed. It is the ultimate freedom. I dream of a society that doesn't require its citizens to fight and compete over life-sustaining tokens.

Eh, it varies. I will proudly say that I am not a very disciplined person, and that's how I like it. I don't like to live on a strict schedule. For the most part, I just do whatever I feel is best at any given time. I am flexible. I do make weekly schedules for myself, but they are very loose and open to alteration. I wouldn't have it any other way. Regarding sleep, my schedule is different from many of you because I am a nocturnal person. My circadian rhythm is very different from most other people. I generally don't feel tired until at least 2:00 am, and I generally don't like waking up before 10:00 am. And that would be an early day for me. When I have free days, I typically sleep from 4 or 5 am to noon or 1 pm. If I sleep naturally with no distractions and nothing to wake me up, I will sleep for 7-9 hours. Sometimes I feel great with 7; sometimes I need 9. It just varies. I only sleep enough about half the time. The other half, I am limited to 5-6 hours. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, so I occasionally have sleepless nights or just 1-3 hours (but that is rare). Regarding exercise, I'm not a big fan of it, but I still do it 2-4 times a week. My favorite thing is running outside. I usually go running 2-3 times a week (either jogging 1-2 miles or intervals for 2.5 miles). Sometimes I go to the gym once or twice a week, just for about 30-45 minutes each, not really focusing on anything in particular. I just do a light, all-around workout. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the healthiest person on earth, but I feel healthy enough. As others have mentioned, I make time for exercise based on my obligatory scheduled events for that day. If I'm on campus from 2-5 pm, I'll exercise after that. I prefer exercising late in the day (obviously, given my sleep patterns).

Obviously it depends on the type of research. If you keep it as simple as possible (one or two experiments), it can be done. But, as a general rule, research always takes longer than you initially think it will. So if you plan a 1-year project, it could easily take 2 years.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I started grad school. I just recently figured out my true research interests in my 3rd year of a PhD. It is generally related to my current research, but not exactly. They are both within "cognitive science" broadly speaking, but I am looking to pursue a different line of research for a post-doc. In other words, I'm not really interested in following up my dissertation work directly. Is that OK?

My history... -No publications in undergrad -4th author on a paper in 1st year grad -6th author in 2nd year -3rd author in 3rd year -Almost done with 3rd year, starting to write a paper as 1st author (who knows how long that'll take)

lol That's a pretty broad statement. Experimental psychology is having a bit of a crisis with data replicability and availability, I can tell you that. Some major journals such as Psychological Science are changing their requirements for statistical reporting. And there is also a push to abandon null-hypothesis significance testing in favor of estimation techniques.

lol

That's probably because most research papers are overly-verbose and filled with unimportant details (at least, unimportant for the reader's purposes). Unless you really need to know something about the particular methods they used, why bother reading the methods? Abstract > Introduction > Discussion is the way to go most of the time.

I wouldn't worry about it. It's probably just a projection of their own anxieties in life onto your evaluation. Lots of college students are anxious/sad/confused people, and rightfully so - they're trying to figure out how to live. That's kind of a stressful situation. So yeah, there will usually be a handful of people who unload their negativity into a teaching evaluation. They might be comparing you to another teacher who set the bar really high - but that would be unwarranted. They don't realize that just as there are many types of students, there are many types of teachers as well. Not everyone can use the same approach to teaching and have the same success. If it works for you, just keep doing what you're doing. I don't know about you, but I'm not trying to be a 5-star TA. If I'm just "decent" to "good," that's fine with me.

I would just go ahead and answer the question, assuming you can answer it in one minute or less. I guess that depends on the course content, but for me I can usually answer emails so quickly that it doesn't bother me or take a significant portion of my time. On the other hand, I rarely get student emails anyway because TAs are pretty low-responsibility at my school. So when I do get them, I'm more than happy to answer. I can see how if you had 100 students emailing you every week, it would be in your best interest to discourage easy questions. But you didn't really specify any of this information in the opening post, so I don't know.

99% of people who view this topic will be disappointed about the contents within. Bonking. hehe

lol what? Someone should fire that bitch. Post-docs have no reason to be bitches. They have fewer responsibilities than faculty and grad students. All they have to do is research projects. Every post doc I've worked with has been cool. If one starts to bitch, they can just suck a dick and leave.

It depends on the professor. In the summer, I was told to buy the book. In the fall, I was given a book by the prof.

lol @ "TA training" I don't remember anything from my TA training because it was fucking pointless. Everything that was said was either trivially obvious or could have been summarized in a page of text.

Ooooooh yeah. I have been incredibly unproductive for the past few weeks. Better summer than fall, I suppose.

1) This thread exists. 2) It's up to three pages. 3) Lol.

..........Yes.

Yeah, I actually like when they make their views explicit, because then you don't have to guess. And if you share their views, you can relate with them. If you don't share their views, that creates the opportunity for intelligent debate, which is good. The value-neutral professor is like a fucking robot, just coldly reporting the facts and pretending not to have an opinion.

My first post on GC in several months is going to be in the topic about dating? I'm disappointed in myself...Fuck it. Maybe he doesn't want a girlfriend, or maybe he's open to the idea but not actively seeking one and would prefer to acquire one in a more passive fashion. That was always my approach. I let my girlfriend make the moves...and she did. You should never assume that "there's something seriously wrong with him"...that's kinda fucked up.

I recommend all books by Andy Clark. Although he is a philosopher, he has a really interesting theoretical framework for cognitive science. Being There Natural-Born Cyborgs Supersizing the Mind

No I don't, but I am a big fan of his work. I would love to work in that research area. Let me know if you end up doing the same.

Right - but in the case of music, people are not merely "attracted" to it; they can actually feel pleasure in response to it, not unlike the kind of pleasure we get from eating food or having sex. So even if it were the case that we are attracted to organized sets of sound, it wouldn't explain why music in particular causes pleasure. I'm sure you guys are familiar with theories of tension and release. One thing that seems to cause pleasure is the buildup of musical tension over time, and then resolving it in a satisfying way. So time is definitely a factor. I'm also interested in how a small handful of particular chord progressions are used almost ubiquitously in popular music ( ), yet there are many potential chord progressions that are never used because they sound awful. What's up with that?

Sorry I don't mean to sound negative or anything. I was actually responding to your statement, "it begs the question." Well, it would only beg the question if it were an attempt at explanation. But it wasn't - it was laying out the paths to emotion and saying, each of these can independently cause emotion. I wonder how that works. Edit: Just to clarify, "begging the question" is a kind of fallacy in which you make a conclusion that assumes a hidden premise. But I think some people use it to mean "raising a question" or something, so maybe that is a source of confusion. But yeah, thanks for contributing ideas! Clearly we all care about this topic, so let's use this thread to share our ideas.

(looks at my CV) Um...this hasn't been updated since last year... ...because I haven't published anything since last year...