UnlikelyGrad

Yeah. Because, after all, Pharaoh let the people of Egypt go the very first time Moses asked. God's plan, right?

Lab 2. I think it's a good idea to do grad work that's different from your undergrad research, if possible, and it sounds like the personality is right for you.

My 2 cents: (1) I know my advisor's DoD proposal has been more-or-less approved, with the caveat that they first need to get money from the government before they can actually give her the green light. It would not surprise me if all government research funding is on hold until the budget comes through. (2) Last year (in which the budget was also delayed) I didn't get a rejection from EPA STAR until the end of May. I submitted an application but don't think I will make it (again) this year. Dr. Hand-Waver was too busy to read the final draft of my research proposal; I'd made some rather spectacular changes in it since the previous draft, and really thought I needed her input. I'm not sure that's a good thing... However, writing the thing *was* good practice.

(pats on back) There, there...

We had a great thread on this a couple of months ago... I am in the middle of a particularly tense time right now, and yet I wouldn't change a thing. Grad school = awesome. (At least for me.)

I ended up with a similar decision and chose Prof B...no regrets here. I should add that many students (grads and undergrads) have told me that Dr. Hand-Waver scares them. And while she did come off as a bit intimidating at first (she is definitely a driven person), she is also one of the nicest, most understanding advisors I could possibly have had. But yeah, I have to say, I totally cried when I emailed my decision to Prof A's school.

How about a shelter for abused women with kids? Trust me, that will give you more of an idea of what nasty things lurk out there than anything else.

Yeah!! Way to show them!! Nope. It's just beginning. Have fun!

Suggestions: (1) Get out of that house as soon as possible. Do not put up with abusers/controllers if you can avoid it. I don't care if she IS your mom. She is not your god(dess) or your Dungeon Master. You do not have to do what she says. (2) Read the book "Boundaries: When to Say Yes, When to Say No." Many good lessons I wish I had learned earlier in my life. Don't go to grad school unless you really want to.

Basically, it was a combination of two things: an observation of what made me happy, and volunteering in a variety of capacities. As anyone who reads my blog knows, I was way, way, way outside of the field I'm studying right now when I made my decision. But I noticed things: (1) I gravitated towards people in my life who were chemists so I could talk chemistry with them. (2) When I read or heard stuff about cool geology, I sighed and wished I could have been a geologist. (3) I never went long without being in a volunteer teaching position. Not teaching drove me crazy. (4) I loved teaching both teens and adults. But I could only handle teens one-on-one; teenagers in groups drove me nuts. Ergo, I wanted to be a geochemistry professor when I grew up. Once I started thinking about it full time, I think it only took me a couple of months to settle on what I wanted to be. And boy, do I love what I do!

I feel the same way! Dr. Hand-Waver is on sabbatical this year and tried to get me to rent out her house while she was away. Aside from the fact that it was more than I was willing to pay, she wanted to rent it out furnished--and frankly, I couldn't imagine having sex with my husband on the same bed where my advisor has sex with her husband. It is a lovely house, though. I like professors as people (which may be why I want to be one) but I try to maintain a reasonable personal distance from the profs in my department. One of the profs in our department is Facebook friends with all of his advisees, and even that's too squicky for me...I can't imagine actually living with a prof in my department! Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'll end up rooming with my advisor when we do field work out of the area, as we'll probably be the only "girls" in the group...but we get along well enough that I'm sure it won't be a problem for a week or two.

I actually had this problem--they were asking for a March 31 decision but I wasn't scheduled to visit my School C until April 2. I called and asked for a 1-week extension, saying this would still give them 8 days until April 15. Luckily they were nice and accepted. I sent my decision on April 4.

You know some of us!! (sort of) What state are you moving to? I'm sure some of the Grad Cafe regulars will be nearby.

The possible smidgens are Portuguese and Mongolian, btw. Still debating whether to wear green or not today. Why should I celebrate a holiday for people of other ethnicities? To avoid pinching (read: harrassment)? The only reason I can think of is that one of my fave profs here is Irish...

Hmmm...not sure what defines an application season. I put my apps in fall 2008 and heard back about now in 2009. We clearly started grad school at the same time, though. I do remember not feeling stupid--in other words, I wasn't too out of the ordinary despite the fact that I only applied for one top-10 school.

Ummm, "she"...but yes, that's exactly what I was saying. When I was applying in 2009 a lot of people had top schools (UCLA, Berkeley, Harvard, etc.) but they usually also had several safety schools, frequently the sort of places most people don't associate with hard-core chem programs. Personally, in today's competitive application climate, I feel that applying only to top schools is a bit risky. Even if I had rock-star GRE scores (actually, mine weren't too bad) and a killer GPA and lots of research experience, I would still want to find a second-tier school or two that matched my research interests, just in case. Maybe the rock stars just posted first and all the "normal people" were too embarrassed to say that they were applying to Florida State or wherever? (Eigen, didn't you apply in the 2010 app season? What did you think of your cohort?)

I second McQuarrie! I have his full PChem book (QM + Thermo). Mathematically rigorous but very well explained. And I really really loved the fact that all of the math was reviewed before you needed it--it had been a good 15 years since I took calculus! Yes, you will have to do a lot of self-study for the inorganic. On the plus side, you should breeze through your class.

Is luck on St. Patrick's Day limited to people with Irish blood? I could use a little luck in the lab, but I'm only French, German, English, Scottish, and Chinese (with a possibility of smidgens of other stuff--but not Irish).

I'm not, but I was a couple of years ago. I think we had pretty much decided on living in Woodland. It's about the same amount of time as the drive from Sacramento, but you could definitely get more bang for your buck.

FWIW: one of my peers here landed a place on Craigslist (room in a shared house) from afar. She was driving out here, expecting to arrive at the new digs just a day or so before school started. She got there late at night and was greeted by the owners, who led her into the home...which was FILTHY. As in, the dogs had not been housebroken and went everywhere. There was no obvious dog stuff in the room designated as hers, but it stunk to high heaven. She turned around and walked out of the house and never went back. Luckily she'd made friends with some grads over visit weekend, so she crashed on someone's couch. Needless to say, since hearing this story I have not been all that interested in doing long-distance house searches. :-) I have bought and sold on Craigslist, no problem. The scammers aren't too hard to pick out. (If you want to get 10 Nigerian scammers emailing you in less than 10 minutes, try posting an ad offering tutoring services. I used to advertise on Craigslist all the time, and got tons of scammers--maybe a dozen for each legitimate reply--emailing me to say they wanted me to tutor their high school student who was living by him/herself in the US; they would be happy to pay me a month in advance if I just gave them my bank account number.)

You poor, poor thing. (Trying hard not to laugh.)

I like all of these, but want to add: What does the advisor expect in terms of workload? In one lab I was basically told that my weekends would not be my own, ever...you'd better believe I didn't go to that school...whereas my current advisor has been known to tell people to take a day off because they've been working too hard.

Yep!! It's why I could never be a theoretician. Being in lab is frustrating but fun. And I really, really, really am going crazy without a house to fix up. I think I am going to buy a fixer as soon as my divorce is final...

Not all people have this view (obviously, I'm one of them! ) but some do... My sister went on the TT market at 39, which is a lot younger than I'll be, and she said that there were definitely schools that rejected her for being too old. (Of course, they didn't say that "on the record" since that would be illegal, but they dropped enough hints that she got the message.) She went on to get two good job offers, though, and is now at a school which is consistently ranked somewhere in the top-5 for her field. So I am hopeful I can get *something*, even though I'm not a research superstar like she is. My dad is 70 and still hasn't slowed down, so I'm hoping I can offer any university I work for a good 25+ years of service.

I'm pretty sure at least one of them did... Personally, I think the age-ist bias is a lot stronger at top-tier schools. If you're willing to apply to a second-tier school, I think it would be worth your while. (I don't just mean admissions bias...I got into a top-tier school, but to tell the honest truth, the bias there was bad enough I didn't think I'd be comfortable doing research. There were other things there that made me uncomfortable, though, so it wasn't just the bias that kept me away.) Even though I have my heart set on academia, I know the odds that any decent program is going to offer me a TT position at (?)45 are pretty slim. I'm pretty resigned to going to a bottom-of-the-barrel school. But I love to teach, so that's OK with me.