mandarin.orange

Here is a professor's perspective on this question - I found it quite interesting.

For further amusement, I suggest Female Science Professor's blog, which has been huge entertainment to me the last couple of weeks. She had a "Worst Cover Letters" contest. Entries were not real, but written in a mock style that contained some of the worst elements that the submitters had come across while on search committees, etc. I was also surprised (or perhaps not really) to discover, over break, that the Chronicle of Higher Education's forums contain a thread similar to this one. It has swelled to a whopping 1200+ pages.

I figured this out today! It is so easy: just pick desired style, then drag and drop into Word and the bibliography is right there! I had to re-find some articles on Google Scholar to get the DOI...once I did this the "Import Citation" goes easily to Zotero and gets allll the metadata. Next to work on citations within the text, but that is relatively minor to getting these other issues figured out.

Thanks so much for your reply! It looks like Zotero may have a way after all to retrieve metadata - I found this but haven't had a chance to experiment with it yet. Scrivener looks amazing. The split screen alone may be worth the price, and I just wrote a term paper for a seminar class that was heavily dependent on historical research with many primary sources. Even at only 15 pp of text, it was getting cumbersome in Word; I couldn't imagine handling something longer in your discipline with just a word processing program. I also have lots of ideas for shorter articles and pieces on current events in science, or teaching pedagogy...Scrivener looks like a great way to "archive" and organize these thoughts (and, quotes or refs I'll come across that are related) while the idea is still in its infancy stages. Thanks again!

I'm late to this topic, but hope to revive with a few questions... I have an ever-growing collections of journal .pdfs to organize and eventually use in my dissertation. I've been using Zotero to index them into folders/groups - it's great for that, but I'm ready to take it to the next level and am trying to figure out its more advanced features. E.g., syncing with Word 2008 as I type. One thing I've noticed is it doesn't seem "smart enough" to extract author(s), article name, journal title, etc. from .pdfs. Has anyone found software that can do this, rather than me having to manually enter the info into fields? Thanks for turning me onto this product - I'm pretty excited about the demos and tutorials I've seen, but pause to download it because very little is mentioned in the tutorials about creating bibliographies in different styles. It seems adept at doing the footnotes, but what about MLA refs in parentheses? Also, can it handle the issue I mentioned above?

What an interesting generalization. During my M.S. in a geology program, I knew about 6-7 people firsthand who either didn't finish or were extremely negative the entire time. Do I extrapolate this very limited experience to make an over-arching statement such as "grad students in the geosciences are miserable"...as you have done?

I wrote several recs as a high school teacher. If asked, I held firm with our guidance office's policy of a three-week lead time. I generally found the truly poor and forgettable students would self-select themselves out, because they were asking way too last minute. So, I could decline and simply cite this reason. In other cases, I'd query about the student's long-term goals. If their class with me didn't really relate, or I hadn't taught them since the 9th grade, I'd gently suggest they ask specific junior- or senior-level teachers, and stress that this looks better to college adcoms and would improve their chances. In a few cases, students I NEVER would have initially guessed approached me for a letter of rec. If they gave me lots of lead-time and were super responsible, I saw this as an opportunity to get to know them better. I also requested individual meetings with them to talk about goals, accomplishments outside my class, etc. and asked if they could provide resumes, answer questionnaires about what they had gotten out of my class, forward personal essays they were submitting for other parts of the app, etc. If a student delivered all this to me, I had plenty of fodder and could easily write them a rec. A rather quiet, poorly-testing student approached me to write a rec for a scholarship last year. Everything I asked for, she delivered, and I was impressed to discover her long track record of community service. Since this was a service-oriented scholarship, I just framed my letter differently. It also forced me to reflect on her other work in my class, and realize she was very diligent about her projects and other preparedness for class, as a way to compensate for not testing well. Despite her not having a mind for science, I am proud of my role in helping her secure her scholarship. I could tell it meant the world to her, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I will add: I think that small-town Indiana can be especially isolating. I did my undergrad at a SLAC in Indiana, and, despite being American (albeit raised in California), I might have gone to the other side of the world, the culture shock was so extreme. Through study abroad, my MS, and now PhD, I have attended large, metro universities and been FAR more comfortable in these settings. Do you play sports? Willing to learn? Joining an intramural team or martial arts would be a great way to meet people, and cultivate interests outside of research. Americans love athleticism and often it is a great “leveling field,” and way to build easy camaraderie. If team sports is not your thing, try a hiking group…I think Perdue has one; I ran into a crowd of them at Turkey Run SP this summer. Outdoor trips are a great way to build bonds and see a little of the beautiful areas of the state. Keep forcing social interaction, however awkward it may be, to improve your English and learn the nuances of American humor. It may feel forced or frustrating, but practice helps. Get out to Bloomington, Chicago, and the west coast as often as possible to remind yourself there is a world outside of West Lafayette.

You're lucky! Were my BF here, I'd do the same. When left to my own devices, I can become my own worst enemy, as far as procrastination goes.

I am going to AGU for the first time, and presenting! After years of attending GSA (and a bit of a hiatus from academia), I am super stoked. Unlikelygrad, I think you need the experience at least once. I have been getting so many emails about breakfasts, receptions, and events just for students. For my specific field, they sent me a template to complete with the main points of my talk, and they plan to show all these as a slideshow at a reception. They seem super supportive towards students on that front. Interesting comments on the "character" of different society meetings. Again, I have historically been to GSA, but the last one I attended (in Portland), while it had cool field trips and Portland is a great city, was absolutely crap for my subfield, with barely any sessions. My MS advisor has made a move towards attending AGU more and more, and I've heard other friends make the same comment - they find the science higher-caliber. The big news I heard out of the last GSA was this nonsense. Several classmates from my master's are paleontologists, and were really up in arms about how much this "junk science" made it to the media, rather than all the other sound science surely present at the meeting.

Why did the author of that article use so many words to ruminate on "Why Geologists Love Beer" ...? Isn't that just a universal, unquestioned law? Beer is infallible. Like God.

While the flexibility of the grad student schedule is great, it also means that you are more prone to this phenomenon: Sounds like you got sucked into a computer vortex. Personally speaking, it's one of my biggest vices. Even on days with the option to sleep in, my sleep is just really, really crappy if I'm on the computer until, say, 3-4 am. When I'm really busy, I have to pick a target bedtime and turn off my electronics 2 hrs prior; it helps my mind unwind and I can do reading, light chores or whatnot. For long periods when I don't stick to this rule, my life gets suddenly erratic and disjointed.

The search function is your friend. There are threads about this from prior years, and one that is pretty recent that I replied to last week:

I am working on a project for a Remote Sensing class, and did the following B/W coloration on an image. (It's actually a way of doing vegetation index, but that info isn't terribly useful in this case.) Look especially at the dots in the lower-middle. What do you think these are? The lines are dirt roads, for some idea of scale. Very curious to know what people think...esp. those that, like me, may spend their free time browsing GoogleEarth.

That is awesome. Reminds me of a past student who told me that the Himalayas were 33 feet below sea level. I have been grading, and came across this last night: "10,000 years ago, human became sedimentary because they needed to live near water sources." An otherwise intelligent essay...just poor word choice!

Definitely worth a read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

Always operate on the assumption that the answer is "Yes." Last week I went to a panel on my campus about how academic job searches work. All agreed that you need to cultivate a "digital footprint" that is as professional as possible. This has been - I think response #8 is especially informative.

FWIW, here is one. Note the department hosting it. All good questions, to which I never found concrete answers, despite extensive searches last year as I wrote mine. I did find, however, this topic has been discussed the internet over here, and in other fora: On Grad Café: the and Economics applicants discuss here. A rather shocking one at a Physics forum. I discussed my prior work in the public sector (as a teacher adapting to students' different learning styles, and working for Calif State Parks), advantage of maturity and travel/work experience as a non-traditional student (I'm in my 30s), and built the argument that since I wanted to make my career in the CA public sector, the UC system/state would do well to invest in me.

An excellent post. Thanks for summarizing your first-hand experience; I enjoyed reading it. I've been excited to see Occupy move to college campuses. To all those who accuse the movement of having a garbled message: again, check out your local Occupy and educate yourself. On my campus, the message couldn't be clearer: we oppose 1) proposals for astronomical tuition hikes, and 2) the use of police force to suppress protests on other college campuses (e.g. UC Davis).

There is much I could say, but am going to have to decline from framing a thoughtful reply in the immediate future...too many looming deadlines. Here is one thing that sums up my initial reaction to the day's activity on this topic quite well:

What if it's work done and collected the last day of class? Hence my use of "final" in the original statement; that was the built-in assumption. Sorry if it wasn't clearer. Still, a logistical problem - how is a TA/prof/instructor going to efficiently redistribute work back to everyone if there's no more class? I've offered ways to save students this trouble in the past (mailing final labs, scanned copies of midterms via email), and been rather surprised by the underwhelming response. As an aside, a professor friend of mine recently had a new university decree: 1) all graded work must be returned, and 2) it now had to be done in such a way that there was NO opportunity to see others' grades. No more stacks of exams on a table at the beginning/end of class, or left outside of offices, for people to sift through -- he had to give up instructional time to individually hand them back, which amounted to 15-20 min in big lecture courses. Which is the more asinine - profs having to cut out curriculum to allow time for an overly-PC mandate, or expecting students to adapt their schedule and sacrifice 5-10 min if they genuinely care to see their grade and feedback?

Some do. I tend to agree with your implied suspicion of such quickly-formed, intense friend/relationships, though. Strong, real friendships take time. Also, the “character” of the cohort varies widely, depending on the school, program, even by the year. You have years in school to interact with these people, and likely your entire professional career beyond that. You could probably describe my social life of the last two months as Spartan; my interactions with my cohort center around classes, seminar, who I run into in the office/mailroom/hallways, and an ill-attended weekly happy hour. It doesn’t bother me because 1) I am confident it will happen in time, and 2) I know there are an overwhelming number of other social outlets in the form of academic societies, beer drinking clubs, athletics, etc. etc. in my area. I’ve been real lazy about persuing those thus far, so I must not be truly lonely, right? The grad student population in my MS was rife with cliques, gossip, bad feelings, and inter-dating. Being “outside” of it (when I first arrived) could be the most alienating feeling in the world; being a part of it was nonstop drama. While I still consider some of those folks my close friends, I very much appreciate the more slow-paced, professional, collegial rapport here. And I’ll be your friend. At least, virtually.