eco_env

I realize now that I was completely unprepared to apply when I did- my research interests were very unfocused. I've been reading papers in ecology for ages to try to develop a specific interest, but it wasn't until the summer before I started grad school, with the pressure of having to write an NSF fellowship application, that I started narrowing down my broad interests into a specific set of experiment ideas and reading about the overarching theory related to those experiments. At this point, it's about 3-4 months since I settled on a theme and context for my research and I'm still finding new papers (new to me, but at least several years old) I need to read. I think with the library I've developed over the past few months I would have been able to make much more informed decisions about where to apply and would have done a better job of convincing POI's that I'm a good fit. If you can write a good NSF research proposal, your interests are probably focused enough. But it's too late for me to test that hypothesis, so I don't know if I'm right. (This is why I fantasize about applying to grad school again- because I think I could do a much better job now)

for those of you that are moving a long distance for grad school how do you go about finding an apartment? I don't mean which websites, etc. I mean- do you pick apartments to look at before moving, then stay at a hotel while looking at those apartments? rent an apartment without seeing it in person? How early do you need to move to the city if you are doing the former? do you need to move at the end of the month so you can look at apartments that become available at the beginning of the month? Basically, I want to get an idea of the overall process people go through to find a decent apartment if they are moving several thousand miles away.

the US news report rankings are almost useless- they are just based on reputation. look at the NRC rankings (though the data is a little old): http://www.nap.edu/rdp/
They rank 94 neuroscience programs based on research, student support, and diversity- you can look at specific data based on what's important to you, or you can use Phds.org to do it for you. you can also try searching for specifc school names on US news.

$20 couch. (I'm the 3rd owner).

$20 couch. (I'm the 3rd owner).

Why don't you just tell the truth? If you don't get it, that doesn't mean you're clueless, you just need some help understanding this one concept. And if you were slacking off because you were working on other things, well, you don't even need to meet with the prof. You know what you need to do.

Philosophical question here:

Ideally, we would like to project the image that we are smart AND hard-working. (In theory, projecting that image got us in to grad school.) But sometimes things go wrong. For instance, I bombed a quiz recently. In part it was because the part of the book it asked about hadn't jumped out at me as important enough to memorize, and in part because I hadn't read that chapter very thoroughly to begin with.

If you get a bad grade, it seems to me the two main interpretations are (a) you don't get it, or ( you've been slacking. (Or c - You were slacking on this class because you were working your tail off on another class, but I think the profs just group that with b.)

So, when talking to a prof after a bad grade, which interpretation is more desirable, if you have the option of spinning things more one way or the other?

I know research has shown that kids who are praised for being hard workers accomplish more than those praised for being smart, because the former group keeps working hard when problems get difficult, while the latter group assumes they're not smart enough. Personally, I take more offense when a professor suggests that we haven't been working hard enough (doing the homework, studying, what have you) when I know I have been doing those things. But would it do any good to confront that accusation with, "That's not true! I HAVE been doing all the homework, and I STILL don't get it."

Thoughts?

I see where you're coming from, but I don't think that's the right approach... Consider it from a practical point of view. Imagine that one of your current male friends/colleagues were accused of rape and charges were dropped. If everything you knew about this man indicates that he is a good person, then it would be wrong to treat him as a potential threat simply because someone accused him of rape. How far are you willing to carry out that principle? By that logic, you should be suspicious of everyone you ever meet in life because there's a chance he/she could be a criminal. But that raises another question...are criminals "bad people"? Should they be treated like they are less than human? No. Every behavior has a natural cause, therefore criminal behavior is natural behavior explainable by the circumstances of that person's life. So even if you do choose to live an overly cautious life and assume that everyone might try to hurt you, you should at least have the empathy and compassion to understand that they are still people with fears and worries of their own...such as a society that will unrelentingly label them for fear of some false accusations.

I can also see the "self-fulfilling prophecy" creeping into this. If you assume that someone is a bad person, it will implicitly influence your behaviors toward that person (in a bad way). The person will pick up on these implicit cues and respond in a negative way, which you will interpret as confirming your suspicions. So basically, you will perceive what you want to perceive about a person...even if there is no truth to it.



Come on...that's silly. We're all adults here. And even if we weren't, the whole idea of "cursing" is archaic nonsense. As I'm sure you know, the concept of cursing originated in the Dark Ages when people believed that saying certain words would literally cast a magical curse with real consequences. But we know that isn't true anymore, and "cursing" is just a social construct. So fuck it, let's be objective about the situation and use whatever words we think best convey our thoughts.

Honestly, I think that your actions have to speak louder than your words. That is, you'll need to prove to your current and future colleagues that you were falsely accused. Because my reaction, at least upon reading your initial post, is that you were accused of something but it didn't go any further because various authority figures decided that the accuser's story was weak and thus had little chance of being successful in court. None of which, by the way, indicates a false accusation, merely one with a lack of physical evidence or other factors that make police and prosecutors hesitant to legally pursue such crimes and perpetuate a cultural problem where women who are raped or sexually assaulted keep silent, rather than coming forward.

I realize now that I was completely unprepared to apply when I did- my research interests were very unfocused. I've been reading papers in ecology for ages to try to develop a specific interest, but it wasn't until the summer before I started grad school, with the pressure of having to write an NSF fellowship application, that I started narrowing down my broad interests into a specific set of experiment ideas and reading about the overarching theory related to those experiments. At this point, it's about 3-4 months since I settled on a theme and context for my research and I'm still finding new papers (new to me, but at least several years old) I need to read. I think with the library I've developed over the past few months I would have been able to make much more informed decisions about where to apply and would have done a better job of convincing POI's that I'm a good fit. If you can write a good NSF research proposal, your interests are probably focused enough. But it's too late for me to test that hypothesis, so I don't know if I'm right. (This is why I fantasize about applying to grad school again- because I think I could do a much better job now)

I also look at the price/unit when I'm shopping, which means that I often buy store brands or larger packages, as long as it won't spoil before I finish it, and if it's not too big to carry home on the bus along with all of my other groceries. The problem is, I find that cheaper brands are often cheaper for a reason (terrible quality), so I'm starting to switch to more expensive products for some stuff (coffee, for ex).

I'm not surprised to hear you guys discussing the importance of good appearance (and the confidence that comes with that), as important in making a nice first impression. I'm a fastidiously clean guy, but I'm not exactly fashionable; whatever clothes are closest to my grasp are the ones I wear. I'll start to give a bit more thought to how I dress (maybe track pants and a button down shirt aren't the best combination).

By the way, I did decide to give OkCupid a try, especially since it's summer and there's less opportunity to meet people on campus now. It's only been a week, so can't judge the site yet, but a rather amusing thing happened. I messaged a girl who seemed interesting, and she replied back. We started chatting online, and when I asked her which university she goes to, she told me that she dropped out of school to take care of her sick mom. Obviously I offered my sympathies, but then she told me that she's doing a nude webcam show to raise money for her mom's health bills, and asked me to watch her perform. Oh, and she also said that I needed to register for a free account on a website to see her, and that, although registration would require my credit card information, it was simply for age verification and that I wouldn't be charged.

Fortunately for me, I'm not a pervert, and I'm quite bright enough not to be fleeced, let alone by a scam as glaringly obvious as this one. I told her that I didn't have my credit card with me, but that I'm a Nigerian prince, so if she sent me her bank account information, I would transfer a fortune over to her. Needless to say, she disappeared rather abruptly. I wonder how many people have been scammed by her by now, and if "she" is really a hairy old man. Who knows who actually lurks behind those profiles. At any rate, even if I find nobody on OkCupid, at least the entertainment quotient has been high!

Do you. Be yourself.

That's it. I could've done without reading some of the more judgmental replies in this thread. You're clearly a motivated, educated, good citizen. You don't need to force yourself to do things or attend social events that you normally wouldn't -- that's a quick path to find someone incompatible or to eliminate your sense of individualism.

Ideally, your PhD program will foster a healthy social environment where you meet similar people. That should branch out into a larger community (of the university, the surrounding town, etc.). Through that, you may come across a girl who strikes your interest and it'll be a natural connection. Although this is where I'll dispense some quick advice: manners, maturity, and cleanliness. Every man should strive to convey those qualities; they're implicit ways to show confidence without magically becoming an extrovert.

BTW, it seems there are studies popping up everywhere stating that people are focusing more on education and careers, and as a result, are getting married and having children later in life.

They might not even realize you are older. I'm always surprised to find out how much older than me some of the grad students in my program are, when I assumed they were my age.

I like this line; I think I'll borrow it. Not for conversations with a prospective advisor, though.

\ That is not funny, and is disrespectful to native Hawai'ians

The majority of my instructors of physics wear slippers in the labs and recitations... In fact, I've never seen them wear shoes. Here in my school, slippers is a code for physics students...

Y'all are either very bored or very crazy. And please, I don't mean that in a derisive way at all! More of a friendly, teasing, "My god, I wish I had the time to graph that all out" kind of way

If we acknowledge that the more recent years are better predictors than the farther away years, then we can do better than regression. We have to make several assumptions (like an original prior, that the years are i.i.d. normal, and that weekends, holidays, and leap years don't play in the decision). Each year's prior is the previous year's posterior, and we update our estimate and our uncertainty with new data. Then the box plots of the posterior distributions for each year are on the left, and our prior (our best guess based on the data) for 2012 is on the right.



The 95% HPD credible interval for the 2012 prior is the 93.63 to 98.53 day of non leap year, or from April 3rd to April 9th. And the most likely day is April 6th. So that doesn't narrow it down too much, but thats what I get from the data.

I still don't understand how someone would even be put in this situation. I fill out course evaluations all the time. No one has ever called me into their office to ask me how I scored them on the evaluation. The evaluations are supposed to be anonymous. I don't care if the professor thinks someone doctored or changed the evaluations to make them look bad. The burden of proving it should not fall on the students. If someone higher up actually felt it was necessary to do an investigation, they should be the ones doing the investigating. Not the professor.
I apologize, but this scenario just doesn't sound right.

Don't make an argument when you have insufficient supporting evidence.

Since my religion has very specific requirements it would be hard for me to not find time for it and still consider myself religious. I schedule prayers into my morning routine, so I wake up early enough to fit that in. I leave campus early enough to say afternoon prayers (eventually I'll probably need to do those in school, but that is fairly awkward if people walk in on me praying). I put religious stuff on my to do list, and will even make it higher priority than schoolwork if it's important enough. I'd say it's just a matter of deciding what your priorities in life are.

Muji notebooks are my favorite! Simple, color coded, classy, and inexpensive. You can buy them individually or in packs. BAM: http://www.muji.us/

+1 Regardless of what your beliefs are, I think a good way to approach this is to ground yourself in what those beliefs have taught you, and how they inform your actions - not the dogma/ritual associated with them (church/temple). I will admit, this is a big benefit to a secular worldview - no mess/strings attached when your time becomes limited. Values are based solely on Humanist ethics, so no time is required for outside "practice" or whatever, and nobody judging you for failing to adhere to some arbitrary set of rituals. But, for those who have been brought up in a religious faith, the social and community aspects of that faith may present the biggest challenges - perhaps it is the lack of these components that are worrying to practicing members of religious groups? Maybe graduate school could actually be seen as an opportunity to develop your own, more personal set of beliefs/values, based in those you held previously but acquired in absence of the rituals and community they originally were based in. It could be a great time to develop spiritually on your own terms. You know, make lemonade out of lemons sort of thing?

Hi

My son is a senior undergraduate student on F1 visa and his I20 completion date is 1st June 2012. However, he might not complete the course by that time, he has 3 more credits to complete and he might not get to complete during this summer, this is under his deans review. The question is, can he one apply for OPT now? If he does and does not graduate by 01 June 2012, what happens then? He has to register for fall 2012 with new i20 completion dates, then what happens to the EAD received for the OPT? Pl. Advice what should be his strategy or any other options available?

Your help is much appreciated.

thanks

Vijay K