xrsng

I learn so much from this forum!

- memorize your graduate handbook. it will have all the timelines you need to meet, the courses you need to take, the requirements you need to fulfill. your advisor, believe it or not, will not actually know this stuff. s/he will know that there are certain things you need to do to meet your requirements, but s/he won't actually know what those things are. it's up to you to be on top of it. sometimes, the director of grad studies won't even know what it is you need to do. frustrating, but as long as you have the department handbook to back you up, you'll be okay.

- learn to value yourself for something other than being smart. everyone in your program is smart. everyone is used to getting the top grades in their class. you will no longer be the best and the brightest. you will also frequently be told that your work isn't good. the grades themselves don't matter anymore, it's the comments in the margins that let you know your work was inadequate. you will have weeks or months of self-doubting, you will read your advisor's every twitch and tick as evidence of his/her contempt for your mediocrity.

like yourself because you're funny, because you're creative, because you can run a marathon, because you can fix things with your hands, because you actually had the "wild years" (or "tumultuous years") that your colleagues heard so much about when they were in the library/lab. but do NOT like yourself only for your intelligence, because within a year, you won't feel smart anymore. i've given this pep talk to colleagues of mine that were having panic attacks when they thought they wouldn't get research funding or that their advisor hated their work, and it rarely sinks in for most of them, because they've always been "the smart one" and can't yet see themselves as anything else. it's time to let that go. even the students with 4.0 GPAs, who breeze through their thesis/comps/overview, who hold big-time national fellowships have days/weeks/months of feeling stupid.

- know the department politics. if there's a universally-hated faculty member, you should know that before you start bringing that person onto various committees. if that universally-hated faculty member is your advisor, you need to know that too, because it will be up to you to cultivate strong relationships with other faculty. they'll need to like you because they don't like your prof.

- don't date within your department. seriously. it's too incestuous and breeds competition within a relationship or between couples. grad school isn't on the buddy-system. you don't need to pair up with someone the first month you get here.

I decided to live in the dorms my first year of Grad School. I went for the cheapest thing on campus...

BIG MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have a freshman (yes, an undergrad freshman) roommate who loves to stay up until 4, playing WOW (including the night before I had a midterm), and the building smells like weed most of the time. I don't think it's until now that I realized how immature underclassmen are! So if you stay on campus, splurge a little bit for a graduate apartment, because this 4am World of Warcraft crap and the weed have got to go!

On behalf of exhausted grad students everywhere, I present this seal to the Grad Cafe and its fabulous members.

This is a great thread. I'll add a few things:

1) Gregory Semenza's book "Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century" is excellent for humanities folk. It has motivated me in many ways to make the most of my time during the MA. Read it!!

2) Don't blather on with personal stories during class discussion. Keep your comments focused on the course material and avoid derailing the whole conversation just so you can chat about your ancestor who was in the Civil War or your visit to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, or whatever. Yes, now and then a personal story is appropriate, but keep it short. Avoid becoming "that person" who only wants to talk about him/herself.

3) Participate in department events, like end-of-semester dinners, important guest lectures, and so on. You don't have to attend every single thing, but be a presence so that others know you care about the department and are taking advantage of the resources offered.

4) School is now your job, so you should treat it like one. Do not miss class without an excellent reason, do not turn in assignments late, do not whine about the grades you are given. (I've seen other first-years making these types of faux pas... they tend to be here straight out of undergrad.)

5) Advice above re: sleep is great, even if I haven't taken it myself. You might barely function with four hours of sleep each night, but give your brain a chance to rest with a good 8 hours so you can work at full mental capacity!

Wanted to start by mentioning a huge THANK YOU to all the members of the forum for their sincere and timely advice that guided us along the hazardous path of applications and the equivocal journey of the selection process:

THANK YOU

MERCI BEAUCOUP

GRACIAS

GRAZIE

VIELEN DANK

ASANTE, etc!

Wishing you all the best in your postgraduate studies and all the plans and ambitions you foster!

Ad astra per aspera (A rough road leads to the stars)

Wanted to start by mentioning a huge THANK YOU to all the members of the forum for their sincere and timely advice that guided us along the hazardous path of applications and the equivocal journey of the selection process:

THANK YOU

MERCI BEAUCOUP

GRACIAS

GRAZIE

VIELEN DANK

ASANTE, etc!

Wishing you all the best in your postgraduate studies and all the plans and ambitions you foster!

Ad astra per aspera (A rough road leads to the stars)

Wanted to start by mentioning a huge THANK YOU to all the members of the forum for their sincere and timely advice that guided us along the hazardous path of applications and the equivocal journey of the selection process:

THANK YOU

MERCI BEAUCOUP

GRACIAS

GRAZIE

VIELEN DANK

ASANTE, etc!

Wishing you all the best in your postgraduate studies and all the plans and ambitions you foster!

Ad astra per aspera (A rough road leads to the stars)

Wanted to start by mentioning a huge THANK YOU to all the members of the forum for their sincere and timely advice that guided us along the hazardous path of applications and the equivocal journey of the selection process:

THANK YOU

MERCI BEAUCOUP

GRACIAS

GRAZIE

VIELEN DANK

ASANTE, etc!

Wishing you all the best in your postgraduate studies and all the plans and ambitions you foster!

Ad astra per aspera (A rough road leads to the stars)

My advice to first year Graduate Students: Change your mind and turn around. Don't go to grad school!

Yoga, reading People and US in the checkout line, going to a live show and dancing like a madwoman, hanging out with people who aren't in grad school (extremely important!!!) surfing, and of course, orgasms don't hurt AT ALL.

Hey, what do you do for stress relief?
I do (get) orgasms.
Nice. Your boyfriend must be really encouraging and supportive of your research work.

^^This.

Kept me sane for the last semester.

when you're apart, have an open relationship.







just kidding.







not really kidding.

The first rule of grad school, nobody cares about you finishing like you do. Don't trust your professor to necessarily have your best interests in mind when it comes to you finishing your program. Also, make sure they don't lose your stuff, and that you follow up on anything important you ask anyone to do. Their priorities are not always the same as yours and a lot of the stuff they "suggest" you do are just suggestions and not required. Make sure though, if you are unclear if something is a suggestion or a requirement that you clarify.

Also, your major professor and committee will make or break your program, choose carefully, it's probably the most important decision you make in grad school.

The posts are fabulous! I'm not sure how things work in Computer Sciences, if you have funding, ect but I would like to add to the list of great advice the following--- no matter how friendly everyone in your department/cohort is.... just because you are 'in' does not always mean the competition is over and there are always 'unfriendly' folks (brought out even more in this economic climate of funding cuts! So- I would suggest new grad students slowly get to know your colleagues and be professional at all times from the moment you step on campus. Friendships take time- to quotePessi a line from the 'Godfather'- " Never let them know what your thinking"!! Sounds pessimistic I know- and I'm an optimist!! But I think its important to remember that people gossip ect- I've heard grad students/faculty taking betting pools on who would be leaving, thrown out ect! Just a reminder to look at this process without rose tinted glasses!!! Do your best work- be professional- make professional connections!! Ie your wild days with colleagues are sadly over!

Don't buy into the myth that in order to be a serious scholar you're not allowed to have a life outside of school.

Learn to prioritize. There are going to be many demands on your time and you'll have to figure out how to divide it in a sensible way.
Decide which of the tasks you have to do are important (your research, your LIFE), which you can just do a mediocre job on and get away with it (classwork, etc), and which ones you just have to say NO to.

BTW, saying 'no' is another important skill to learn..

So I don't know enough about this situation to understand why you think and your advisor thinks that he is being reasonable. You are a first year graduate student with one semester under your belt. Why does he think you should be ready to publish at this point? I don't think it is unusual to not submit manuscripts until you are in your third year let alone your first. How can your untenured advisor be very senior in the department? That doesn't make logical sense without more information. The tenured professors in the department will be voting on whether to keep him and therefore more senior. Senior indicates how long they have been in the department. By senior to you really mean influential? These are different things.


It sounds to me like you are being tossed in with all sorts of expectations and not being mentored. If you don't know how to approach research it is your advisor's job to teach you how to think about it. It's like taking upper-level major classes, they are about the content to some extent, but its more about learning how to read research or work problems. Its about learning to approach the subject properly. Either your advisor or a further along grad student should be teaching you how to approach research, how to recognize the beginnings of results, how to then focus in, etc.

How does funding work in your department? Is all funding through the advisors or is there the possibility of becoming a department funded TA if you are not given an RA position? Were you guaranteed funding for 4 or 5 years when admitted. If you have any sort of fall-back like this you might be a bit less stressed out about producing results. Look to grad students who have successfully gotten further in their grad careers than you have. Ask them questions about options should your advisor follow through with taking away your RA funding.

Finally, just because your advisor-advisee relationship hit a snag, that doesn't mean its over. He does sound like a bit of a hard-ass but you signed up for that, thinking it was positive he emphasized results. Are there other advisees of this same professor? They have probably been dealing with him longer and know how to approach him, how to avoid pissing him off, etc. You need to figure out what you have been doing, where the weaknesses you see in yourself are, what needs to be fixed. Set goals for yourself and meet them. If one of your issues is that you are not currently skilled at honing in on usable results, explain that to your advisor. Ask if you can set up a weekly meeting (if you don't have one already) where you show him what you have been doing that week and he can see if he can help you to focus on the right next step. It sounds like he is having you be too independent too fast. Demand more attention until you are at a place where being independent is a reasonable expectation. If there is any time that you are unclear on how to proceed or don't know what is expected of you, ask. I know the whole advisor-advisee relationship is scary in its power differential especially if your advisor is already threatening to take away funding, but the relationship is based on advice. Make sure he is giving you plenty. If he is not going to mentor you, do look around your department and think about whether you can 1) setup a co-advising or unofficial second mentorship with another professor who you could serve on your committees, or 2) see if there is another research fit that would allow you to study the things you want to study with a better advisor-advisee relationship. I think it is way too early for you to be thinking about dropping out. That seems to be stemming from the advisor-advisee issues which are to be weathered, rather than a disinterest in the research. If you aren't producing because you don't like research as much as you thought you would, that is when to consider dropping out.

It's not difficult, but it does take time. And many current department webpages are not designed very well either. astro.columbia.edu has 91 errors according to the W3C markup validation service. astro.washington.edu has 25 errors. astro.caltech.edu has 88 errors. astro.princeton.edu has 36 errors.

And yes, design does matter, since many people do form first impressions based on how good the website is. Especially when they're comparing between departments.

The fact is, that if it's not difficult *and* takes time, then grad student labor can be used for it. Just like TAing. Plus, it doesn't take much time to make a crappy webpage, but it does take more time to make a website that's actually good.

Plus, many professors may want better webpages. Lots of professors have pretty crappy webpages, but they could use labor to make better ones that would also help advertise themselves better.

What does CAD mean?

"That's great but ... couldn't you find something in New York?"

WHAT does "POI" stand for? I just always say "PI," as in "principal investigator." I've googled. I've lurked. I'm out of ideas. Here are a few I have:

Primary Opium Introducer
Pithy Orangutan Instigator
Perching Orange Intimidator
Person Oppressing Imagination
Pathological Optimism Incinerator
Professor of Interest (<---- that's actually a legitimate guess)


Don't judge me. Maybe somebody else out there has this question too.

Thank the Lord for anonymous forums.

Hi xrsng,

From what I've seen, the only on-campus housing for graduate students is at Northwood apartments which tend to be more expensive than off-campus housing. Have you seen UMich's offcampus housing website here: http://www.offcampus...du/lt/index.cfm ?

I'm guessing that you're going to be on North Campus? If so you might be interested in housing near North Campus. I have a list of apartment complexes near North Campus that I got at visit weekend that I could send you. Alternatively you could find somewhere else that may not be close to North Campus, but is located in a bus line. UMich students can ride the bus for free and if you find a place near a U-M bus line, then it could take you straight to campus.

OK! So. Today I accepted an offer at a school I'm very excited about. They seem to be excited about me, too, because they offered me a pretty prestigious fellowship. It was icing on the cake.

This school let me know their decision FOUR DAYS after I interviewed. I thought, "whoa. These guys are on top of things."

I only applied to two schools, and to tell you the truth, this one I accepted wasn't my first choice in the beginning. Then came the visit. The school that I THOUGHT was my first choice didn't turn out to be the well-oiled machine like the other. They kept lying to me, telling me I would hear my decision in a "few days" or "by the end of the week." It was always a different answer, and it was a two-month saga that exhausted me. This morning I emailed and asked one final time. Then I thought to myself (after consideration of much of the advice floating on GradCafe), if this school accepted me, would I go there? And when I realized that the true answer was NO, I just went ahead and accepted the offer to the school that wants me. I gave both schools a lot of thought, made pro/con lists, slept on it for months, and arrived at my decision. Hooray!

Fast forward to tonight. I'm sitting here doodling online and celebrating life when my inbox flares. (of course, right? it always happens that way). The adcomm apologized for taking so long to get back to me, and then asked me a bunch of questions about their concerns with my application. "what are you going to do when things get tough?" "Are you sure you have the passion for this?"

I mean, seriously? If these were the issues that prevented you from giving me a decision, why didn't you ask me sooner? Why keep lying and saying you are making a decision, and only respond to me after ignoring me for so long? It's... practically April. I predict they were waiting to hear back from other students before deciding if they should investigate me more, but I wish they would have been more upfront about it. I spent two months going through whiplash and not knowing what was going on.

I guess the point is that it doesn't matter. I responded with a kind email saying that, while I certainly have the passion necessary for their program, I accepted another offer earlier today. It felt good. I finally have closure. Now I can move on with my life! I just needed to tell this story because, well, I needed to share with people I knew would understand!

You guys on the GradCafe have been an invaluable resource for me. I so appreciate the laughs, support, and geeky cyber-friendships that we share. I wish all the best to ALL of you in this process. It's finally over for me!