go3187

You could take the battery out, and put it back only when you unplug your laptop.

I doubt mandatory office hours would work at our university, and for all the (science) courses I took over the last 6 years, the office hours were optional. In the undergrad course I'm TAing this semester, there are a few students who are doing very poorly. The homework is 40% of the final grade, and there's a final exam that's 60%. Some of the students (about 1/4 of the class) have such a low homework average that they'd need to do better in the exam than in the homework in order to pass -- that's rarely the case. I've been TAing this course for the last 5 years, and it's for the first time that the homework grades are so low. (The homework assignments are essentially the same as in previous years, and my grading hasn't changed.) I have office hours twice a week, including on the weekends (undergrads live on campus, my office is on campus), and I'm available any time by email or phone. Out of 10 students, there's one who emails me whenever he needs help, one who came to office hours once, while the others never emailed/phoned me and never came to office hours. The professor reminded them a few times that they should see me if they are struggling with the course, but that didn't help. So, I'd love to be able to implement mandatory office hours! However, not even classes are mandatory unless the attendance is graded, which is usually not the case in our science courses. For office hours to be mandatory, attending them would need to be graded. I'm certain my professor would never agree to that, and I don't think the university would either. ETA: In the unlikely case that one of those 2 students who will likely fail the course asked me for a LOR, I would definitely not discourage them from applying to grad school, to an internship, etc. I would, however, tell them that I don't know them well enough to be able to write a strong LOR.

Whether or not you are accepted somewhere, I think you should let the professors who wrote your LOR know the outcome. And if you don't get accepted, you can also let them know that you are planning to re-apply next year, and would appreciate if they could help you again with a LOR. They can then decide whether they want to save the LOR that they wrote this year, and/or write you a new one. What are you planning to do during your gap year? If you are going to work, do research, anything that would help your application, then you should let your professors know about that too.

Never had ramen noodles... they aren't very popular in Europe, I think. I eat low(ish)-carb paleo. Breakfast is usually scrambled/fried eggs and vegetables. Lunch and dinner are salad, or meat and cooked veggies. I mostly drink water and (way too much!) coffee. Occasionally I eat nuts, mostly when I travel to conferences, and berries. I cook about three times a week, and use my slow cooker and steamer a lot. My monthly food expenses are around $150-200. Normally I buy whatever meat and veggies are cheap/on sale, which typically means eggs, whole chicken, chicken leg quarters, chicken livers, fresh ham or pork shoulder arm picnic, pork steaks, ground meat, and veggies that are in season. But staying within my food budget, I can also afford more expensive meals (e.g., salmon) a few times per week.

RefWorks is the software provided by our university, but I haven't tried it. I started with Mendeley, and sticked to it just because I'm a creature of habit. However, for my field and my way of working, Mendeley does everything I need. I mostly use it to save trees by not printing every paper I'm interested in. I like that you can highlight stuff you're interested in, add notes, and then share the annotated files with collaborators. I'm not sure how it works in other fields, but in astrophysics we can find essentially any paper here: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/, and the site allows one to download a bibtex entry for each paper. So I get all the bibtex entries I need from this website, and (gasp!) have one BIG text file in which I save all of them. I write my paper in latex, using kwrite. I remember when I was writing my 3rd paper, I emailed the tex and bib files to my advisor, and he commented that there were many references in my bib file which I didn't need for the paper. He was shocked when I told him I use one common bib file for all my papers, lol. It's probably not the most organized way of handling references, but so far it's been working fine for me.

Your question is a little general, and you should contact the universities where you plan to apply for information. As far as I know, essentially all university scholarships are for PhD students. Everyone I know who did their Master's in Belgium supported themselves by getting a loan and a job. Would it be possible to find some funding from your country? That might be easier. I don't know of any private organizations that offer funding for non-EU students. I'm curious though, why are you choosing Belgium for your MS in Astronomy? What are your research interests?

I use Mendeley for organizing and reading papers, and (mostly) IDL for programming and plotting. I write my papers in kwrite, using Latex, and then ps/pdf them from the terminal. (I work in Linux.)

I applied as an international student, and all my friends were international students as well, but some of us only received rejections months after April 15th... some time during the summer. I guess it can happen for US students too. Congratulations on the fully-funded PhD program!

From one of your previous posts, I am assuming you are referring to the Global Health program at UCSF. This is from one of their FAQs: "When Can I Apply? Online applications will be available starting September 5, 2011 on the GHS website. The application deadline is March 23, 2012, although late applications may be submitted without assurance of review or an interview. Late applicants may by placed on a waitlist and contacted if accepted candidates decline admission. The Admissions Committee will conduct interviews early in 2012, either face-to-face at the Beale Street location, or via Skype in the case of long-distance applicants. We will notify candidates of their status within a few weeks after the interview. Exceptionally qualified applicants may be accepted on a rolling basis; therefore, there is an advantage to an early application." http://globalhealthsciences.ucsf.edu/education-training/masters-program/faq The program has quite a high admission rate (25%), but the chances of getting in if you sent your application 3 weeks after the deadline are pretty small, imo.

My parents are similar, in that they can't imagine I might end up not getting a postdoc, not working in academia, or not even having a job in astrophysics. This isn't only my impostor syndrome surfacing; jobs in astrophysics are just incredibly hard to get at this point. However, I remind myself that my family doesn't really understands what I do. There was this funny picture shared by a friend on FB, which made a similar point: Asking my parents to "get" how challenging is going to be to find an astrophysics job is... well, a little too much, and probably unnecessary too. Now, does it bother me? Yes and no. It's not their attitude that's really the problem, I think, but my fear of what they'll think if I don't make it, if they will be faced with the fact that I might not be quite as smart/amazing as they think I am. (As an aside, I'm dealing with a very similar issue in another aspect of my life, and I'm seeing someone at the university's counseling center to get some help with it.)

One can only undo a sent email in the next few seconds after clicking Send though...

I don't think it means you were waitlisted. No clue what that last sentence means though. From the way the email is written, the person who wrote it didn't check your application status. To me, it reads like an email she would have sent to anyone asking your question. I wouldn't know more from this email than I knew before sending it...

(I realize that I'm bumping a very old thread here.) I think it depends a lot on what someone wants to do with an astrophysics degree. Finding jobs in astrophysics is very, very difficult at the moment, and bordering on impossible without a PhD. As discouraging as this might sound, most of the astrophysics students I know who didn't go for a PhD work outside astrophysics, very often as programmers. Also, of those with a PhD, most -- even some of those students with very good results (5-10 published papers, many conference talks, many accepted research proposals, etc.) -- end up doing jobs that could have been done with a physics or CS degree. Of the remaining few, many follow their PhD with (usually) two postdocs, then search for jobs in academia; but there's also the risk of not getting a (second) postdoc position in astrophysics... as it happened to my former officemate, who had to leave astrophysics and now does research in climate change (numerical simulations). That doesn't mean it's impossible to do astrophysics. But after much time and money invested in an astrophysics degree, there's a high chance that an astrophysicist ends up not doing astrophysics. If someone already has a very good job in IT, she/he should ask herself/himself whether it's worth giving it up only to (likely) end up applying for jobs in the same field a few years later.

I'd call it arrogance. If you were just overconfident, you would have seen your self-worth without comparing yourself to others, and without stating your equality or superiority with all those whose theses you read (theses which, as you wrote, likely included some of the best, too). You know how I read this? "You have no idea how brilliant I am!" From what was quoted above, you seem to think others don't realize how brilliant you are either. I think getting some help for dealing your insecurities might benefit you more in the long-term than just getting a master's.

I agree that there was no way for us to divine the kind of answers the OP wanted. I originally read the thread the same way as you did, as having two possible answers: "write some standard reply for all the programs you decline" or "write something personalized, for e.g. <insert idea>". After reading it a few more times, I can see how "new & fresh" might refer to ideas for personalized emails, and exclude the old and boring (?) reply, "just send a standard reply". But it's not how I first read it either. Had I answered the OP, I would have suggested the old and boring email. Then I would have been frustrated by the OP's first reply, but I would have kept it nice, I wouldn't have mocked her preference... and I certainly wouldn't have gone back through her posts to give negative rep points. (I have more interesting ways to procrastinate, lol.) Or to post "swan songs". While I can understand the OP's anger and frustration, I think there would have been wiser, less board-dividing ways to handle these feelings and the situation in general (privately, with the admins/mods, and then by PM with people who noticed/would notice her absence). None of us can control how others reply to us, but when someone is mean and working hard to annoy us, we can outsmart them by learning to ignore their antics; their behavior will reflect negatively on them more than their actions do on us. Hopefully the OP will take a deep breath, calm down, perhaps let some time pass, and learn something from what happened. I think most of us wouldn't want her to leave.

Are you referring to the OP's posts in In my opinion, she didn't come close to telling someone that they were "going against the theme" of the board. The way I read post #9 in that thread, she wrote what drew her to the board ("I was drawn to TheGradCafe.com for the supportive and positive environment."), and how she thinks many others view the forum ("I think that many other posters feel the same way about this forum."). To me, that means sharing her experience and opinion ("I was drawn", "I think"), not telling anyone what's the "theme" of the board. In reference to the other thread, would it hurt the OP to send the professors a personalized email if that's what she wants? I don't think it would, although I wouldn't have done it myself (but then, I also wasn't in that situation when I applied). And if it doesn't hurt sending personalized emails, then ANDS!'s advice was not really better than different views presented in the thread. ANDS! first reply there, and the OP's reply to his/her post, were polite. But because the OP (politely) disagreed with ANDS!'s suggestion, she got back a sarcastic reply, "Well then by all means, craft personalized emails for these instructors you have had these substantive conversations with who I am quite sure will remember you in 5 or 10 years.", followed by another, "But hey I'm sure someone will come along and tell the OP what they want to hear: personalized hand written cards (perhaps scented) expressing deepest regrets and the hope that this doesn't completely shatter their graduate program." There were others who agreed with ANDS! that a canned email would suffice. The OP didn't/doesn't seem to be bothered by those, so was she really upset because she "wasn't told what she wanted to hear"? I'm not so sure. She's the only one who can answer that, but I would assume that what bothered her was the part of ANDS!'s post that she quoted in her 2nd reply to him/her (post #9). It's the same that bothered me, too. Among all the fluff existing on the board, the experienced grad students who give good advice, imo, do it bluntly, but with clear good intentions. I hope we all reply to others with good intentions. But while I see the good intentions behind ANDS!'s first reply, I fail to see them behind the unnecessary, repeated sarcasm. That said, giving negative reputation points for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual posts isn't exactly what I would call "really awful behavior." I've seen so much worse online. I understand it can be upsetting though (been there; it took some gentle guidance from a dear friend to learn not to care).

For a couple of years I was the youngest grad student in our department, and I never gave much thought to it. In fact, I initially thought the age difference between me and a few other grad students was smaller than it actually is (~7 years). Now I share the office with a postdoc who's 10 years older than me, and before I had as officemate someone who was about 8 years older. The age difference hasn't been an issue at all. I think the youngest in our department is now 22, and the oldest is 34 (excluding the professors, who are around 40). We all get along just fine, and everyone joins common activities.

You got some good advice above. Thought I'd share the experience of my first day as a TA. It was my first teaching job, for a computer lab. I had it all planned nicely in my mind... and then my PhD supervisor decided to stay in the lab while I was explaining things at the blackboard (he normally doesn't)! I freaked out. I realized right then that I wasn't clear, that what I was saying probably didn't make much sense to the students, but I just couldn't get back to the plan I'd made. It was awful. As I gained more teaching experience, things got better though. Now, 5 years later, I could TA with anyone in the room, and I'm okay with not being able to answer some questions right away, or with knowing that a class didn't go as well as I wished. Tip: Try not to puke in the class. THAT first impression might be harder to change.

As others have said, it's normal. The only people who don't normally have to pay (or are reimbursed by the organizers) for their registration fee, accommodation, etc. are invited speakers. The chances of getting an invited talk as a grad student are about 0 though. In some cases, the department (or your supervisor, if he has grant money that he's willing to spend on you ) might cover traveling fees, accommodation, conference dinner, registration, and so on; our department does it for conferences in Europe, as long as you have your advisor's approval to participate. That's clearly not the case for you this time though, since you were asked to pay the registration fee for a conference organized by your university.

I applied to only two universities, ended up at my backup choice. Best thing that ever happened to me! I happen to have an amazing PhD supervisor, who helped me grow a lot (not only academically) since we started working together. I don't know how it would have been at my (then) "dream school", but I have nothing to complain about.

My glasses are -1.5/-1.25, but my vision began getting worse probably in my 2nd year of undergrad (can't blame it all on grad school). I went without glasses for a couple of years, and only saw an ophthalmologist after my first year in grad school. Sitting almost all day in front of a computer definitely makes things worse. I can go without glasses after a long weekend spent with little work and some outdoor activities, but it's very unpleasant to do so at the end of a day spent working.

What did you study as an undergrad? Any work experience? Is this a 1st year undergrad course? 2nd year? What are you expected to do as a TA? I would check the course outline. You probably have some background in a related field. For example, even though I only took a general geosciences course in my first year as an undergrad (my major was Earth and Space Sciences, but I specialized in astrophysics), with some reading I could have TA'd a geology course. It wouldn't have been the ideal TA job for me, but it could have been done. Also, things taught in this lab might be useful for your PhD and/or your future career, so this is a great learning opportunity for you too. From reading your other posts on the forum, I think you likely know more already than the students who'll be taking this lab, and it will be easier for you to understand the material. Have you TA'd other courses as an undegrad? You won't be expected to know everything, to know everything in advance, or to be able to come up right away with an answer to any question students might ask. I've been TAing only astrophysics courses for the last 5 years, but I still have to prepare for office hours and tutorials, and it does take me a few hours each week to solve the homework assignments. It's definitely easier now than it was 4-5 years ago, but it's work nevertheless. And there are also times when I have to tell a student that I'll think about her question and email her later. I think that's okay to do.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=8 Kidding aside, some schools have many activities for graduate students too. We have coffee breaks a few times a week and BBQs every now and then, we go on trips together, watch movies... And if you want to meet more people, you could also do it outside the university (e.g. take a dance class, a photography course, a cooking class, whatever your hobbies are). Here's another thread on this topic:

You can see here the minimum requirements for running Stata: http://www.stata.com/products/opsys/

Those feelings come and go for me too... they usually rear their head whenever I achieve something. I haven't re-read this recently, but I remember liking this Nature article on the topic: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2009/090521/full/nj7245-468a.html