jeffster

EPIC. I have not laughed like that about something online for awhile. Well, at least not since I read the reviews for this product. I am sending this to everyone in my lab group life.



For my part, I usually anticipate weekends...but then have a moment like this:

My goodness, the pictures from Dal PhDer and bluetubeodyssey just make me want to scratch those bellies. The bunnies are cute, but I wouldn't trust my dog around them! She's grown up with cats, but she loves to chase critters she sees outside.

Also, since everyone liked her, here's another shot of Misty in the car on the way up north a few years ago. She's a goofy puppy in an adult dog's body.

I love it, perusing this thread quickly exhausted my daily supply of up votes. Here's my little dober-girl, Misty. She's been with my parents for the last year and a half while I live over seas, but once I take stock of how grad school goes I'll look at moving her in. Although now she's so used to having my parents two dogs around, and their big yard, I might feel terrible trying to move her to a small apartment in the city!

I love it, perusing this thread quickly exhausted my daily supply of up votes. Here's my little dober-girl, Misty. She's been with my parents for the last year and a half while I live over seas, but once I take stock of how grad school goes I'll look at moving her in. Although now she's so used to having my parents two dogs around, and their big yard, I might feel terrible trying to move her to a small apartment in the city!

I love it, perusing this thread quickly exhausted my daily supply of up votes. Here's my little dober-girl, Misty. She's been with my parents for the last year and a half while I live over seas, but once I take stock of how grad school goes I'll look at moving her in. Although now she's so used to having my parents two dogs around, and their big yard, I might feel terrible trying to move her to a small apartment in the city!

I love it, perusing this thread quickly exhausted my daily supply of up votes. Here's my little dober-girl, Misty. She's been with my parents for the last year and a half while I live over seas, but once I take stock of how grad school goes I'll look at moving her in. Although now she's so used to having my parents two dogs around, and their big yard, I might feel terrible trying to move her to a small apartment in the city!

I love it, perusing this thread quickly exhausted my daily supply of up votes. Here's my little dober-girl, Misty. She's been with my parents for the last year and a half while I live over seas, but once I take stock of how grad school goes I'll look at moving her in. Although now she's so used to having my parents two dogs around, and their big yard, I might feel terrible trying to move her to a small apartment in the city!

I love it, perusing this thread quickly exhausted my daily supply of up votes. Here's my little dober-girl, Misty. She's been with my parents for the last year and a half while I live over seas, but once I take stock of how grad school goes I'll look at moving her in. Although now she's so used to having my parents two dogs around, and their big yard, I might feel terrible trying to move her to a small apartment in the city!

Happy Monday folks!!!

oh my gosh...everyone has such adorable pets!!!
I am not sure what I would do without my girl, Gemma! Honestly, there is something so special about a pet relationship!

Just a note to anyone planning on an adoption when they move to grad school: please, please give senior cats or dogs a chance. A kitten may seem like the most appealing and fun option, but kittens very rarely encounter trouble getting adopted. Seniors, on the other hand, may live out their final days (and it's a truncated period, as limited space makes them more "expendable") in a shelter despite the fact that nothing is wrong with them. You would make a huge impact by helping out a senior pet who has been forsaken. Not to mention that their dispositions can be eccentric and interesting -- a kitten will be a lot of work on top of a transition to a new school and location.

What a perfect pose.

I HAD to buy a Mac for my program, however right afterwards I changed programs and now have a Mac for a pointless reason.

My boyfriend's computer is twice as good as mine and was the same price, which says a lot because I got one of the best deals around on my Mac since I bought it through a rather large school discount.

I recommend PC. They are more compatible, they allow you to get far more software, accessories are cheaper, and if you had one already, you'll have an easier time learning the features.

Also, I got a Macbook (the white one) and the casing and cords are poorly made. I have cracks in the USB ports without ever having dropped my laptop and my charger doesn't work half the time; when it does, it gets far too hot.. the only reason I would ever recommend a Mac is if you need Mac specific software (for some odd reason) or you want long lasting battery power - I do enjoy that my Mac (on low settings) still gets just under 10 hours of battery power after nearly 2 years of use.

Sigaba, I'm afraid I can't tell if you're just trolling, or if you're really this unfamiliar with how internet forums work. The effectiveness of a forum is undermined when no one posts; it is not undermined by people posting similar questions. I'm pretty new here, but I don't think most of us view this as a information repository so much as we view it as a discussion community. There are a lot of reasons that users should post new threads, which TakeruK outlined quite thoroughly above. In fact, a perfectly valid reply from you would have said "Hey, you can also check out these past threads on this topic. Good luck!" That would have been something a helpful member of a forum community would do. Unfortunately you chose to share some links then couple it with a rant equating poor (in your mind) internet forum behavior to grad school research habits.

And just to avoid contributing even further to the hijacking of this thread, I'll add for the OP that I don't think you should give your dog away. There's another thread around here somewhere about pets in grad school - plenty of people manage it!

Sigaba, it's rather funny that you chose to post that in a thread that has generated some really great replies.

Rather than assuming that the OP didn't read any past posts and then hijacking their thread, maybe you should create your own post where this topic can be discussed.

Also, thanks to juilletmercredi and Cookie Monster and TakeruK, those were really helpful posts!

Indeed there are . Financially a US university is more expensive that a European, and furthermore am an only child, and my parents are divorsed and im still living with my mother..
I think that are some ways to consider if i eventually must choose USA or Europe..
Thanks anyway Jeffster! It was a very nice discussion we had !

I did a few years at community college too, and it's a great way to get pre-reqs out of the way easily and cheaply. Here's my pointers, some of which have been touched on already. This is all going on the assumption that your long-term goal is to get the associates done, transfer to a 4-year institution and finish the BA/BS, then go onto grad school:

Take as few of the classes in your major field at CC as possible. You need to develop relationships with professors in your field at your 4-year institution. It's literally crucial that you get to know 2-3 professors in your area or a related area, who will write letters of rec for you to grad school. This is most easily done if you take more than 1 class with that professor, though it's certainly possible after 1 class if you stand out.

Take at least 4 courses a semester, 5 if you can. CC classes tend to be easier, and you'll need to show any potential grad school that you can handle a heavy workload. If you part-time your way through undergrad, it wont reflect as well as if you loaded up on classes. Of course that comes with the caveat that you still have to actually do well in those classes, so make sure you're accurately assessing your own ability to get by with a heavy workload.

Take as few online courses as possible. Grad school isn't done online, and the point is to show the grad committee that you can handle it and they should invest time and money in you. Also, you really need to develop those relationships with professors, and you wont do that online. Definitely do not take anything in your major field online. Personally, I took just one course online, and it was a summer class taught by a grad student anyway.

Community college is a fantastic way to do your early university education for far less money. I also found at my community college that it was even better than the state university I went to for the more "practical" oriented courses. For example, I took a biology course on natural resources there (my major has nothing to do with biology), and the teacher instead of being a professor was a long-time inspector for the department of natural resources, who took us all over the city to actual relevant sites. And I had an international law course taught by someone who actually practices as an immigration lawyer, who brought in several immigrants she had helped to talk about things. These were far better experiences than I would have gotten at a university with an academic teaching them, I think. On the flip side, however, I found the theory-heavy courses (economics, sociology, poli sci, etc) tended to be much better at my state university.

Also, meet with a CC adviser early and plot out a course to your transfer - CC advisers should be well used to students whose goal is to get to a 4-year institution, and will have good advice for you. Take that list of courses you put together with professors you want to take to a meeting with them.

Good luck

Sigaba, I'm afraid I can't tell if you're just trolling, or if you're really this unfamiliar with how internet forums work. The effectiveness of a forum is undermined when no one posts; it is not undermined by people posting similar questions. I'm pretty new here, but I don't think most of us view this as a information repository so much as we view it as a discussion community. There are a lot of reasons that users should post new threads, which TakeruK outlined quite thoroughly above. In fact, a perfectly valid reply from you would have said "Hey, you can also check out these past threads on this topic. Good luck!" That would have been something a helpful member of a forum community would do. Unfortunately you chose to share some links then couple it with a rant equating poor (in your mind) internet forum behavior to grad school research habits.

And just to avoid contributing even further to the hijacking of this thread, I'll add for the OP that I don't think you should give your dog away. There's another thread around here somewhere about pets in grad school - plenty of people manage it!

People keep agreeing, but just to add to it, you can definitely get into a grad school ranked far above your undergrad school, but it does require stepping things up. A friend of mine did his econ undergrad at a state university ranked in the low 30s nationally, then got into MIT which is generally ranked number 1 in the world for econ. But he did it by getting good grades, building relationships with professors who would stand for him, and doing research.

I'm going to be blunt here, because I don't believe in sugar-coating things when people genuinely ask for advice.

I don't think that your question should be "what are my chances?" but instead, "should I be applying to grad school?" With your current GPA, I'd say, "no." Even if you do somehow find a school that will accept you with a 2.35 GPA, if you could only manage a 2.35 in undergrad you're likely going to fail out of grad school pretty quickly.

If, on the other hand, you have extenuating circumstances that caused the low GPA (serious medical issues, or a history of documented dis/ability accommodations, etc...), then you might be able to build a case and be successful with the right support. But since you didn't mention anything along these lines in your initial post, I can only assume that the 2.35 was a result of either (1) not working hard enough, or (2) not really being suited to an academic track.

If you have your heart set on grad school, you'd be much better off re-doing some courses to pull up your current GPA, or doing another Bachelor's degree altogether (maybe one that is better suited to future graduate study in international affairs). Sending out grad school applications with a 2.35 GPA is basically inviting rejection. You're setting yourself up to fail.

[and as an aside... unless your mom is in the business of university admissions, you shouldn't be taking advice from her. Get on the phone to the universities you're really interested in, and find out the hard facts about what you have to do to improve your GPA and boost your future application chances]

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!

The question that comes to my mind is, why do you get to expect something from your professors if you've done no work? It seems like this should have been a serious concern of yours in the first week, not in the first year.

I am very sorry to hear about your illness, I can't imagine how tough that would be, and the negative affects that would have on PhD studies. Maybe we need some more information. Did the illness keep you out of school work for the entire year? How come you couldn't seek a deferment? It seems like there's nothing we can really say to help you here, anyway. You need to have a frank discussion with your professor about the previous year, your expectations, and their level of help. I think approaching it as "you never offer any help" is ill-advised. Instead approach it that you're having problems and hope they can help you figure out what can be done better. Maybe one of those things is closer contact with them, or maybe they just need to be clear about how self-driven they expect your work to be. Either way, you need to have that talk as soon as possible, since there's no going back on this first year whatever the cause may have been.

Good luck.

The question that comes to my mind is, why do you get to expect something from your professors if you've done no work? It seems like this should have been a serious concern of yours in the first week, not in the first year.

I am very sorry to hear about your illness, I can't imagine how tough that would be, and the negative affects that would have on PhD studies. Maybe we need some more information. Did the illness keep you out of school work for the entire year? How come you couldn't seek a deferment? It seems like there's nothing we can really say to help you here, anyway. You need to have a frank discussion with your professor about the previous year, your expectations, and their level of help. I think approaching it as "you never offer any help" is ill-advised. Instead approach it that you're having problems and hope they can help you figure out what can be done better. Maybe one of those things is closer contact with them, or maybe they just need to be clear about how self-driven they expect your work to be. Either way, you need to have that talk as soon as possible, since there's no going back on this first year whatever the cause may have been.

Good luck.

Hi there,

I am sorry you are having a difficult time and have been ill this past year. Working through being diagnosed and treating an illness during school is hard, stressful, and tiring.

Outside your illness, there seems to be an apparent misunderstanding of your expectations and perceptions of a PhD. A PhD is never easy and is not suppose to be easy. It's a prestigious degree that takes years, many hours, tears/sweat/sanity...etc to finish. You should never regard it as being easy, nor should you think you should choose the "easy" route.

A PhD is also an independent and self-directed learning experience. This is a process where you begin to learn how to do research, formulate skills, and show to your advisors and committee that you are ready to begin a career. I know what it's like to be in a situation where you feel your supervisor isn't invested in your project- but in all reality, that's not their job. The true reality is that YOU have to be invested in that project, and YOU have to continually become the expert, advocate, and progressor with it. Your supervisor is not there to hold your hand, their job is to mentor you, make you think beyond your capacity, make you question your choices in design/methods/etc., and be your supporter. I would not expect my advisor to give me literature to read for my proposal - NEVER. They might recommend me a book or article if they come across something, or I might seek out their recommendation on a specific topic if I am finding it difficult to find information, but I would never expect them to hand me a list of readings to develop my thesis on- this is your job, and a critical skill you should learn.

It sounds like your first major hurtle is developing a literature search. If you are stuck on finding literature, head to your library and they can help you. You will find there are a lot of services at your institution that can help you with various steps of your degree...I have even met with additional professors to get their input and guidance on certain things or specific methodologies questions.

The biggest thing to remember is this is your degree, and you have to have the initiative and motivation to take the reins and drive it to success.

As ticklemepink has suggested, perhaps you should sit down and really think about what you want out of your PhD, you interest in your dissertation, and where you see this degree taking you.

Best of luck

1. There's just no pleasing some people. This includes fellow students as well as faculty. Recognize these people and adjust your expectations accordingly, lest you succumb to the trap of killing yourself while trying to please the unpleasable. Instead, try to surround yourself with people that will cheer you on rather than tear you down, even if it's just your peer group, as realistically, you might not have much say with your assignment for your supervisor.
2. Don't sweat the small stuff and know when to say no. It's hard not to in an environment that is so stressful and will take over your entire existence if you let it. Just remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint, and that you need to pace yourself accordingly.
3. As hard as it is, set boundaries. Before you start graduate school, you need to outline what is truly important to you and what graduate school can't have. This could be your significant other, time for hobbies, money to splurge on something that will keep you sane, etc. Either way, be mindful of what you are willing to give up and what you are not willing to give up, as graduate school will take as much as you give it (which is everything, if you let it).
4. A good advisor is one of the best tools you can have when navigating a PhD program. Make sure that you match well with your advisor in terms of working style (i.e., are they a micromanager, are they more hands-off) and personality over research fit, as even the best research fit with a bad personality will make your life a living hell. It's hard enough; don't make it harder by not having some support from faculty Additionally, sometimes you will find that your advisor just serves as a figurehead and that your true mentor isn't your formal "advisor". However you do it, just make sure you become close and have a good relationship with at least one faculty member. It will make your time in the program much easier.
5. Branch out in your research. I know the cookie cutter advice is to write every single class paper on what will be your thesis or dissertation, but I disagree with this advice. While I think most work should be oriented towards a dissertation, about once a year, I pick a different topic that departs from what I usually research. Not only has this been a welcome break from the monotony of doing the same topic, but it can open up the door for new research interests (or hell, even a new course you'd like to teach), and I find that doing something outside of my comfort zone has really pushed me as a researcher.
6. Try to have a few friends outside of your program. I find that it's helpful to socialize with people who aren't academics.
7. Don't focus on grades. Focus on learning new skills.
8. Be realistic; accept the possibility that if you are trying to land an academic position, it might not happen. If you are aiming for the ivory tower, be cautiously optimistic, but anticipate other career possibilities. To this end, if you have the free time, I would recommend learning skills that can be taken to non-academic jobs. This might mean doing an internship over the summer. This may be field-specific, but in my field, I've found that the networking associated with doing internships for non-academic companies/agencies has come in handy (if you can land a paid internship, bonus!).
9. Always, always, ALWAYS be nice to the administrative staff/secretaries. They are the gateway to many things, such as submitting important paperwork and free food.