SymmetryOfImperfection

Seems like alot of females here. From the male perspective, I'm cool with dating anyone with any job, because I'm a good listener and can get interested in alot of things, and can hold a conversation about things. Grad school in physics doesn't feel too different from my internship at a pharmaceutical plant - there's still corporate boardroom style meetings where we're told to raise our productivity or take customer satisfaction into account.

guy's meant for her.

I got a funded MS. It was the best choice of my life. It gives me a fallback option if I don't want PHD, it gave me valuable skills, and I had experience teaching.

I was 22, when I was doing my MS. So young, so full of hope and dreams. I hope to stay young forever, at least mentally.

fk that lol, gotta get my free time. i've seen ppl get MBAs, MS Finance, etc. after a PHD in physic, atmospheric sciences, computational chemistry, etc. and I'm thinking - why would you torture yourself like that and spend even more money and time, just for the tiny extra chance of getting a finance job where you'd torture yourself some more for some scraps? after my PHD, I'm gonna take a vacation with my life savings. Life is too short to spend slaving away in a classroom.

I spent 5-10 hours in the lab per day, 5-6 days a week during my MS in physics (experimental condensed matter physics) and expect to spend the same right now for my PHD in chemical physics (still finding groups). Only 3-4 of those hours are actually doing experiments. The experiments are not that hard, in general, especially with commercial instrumentation. Fabricating the samples (cleaning, deposition, photolithography) is hard. Programming your instrument is hard. Analyzing them on the computer is hard. Programming a model is hard. Writing the papers are hard.

There's been a few younger grad students and I relate to them better than to the 29-30 year olds that already got married with kids and talk about back pain, mortgages and insurance.

I want to be on winter break again. I caught the flu eating at the cafeteria. Feel horrible. Never eating at that trash place again. Coursework is good, I have one fun class in interdisciplinary condensed matter physics, but my advanced quantum class is terrible. Should I take a 3rd class on the physics of solar cells, or just chill out this semester?

LEAVE NOW. DO NOT LOOK BACK. You should be taking this as a personal insult.

BS pays in the real world until you get caught. Trust. Now this depends on how top these profs are. If they are all top profs (top 10 institutions) then be careful. If they have alot of differences in ranking then you can learn how to get really interested in their topic.

Wusses use dedicated software. I use notepad. Date - event. There.

wtf why are there so many elite ppl this year? i'm just seeing harvard, MIT, stanford, berkeley and UIUC pop up everywhere. where's the normal ppl at lol?

Yall are too elite this year. Everybody is Harvard, MIT, Caltech, WUSTL, Berkeley and Stanford. Dayum. Where are the regular ppl at lol?

Rotations all the way. They didn't do rotations in my current program and I am miserable for it.

Depends on which seminar. The seminar for my direction has cookies and coffee. At my old school we had sandwiches, fruit and cake. I thought big programs would have better stuff, nope.

Riverside is good in polymers and is ranked comparably with the schools you have listed.

I think you should try to negotiate a bit with the current school to see if they will let you join a group unofficially now, and to officially add you next year. Meanwhile, at the same time, apply to other schools, especially the strongest programs that you are realistically a chance for. Remember that AAU is pretty damn prestigious and there are a limited number of schools on that list. A non AAU school is often weaker academically than an AAU school. Also, be careful what conditions the professor puts on you for bringing you over.

I see. That means it indeed is an irresolvable problem. I just needed a reminder of that. Thanks.

No concerns, I already know what is going on with his personal motives: he wants everybody to work on a different topic so that he can get the maximum amount of possible grants.

The thing is, there is research going on, literally right now, at multiple major national labs and top 10 universities on this very subject, and my PI is no stranger to the theoretical/fundamental side of that research and it was even listed as a potential application. The *only* difference from the other profs is the instrument used to analyze this system, and the instrument is something that my PI knows about. It is literally one of the safest possible projects and a direct extension of my PI's PHD work. If this doesn't work, then nothing will work and it is a problem resolvable only with changing professors or schools, which I have already set my mind on. I cannot write a proposal - DOE and NSF give grants to PIs and there is no reason for the PI to even consider my proposal. Also, I thought about it - why the hell should I stress myself for writing this proposal that may or may not be even looked at? I came to graduate school to do materials science, and if I cannot do materials science at one professors lab or at one school, then I should change.

I did a MS first. I passed the qualifier exam before school started. I got 3 courses transferred officially (with credit) and for the remaining course credits I do whatever I want instead of taking core classes.

thanks for the advice. I was dreading going to lab at one point.

I have decided that I cannot work in the current group for multiple reasons - professor teaching style, lack of suitable project and lack of funding. I am only staying for now because I joined a month ago, but I doubt things will improve. I've talked to my graduate advisor, and he told me to work until January 31st. If I still want to leave, I can switch with no (administrative) consequences or delaying my graduation. This group has been giving me alot of stress lately. I can't sleep well. I have no motivation to pursue my assigned project because it isn't in my field. The professor doesn't even answer my questions straight, and I have no funding for anything. The only thing I have to say is, I want to leave her group, either for a new group or for a new school. But I would like to do it in a non-offensive way.that minimizes damage to myself and others. All my academic qualifications have no problems, and I have absolute confidence that if my current school or this professor doesn't say excessively negative things about me, I am a very strong candidate for the groups/schools that I'm planning to join/apply to.

If in the 1st semester they announce that you don't get RAships until end of 2nd year, might have to teach all years, have 50% heavier teaching job loads than comparable institutions, don't get to do the project you came here to do, lost a major interdisciplinary funding source and on top of that, don't even have social events for graduate students what do you do?

My idea was about a sophisticated yet known measurement methodology that the professor used during his PHD, but adjusted and applied to a new semiconductor system about which little is known. This measurement technique has significant potential to measure things that simply cannot be measured by other means (at least not in a non-contact way), and this new semiconductor system is one of the leading candidates for revolutionary solar cell technology. The professor basically shot down my idea with "The efficiency is too low right now. It will never beat silicon." That makes me very disappointed because I have alot to say about that - there are reasons why the efficiency is low (some of which can be addressed with his instrument), and there are also reasons why it is still worth pursuing, including cost considerations, things that it can do that silicon can't, and new device architectures made possible only with this material. I started to bring it up and he says "You know, you should think about the quantum information project instead. It is really interesting and cool." In my interpretation, this means, forget it. I'm just going to hand him a 10 page draft of the proposal, and see if he can work with the idea. At this point, I have to make clear what I want.