Venting Thread- Vent about anything.

[_kita]

16 minutes ago, speechfan222 said:

 

Sorry to hear your sister wasn't being very understanding or supportive of your decisions. 

Random and not important, but you brought back a memory to me. I used to have a NeoPets account and forgot about it. You just reminded me of it. Obviously, it's for children, but it's a pretty good site. There is quite a bit to do there! 

Hope everything else is going well. :o) 

Thanks! Yeah. It's a consistent family-thing. Just needs a good venting occasionally.

And I agree about NeoPets. I'll hop on there when I feel like playing rattler race or other quock java games.

[Cheshire_Cat]

4 hours ago, _kita said:

Thanks! Yeah. It's a consistent family-thing. Just needs a good venting occasionally.

And I agree about NeoPets. I'll hop on there when I feel like playing rattler race or other quock java games.

I had NeoPets when I was a kid too!  My brother and I both made millions of NPs and probably played the game a little too much, lol.

[jaaaayciee]

I'm currently writing my SOP for my list of seven schools and I am sick of these schools with tiny word limits!! How am I supposed to tell you about myself, my goals, my professional and academic experience, and how your program will fit for me if you only give me 400 words to use?! 

[Sigaba]

3 hours ago, jaaaayciee said:

How am I supposed to tell you about myself, my goals, my professional and academic experience, and how your program will fit for me if you only give me 400 words to use?! 

Concisely. 

Think about it this way. A double spaced page of writing has about 250 words and takes about two minutes to read aloud. So think about what you could say in about three minutes, and write that up. 

By the bye, in two, two and a half years (plus/minus), you'll be summarizing 500+ page books in a sentence or two.

[PokePsych]

When my supervisor is more busy with going on vacation then supervising. Dude like I get you're moving to a different uni and you want to take your 3 months of vacationdays they still owe you - but you're in charge of data collection on MTurk so just run the shit please - it's not like that complicated to just click '300 participants'.

[Cheshire_Cat]

I am frustrated with the amount of research I'm supposed to be getting done.  I don't have time, and what time I have I feel like I waste.  So mad at myself.  And I have to teach two largish sections this semester... I'm just frustrated.  I'm ready to be done with my program, but I still have 2-3 years.  I should relax because I passed comps and will be getting a degree someday, but I'm more uptight than ever.  I really need a break.  Next semester I am not supposed to be teaching, and I will be done with my second-year paper, so maybe I'll take a break then...

[spectastic]

I'm supposed to be meeting this really hot girl, but she keeps flaking because of her tight schedule of trying to find a place to live.. she did propose that we meed next week though. I'm usually not this patient.. 

[qkhitai]

Moved to my new city to start my degree. Had a house lined up for a while, but landlord is taking forever to get things sorted. Burning a massive hole in my wallet extending my stay at a hotel, which is really eating into funds I just don't have. Was hoping to have moved in by now.

[samman1994]

Dear Academic Faculty Researchers,

If you want to attract new researchers to your labs, please actually write a proper description about what you do. Writing "biochemistry and metabolism biochemistry" tells the viewer nothing. Writing "DNA repair or protein-protein interactions" also tells the viewer nothing. If you are going to be so vague in your faculty page, please at the very least update your lab page. Going to your lab page and clicking on the research tab only to be presented with a "Coming Soon" page, is also as useless as your 5 word job descriptions on your faculty page. The same goes for the opposite. Please do not write a 5 page introduction to the problem your research addresses, then only end it with a 2 sentence description of what your lab actually does. Please specifically indicate what potential biophysical techniques you use in the lab, instead of just saying "Biophysical techniques". A protein crystallography lab is completely different from a protein mass spec or nmr lab. Please organize your publications, and properly space them out. It is incredibly difficult to highlight one single publication, when you have every publication from the past 10 years crammed back to back with no spaces in between them (i.e. yesliterallylikethiswithnospacesbetweenanypublicationsfromrighttolefttoptobottom). Please do not put publications that you had very little or almost nothing to do with on your faculty or lab page. I do not want to get excited about a publication and read it, only to find out your lab literally only ran one of the 50 samples in the paper (often times the original PI will put their name last or 2nd to last and put the students ahead of them, but this also happens if it is a collaboration between 2 labs and the other lab didn't do very much). If you do, please indicate that you were a collaborator in the paper, and not its author. 

Dear Schools,

Please, for the love of God, and everything that is holy and good, have an option to organize your faculty by researchers. When you don't create sub-departments, and cram Biochemistry (including structural, computational, biophysical, etc.), and cell and molecular all into one department, you will end up with over 50+ faculty members with different research interests. And if you do lack the ability to organize by research, please, super please, ultra please, for the goodness of mankind, at least put a brief or potential summary, or even just key words (e.g. "DNA repair") next to the persons name. Nobody wants to click on 50 faculty members, and have over 50 tabs open, only to find out that member does nothing remotely similar to what they are interested in doing. Please organize your faculty members into their appropriate departments based on their research. If they do interdisplenary work, then organize them into multiple departments, not just one. Having a biochemist who do biophysical work, in the physics department page, but not the biochemistry, biology, or chemistry department page (when their main focus of work is Biochemistry), makes it incredibly difficult for people interested in finding a lab like that. Basically, learn to organize your web pages, faculty, and departments, and stop being so lazy. It will make it easier for your faculty to find students who actually are interested in the research, and easier for students to navigate your departments labs. 

Edited August 28, 2017 by samman1994

[Cheshire_Cat]

You know you are a Ph.D student when instead of taking the universities word for classes being cancelled, you wait until the professor herself tells you they are cancelled.  

Also, I'm so tired of hearing about Irma.  I know I'm about to experience it, but this waiting and worrying has me stressed out!!... Hopefully the power will just go out and I can sleep all day.  That would be nice.

[Cheshire_Cat]

Apparently this is just my personal vent thread.
So, I was supposed to get a break from teaching in the spring, but instead I am teaching in the spring and getting summer off, I think. I got a really confusing email from the department head, which to me indicated he wasn't going to pay me for summer which really pissed me off, but after asking around, the Ph.D coordinator said that wasn't possible, and what he probably meant that he was going to pay me the summer stipend during the spring and then just not pay me in summer.  So I sent him an email about it, asking what my total support should be, but I haven't got a reply yet- because I sent it this morning.

Anyways, none of this should affect my current pay.  However, today is payday, and when I looked at my pay, it was about 2/3 of what it should be.  So I get out my accountant hat, and figured out that my gross pay was 1/4 of my total summer stipend, which would indicate that I am getting my summer amount during the fall, except not getting my fall amount.  Now I think this is just a huge screw up, but uggh!!!!!  If I didn't have student loans in the bank right now I would be in trouble tomorrow when I have to pay all my bills.

I think I am almost at a point where I can breathe and focus on research.  But little crap like this keeps happening.  I need to relax.  I'm going to be here 2 an 1/2 more years.  I need to settle down and focus on what is important.

[PokePsych]

These PhD Application thingies make me tooooo stressed. I'm constantly second guessing myself and doubting myself and shit. 

[Oshawott]

tl;dr vent: Some people in grad school are just quite awful.

Edited October 9, 2017 by Oshawott

[fuzzylogician]

Talked to 5 customer service reps today, got one thing fixed. If another person tells me to call [someone else] and to ask for a manager "if they tell you to call us back," I will reach through the telephone and strangle someone. 

[Oshawott]

4 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

Talked to 5 customer service reps today, got one thing fixed. If another person tells me to call [someone else] and to ask for a manager "if they tell you to call us back," I will reach through the telephone and strangle someone. 

I literally told someone "no, I'll wait" and to put my on hold because I could just do something else while keeping them on speaker phone...they eventually just hung up on me lol

[lemma]

I'm just so, so tired. Trying to balance PhD applications with full-time work and part-time study is taking it out of me. 

I wonder whether it's worth it. The university isn't used to having people with my background apply, so I've been going through mountains of red tape to make my case for eligibility. The department wants me, and truly believes I should qualify, but the final decision may not lie with them. 

If I get rejected based on this technicality, I'm not sure what will be going through my mind. Maybe I'll sleep, finally. 

[Cheshire_Cat]

I'm the only native speaker in my cohort and so I'm getting fucked on my teaching schedule.  It wouldn't matter to me if everyone was getting fucked, but no, it is just me.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

Having a hard time finding a job with reliable income. I have freelance work and a bit in the bank, but I think I'm going to have to reduce my student loan payment soon if work doesn't pick up. On the plus side, plenty of time to work on apps. Downside, majorly stressed about paying for it all.

[781227]

Starting to think that If I have to make students feel the way I do now, there is no way I can ever go into academia.

[EvelynD]

I feel like I'm alone in this process. Everybody tries but they don't really get it. Whenever I accomplish something (like skyping with a prof, big deal for me) my fiends give these luke-warm reactions. My boyfriend doesn't get the stress the deadlines cause. Some American friends don't reply when I ask for advice. Urg..

[PokePsych]

15 hours ago, EvelynD said:

I feel like I'm alone in this process. Everybody tries but they don't really get it. Whenever I accomplish something (like skyping with a prof, big deal for me) my fiends give these luke-warm reactions. My boyfriend doesn't get the stress the deadlines cause. Some American friends don't reply when I ask for advice. Urg..

Join the (Dutch) club!

Didnt'get any skypes but I'm  OK with that. 

[samman1994]

1 hour ago, chalkdust said:

havn't done the wild thing in nine years. it is what it is.  anyone else with a longer spate?

jesus 9 years? My longest was 2 months and I started to lose my mind shortly after. 

[Carly Rae Jepsen]

I was having second thoughts last night and just fearing I wasn't gonna get accepted anywhere. :/ 

[PokePsych]

8 hours ago, Carly Rae Jepsen said:

I was having second thoughts last night and just fearing I wasn't gonna get accepted anywhere. :/ 

Join the club.

[Sigaba]

On 10/29/2017 at 6:51 AM, Carly Rae Jepsen said:

I was having second thoughts last night and just fearing I wasn't gonna get accepted anywhere. :/ 

 

On 10/29/2017 at 3:06 PM, Psygeek said:

Join the club.

Push through second thoughts and feelings of uncertainty. Do NOT self select yourself out of contention by getting squirrelly.

Someone is going to get offered admission to a graduate program at the University of Happyland. Why not you? 

Focus on putting your best self forward in each of your applications. It's your role to make committee members nod their heads and say, "Yes, this person will do well here."