Staying motivated for the rest of the semester

[completeurprofile]

After getting acceptances, I am no longer motivated to do well in my courses. Will anyone care if grades slip in the final semester of your undergrad transcript? Will professors get upset at you for dropping the ball? Does anyone look at undergrad transcripts? I know there are only a few weeks left, but I do not feel like doing much. lol... Is anyone else on the same boat?

[Schwarzwald]

I'm having the same problem. To try to keep ourselves motivated, me and my partner have two big calendars and we put red X's on each day we complete so we can keep the goal in view. It sort of helps. 

[FroggyFriend]

Unless you are applying to certain fellowships and/or looking to transfer into a different PhD program, no one is going to care about your undergraduate grades once you're accepted into a PhD program.  

That said, I strongly encourage you to stay disciplined.  Graduate school and the rest of your academic career will be filled with distractions and reasons not to feel motivated to work--things like job market anxiety, anxiety about tests, falling out with advisors, etc., that are far more psychologically taxing than "senioritis"--and literally the only way you're going to succeed is forming a strong work habits that allow you to remain productive no matter what.

Sorry to sound bleak.  I'm in a grad program and learned about self-discipline the hard way.  Start building the habits now.

[gughok]

39 minutes ago, FroggyFriend said:

I strongly encourage you to stay disciplined.  Graduate school and the rest of your academic career will be filled with distractions and reasons not to feel motivated to work--things like job market anxiety, anxiety about tests, falling out with advisors, etc., that are far more psychologically taxing than "senioritis"--and literally the only way you're going to succeed is forming a strong work habits that allow you to remain productive no matter what.

Sorry to sound bleak.  I'm in a grad program and learned about self-discipline the hard way.  Start building the habits now.

Oh dear. This sounds like the high school-university transition x100.

[Schwarzwald]

2 hours ago, FroggyFriend said:

Unless you are applying to certain fellowships and/or looking to transfer into a different PhD program, no one is going to care about your undergraduate grades once you're accepted into a PhD program.  

That said, I strongly encourage you to stay disciplined.  Graduate school and the rest of your academic career will be filled with distractions and reasons not to feel motivated to work--things like job market anxiety, anxiety about tests, falling out with advisors, etc., that are far more psychologically taxing than "senioritis"--and literally the only way you're going to succeed is forming a strong work habits that allow you to remain productive no matter what.

Sorry to sound bleak.  I'm in a grad program and learned about self-discipline the hard way.  Start building the habits now.

I've worried about this, and put forth some effort to build good habits, but I have only been building these habits for a semester or so. Would you be open to telling us some of the rituals or organizational techniques that helped you stay on track?

[FroggyFriend]

Sure!  I'm not super great about it either.  I literally time (with an online timer) how long I spend working on a single day; the timer has a feature that lets me track which projects I'm working on.  I roughly estimate how long I want each task to take (so like "I want to spend 40 hours on this research paper over the next month") and try to spend exactly that amount of time on it.  

I've found that works the best for me, because "working" in philosophy often feels like you're not making any progress, even though you are, since so much of philosophical work is banging your head against a chalk board.  Tracking hours let's you know that you're actually making progress, even if it doesn't feel like it.

Also find an advisor that you admire / like enough that you would feel embarrassed going to an advising meeting with no work to show her.  Then schedule periodic meetings with that person.  That's definitely worked wonders for my productivity.  (Having at least one moderately scary advisor is a good thing, folks!!)

[Another applicant]

Just think about the fact that you're going to be on the job market in merely 5 more years. If that doesn't motivate you to stay productive, I don't know what will!

[MentalEngineer]

3 hours ago, FroggyFriend said:

Also find an advisor that you admire / like enough that you would feel embarrassed going to an advising meeting with no work to show her.  Then schedule periodic meetings with that person.  That's definitely worked wonders for my productivity.  (Having at least one moderately scary advisor is a good thing, folks!!)

Funnily enough, I had the polar opposite experience. My original advisor was definitely one of the scary sort; we spent most of our meetings talking about what I needed to have done, how much time I ought to be spending each week on reading and writing, and talking about what the minimum standards for professional competence in those areas were. I produced half a writing sample, later abandoned, and one terrible conference abstract in almost three semesters of working with this person. I left our meetings cranky, unmotivated to write, and frankly less interested in doing philosophy at all. I almost suspect that this last result was the primary aim of our meetings.

My second advisor, though in possession of numerous weak points, produced totally different effects. In these meetings, the focus was simply on talking about philosophy, about things that interested me and that I wanted to work on. Through argument and discussion, we honed in on some questions I just could not let go of, some people with positions worth reading, and off I went. I left our meetings with a sense of positions in the literature, a nascent view of my own, and the urge to get that view out of my head and onto the page, where I could wrestle it into even better shape for the next encounter. All through just shooting the shit.

So YMMV, I guess.

[completeurprofile]

11 hours ago, Another applicant said:

Just think about the fact that you're going to be on the job market in merely 5 more years. If that doesn't motivate you to stay productive, I don't know what will!

Do you have to submit your undergrad transcript when you're on the job market?

[maxhgns]

21 hours ago, completeurprofile said:

After getting acceptances, I am no longer motivated to do well in my courses. Will anyone care if grades slip in the final semester of your undergrad transcript? Will professors get upset at you for dropping the ball? Does anyone look at undergrad transcripts? I know there are only a few weeks left, but I do not feel like doing much. lol... Is anyone else on the same boat?

Check your acceptances. All are conditional upon you completing your degree, which you probably can't do if you slack to the point of failing a class or two, or getting a grade below the threshold required for it to count toward your major. Sometimes acceptances are also conditional upon you completing your degree with a certain minimum GPA or letter grade.

 

5 minutes ago, completeurprofile said:

Do you have to submit your undergrad transcript when you're on the job market?

 

Yes. Not every job, but a lot of them do require you to submit all of your transcripts. More importantly, grant and fellowship applications require your transcripts, and definitely do factor them into their decision. And you'll be applying to a lot of those as a marketeer and later as a faculty member somewhere (if you win that particular lottery).

[historicallinguist]

On March 19, 2016 at 6:01 PM, completeurprofile said:

After getting acceptances, I am no longer motivated to do well in my courses. Will anyone care if grades slip in the final semester of your undergrad transcript? Will professors get upset at you for dropping the ball? Does anyone look at undergrad transcripts? I know there are only a few weeks left, but I do not feel like doing much. lol... Is anyone else on the same boat?

It depends on what kind acceptances you got. If you got MA acceptances, DEFINITELY TRY YOUR BEST AND DO WELL IN THE FINAL SEMESTER OF YOUR UNDERGRAD. This is because when you apply for Ph.D. in the future, adcoms are going to look at it. 

However, if you got Ph.D. acceptances, forget about it, and just get a passing grade (sometimes, it is even unnecessary to pass if it is an elective course that does not count for anything and you have already got more than enough credits to graduate.) In this case, I think it is even morally acceptable to do the bare minimum. Doing more than the minimum could potentially generate a negative overall utility (your unhappiness due to more work + the unhappiness of the people around you due to your unhappiness - your prof's happiness due to your handwork > 0) , while doing the minimum should generate a 0 overall utility as your happiness due to doing less work offsets the unhappiness of your prof due to your worsened grade. So, if you adopt the moral theory of act utilitarianism, you would agree that it is morally acceptable to do the bare minimum in this case.

[historicallinguist]

1 hour ago, Abendstern said:

It would be unbelievably foolish to slack off on college courses. You can never go back and redo your undergrad degree. You may, someday, want to apply to another school if you change you mind about philosophy or you may try to get a non-academic job. In both cases your undergraduate grades matter. In law, which I imagine is a popular exit option for philosophy PhDs, undergraduate grades always carry the most weight, even if you have stellar graduate grades. Don't make the mistake of slacking off on something just for the sake of something as silly as senioritis.

Do you mean that, when you apply for a post-doc position/position that requires a Ph.D., the employer/post-doc fellowship committee still requires you to submit your undergraduate transcript?

I am in linguistics and this is certainly not the case for linguistics. Maybe you are right if this is the case for law. But it depends on what courses you are taking during your last semester in your undergraduate institution. I doubt whether it will really matter when you apply for a position in law if you get a C+ for your "Calculus III" class during your last semester in your undergraduate institution. 

Edited March 22, 2016 by historicallinguist

[rising_star]

16 hours ago, historicallinguist said:

Do you mean that, when you apply for a post-doc position/position that requires a Ph.D., the employer/post-doc fellowship committee still requires you to submit your undergraduate transcript?

I'm not in philosophy OR linguistics but I've applied for a number of faculty and postdoc positions where I was required to submit ALL transcripts, both undergraduate and graduate, as part of my application.

[maxhgns]

18 hours ago, historicallinguist said:

Do you mean that, when you apply for a post-doc position/position that requires a Ph.D., the employer/post-doc fellowship committee still requires you to submit your undergraduate transcript?

 

 

Yes, they often do. I've applied for around 90 jobs so far this year (in philosophy). They're a mix of postdocs, TTs, VAPs, and other part-time gigs. I'd say that between 1/4 and 1/3 of them require copies of all your transcripts. Some of them even ask for your high school information (though not, as yet, transcripts).

[historicallinguist]

7 hours ago, rising_star said:

I'm not in philosophy OR linguistics but I've applied for a number of faculty and postdoc positions where I was required to submit ALL transcripts, both undergraduate and graduate, as part of my application.

I am quite surprised about this. But certainly it is good for me to know.(Fortunately, I did get the highest possible grades for the last semester of my undergraduate career).

[historicallinguist]

1 hour ago, Abendstern said:

That is not at all what I meant. I specifically said non-academic positions. It is naive to think that everybody now admitted to PhD can or will want to finish. Many will go on to private sector jobs, apply to law schools or other professional programs, etc. For these positions, you still want a strong GPA. While you may not be submitting a transcript, you certainly will be submitting a resume. And I can tell you from experience that, when I review resumes, I immediately look at the GPA (and negatively view those who don't include it). This is especially true for applying to law school (and yes, even many law jobs). A "C+ for your 'Calculus III' class" will look especially bad, because it is at the end of your undergrad career and is higher level. It's the early, less important grades that tend to be written off.

But as others have already pointed out, even for post-doc positions you often are required to submit all transcripts.

Just curious. If someone lists on the resume something like "summa cum laude"/"cum laude" etc rather than the numerical GPA, would such a resume be reviewed positively for non-academic job application? Do you think that listing both the Latin Honor and the Numerical GPA would be a better presentation on the resume?

Edited March 23, 2016 by historicallinguist

[Another applicant]

On 3/20/2016 at 11:17 AM, completeurprofile said:

Do you have to submit your undergrad transcript when you're on the job market?

Ha. Apparently so, according to a poster above me. But I meant that (grades be damned) it's very important to keep learning, writing, and building qualifications and connections so that you can do well once you're on the job market in a few years.