We've wined, we've waited, now it's time to celebrate 2016

[MarineBluePsy]

@Need Coffee in an IV  What kind of job are you doing over break?  I pondered working too but couldn't find anything that wasn't retail or food service.  There's nothing wrong with that kind of work and the odd people you meet are entertaining, but its not much of an income boost.

[Need Coffee in an IV]

@MarineBluePsy I work as a graduate assistant for the museum! I float between the paleontology division and the registrar division.

[hippyscientist]

Woohoo I now have the 21st to the 27th off  Plus I made a MAJOR step forward in my code today, got my mechanical engineering final back & got a 95% & I got paid for dogsitting over thanksgiving. Good day on my end.

@Need Coffee in an IV that's so cool, I love museums, especially if they're natural history and/or science ones. 

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

5 hours ago, Need Coffee in an IV said:

@MarineBluePsy I work as a graduate assistant for the museum! I float between the paleontology division and the registrar division.

What exactly does a grad assistant do? Help with lectures? Research? (By the way, I have no idea what *actually* goes on in a museum)

[Need Coffee in an IV]

@hippyscientist I feel the same way, I've been working in them for years and I refuse to leave that realm

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny I'm basically a museum employee. So it depends on the day. I'm either in the field excavating, doing data entry on the database, packing up dinosaur skulls to be shipped, cleaning/removing fossils from rock. etc. I do data entry for the registrar division too. There's a lot that goes behind the scenes in museums. All the action happens in the back and the product is what visitors see ha

[MarineBluePsy]

24 minutes ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

What exactly does a grad assistant do? Help with lectures? Research? (By the way, I have no idea what *actually* goes on in a museum)

Grad assistant duties are going to vary based on department needs and where your funding is actually coming from.  In my program some GAs are more like administrative assistants while others are more like lab managers.  A few work on special projects or help the TAs with undergrad related issues.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

Sorry, I was talking about in a museum wasn't sure if the slavery was of a similar nature or not

 

 

[MarineBluePsy]

8 minutes ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

Sorry, I was talking about in a museum wasn't sure if the slavery was of a similar nature or not

 

 

LOL of course its slavery!  We're all overworked and underpaid drones 

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

On a scale from 1 to 10, how unprofessional is it to email my advisor and tell him I'm failing my class instead of telling him face-to-face?

[MarineBluePsy]

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny  super unprofessional.  Your advisor is your boss and that's the kind of thing you discuss face to face.  I just did this with my advisor and it surprisingly wasn't so bad.  They asked me how classes were going and I said something like "class w is fine, class x is ok, I'm expecting a C in class y which isn't great but it is what it is, and class z is going ok."

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

9 minutes ago, MarineBluePsy said:

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny  super unprofessional.  Your advisor is your boss and that's the kind of thing you discuss face to face.  I just did this with my advisor and it surprisingly wasn't so bad.  They asked me how classes were going and I said something like "class w is fine, class x is ok, I'm expecting a C in class y which isn't great but it is what it is, and class z is going ok."

So typically I'd agree, but I've been working for this professor for 7 months now and never once spoken to him. I just need to say "Hey, I'm failing this course, but I'm going to do X, Y, and Z to improve." 

[MarineBluePsy]

1 minute ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

So typically I'd agree, but I've been working for this professor for 7 months now and never once spoken to him. I just need to say "Hey, I'm failing this course, but I'm going to do X, Y, and Z to improve." 

Ok well it seems weird you two have never talked, but he still should hear it in person from you.  The line you're considering is perfect and its always better to be proactive than reactive.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

1 hour ago, MarineBluePsy said:

Ok well it seems weird you two have never talked, but he still should hear it in person from you.  The line you're considering is perfect and its always better to be proactive than reactive.

You're right, I'll set up a meeting. Thanks I'm still learning what is appropriate and what isn't, I suppose

[Need Coffee in an IV]

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny Yeah I would do it in person too. Oh you guys want to hear more of my misadventures?! So I finish my exam and my TA asks me to speak to me. I'm thinking urg but I said sure. She then went on about how she heard i'm not going to the christmas because its at her house and she doesn't understand why I have a problem with her. Plus she told me I needed to be more polite in general. I told her yeah I'm not going, our personalities don't mesh and if you can't sit at a table with me then why would you think I would come to your party? The museum was having a christmas potluck and me/several of people in my year sat down at a table that had some second years. The TA comes by the table, there are open seats but she doesn't sit and goes off to a different table. Like 2 min later, the second years are starting to leave and my friend asked them where they were going. They told us our TA summoned them to sit at her table. I brought this up to her and she said "that's not what happened at all!" but didn't even try to come up with a reason for what happened. She then walked off in a huff and said "well come or don't come, it doesn't matter". I'm so dumbfounded and feel like I'm back in middle school.

[Neist]

@Need Coffee in an IV One thing that I've quickly discovered about graduate program life is that it's far more political than I would like. 

I sort of live in my own world, so I avoid a lot of it, but I certainly can tell it occurs.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

@Need Coffee in an IV Is your TA a high school student? Seriously, does she not know how to act like an adult?

 

In other news, I accidentally left the slow cooker on for two days. It's one of those weeks

[Need Coffee in an IV]

@Neist It is very frustrating but after this semester I won't have any interaction with her so there's that silver lining. @Pink Fuzzy Bunny I sometimes forget to turn off my coffee pot so i cam understand forgetting the pressure cooker ha. She does act like a teenager and before grad school she was an elementary teacher....hopefully she was nice to those kids ha. It's only infuriating because she talks about how we need to be professional..

[MarineBluePsy]

And I seriously just freaked myself out watching Season 2 Episode 1 of American Horror Story.  Season 1 was creepy, but not like must sleep with the lights on creepy like Season 2 is so far.  

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

Oh good, instead of failing one class, I might just fail both hahahahahahahahah *cries*

[MarineBluePsy]

11 hours ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

Oh good, instead of failing one class, I might just fail both hahahahahahahahah *cries*

So exam results are back?  I'm curious, not that I assume this is the norm, but did either professor offer you any extra work to supplement your learning and/or boost your grade?

[Neist]

12 hours ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

Oh good, instead of failing one class, I might just fail both hahahahahahahahah *cries*

I'm sorry.  A lot of people I know in the sciences are having a rough go at it. Scienc-y graduate programs sound a little hardcore!

History programs don't seem to be horrendous, assuming you can keep up with the reading load, which admittedly is drowning. 

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

7 hours ago, MarineBluePsy said:

So exam results are back?  I'm curious, not that I assume this is the norm, but did either professor offer you any extra work to supplement your learning and/or boost your grade?

All we had exam-wise for this class was an oral exam that was 10% of our grade, but my last lab report didn't go so well (it was a lab class). I think I'll end up passing though (but not the other class, hahaha)

 

@Neist I'd much rather struggle through lab classes and such than read 10 million pages a day like you do. I'm not sure how you manage to do that.

[hippyscientist]

1 minute ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

All we had exam-wise for this class was an oral exam that was 10% of our grade, but my last lab report didn't go so well (it was a lab class). I think I'll end up passing though (but not the other class, hahaha)

 

@Neist I'd much rather struggle through lab classes and such than read 10 million pages a day like you do. I'm not sure how you manage to do that.

I'm with you fuzzy on the lab classes over reading!! Labs can be tough, science profs can be demanding and exacting but tbh (and excuse my language) F*** doing all that reading! @Neist and all other arts& humanities people - props to you, no idea how you do it! I love books for fun but not for studying. 

Today I sat in on a job talk given by a prospective faculty member that was also being videoconferenced to our medical school. It was pretty cool and I was the only student there. Was a great opportunity to network, and it made me feel pretty clever that I could follow everything nicely. Gave me some good ideas for future work, and it's such a cool insight into questions people ask on the job search.

In other news, in less than an hour I have a date and I'm so woefully unready for it! 

[KingNikolai1]

Yeah, I'm with @Pink Fuzzy Bunny, this quarter definitely kicked me in the ass. Coming straight from undergrad into a combined MA/PhD at a top ten 10 university has sucked the life out of me. I barely coasted through one of the seminars, but it was because I had read most of the books already in translation. Thankfully, next semester I'll have a language course to help fix my situation. Literature PhD, making me look like a phucking dork all day long....

This video has helped me destress. It helps exercise the mind (the first minute is an intro): 

 

Edited December 9, 2016 by KingNikolai1

[Neist]

Ergh. This last paper isn't writing itself very quickly. 

At least it's the last paper, and it's not due until Monday evening, so.