what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

I'm getting some feelers from some grad programs but yeah I need to ~find myself~ some more before even thinking about applying

i also support taking a gap year or two or several. i think it helps a lot in figuring out what you want to do, what your possible career paths actually look like, and just feeling like you know what your alternative options are if you don't go through with the phd.

job prospects are an issue, but i think it's best to go in thinking about how to get skills and experience that will allow you to market yourself outside of academia as well. in my field, you need at least an ma to do any work that isn't literally hard physical labor with no advancement potential, so i am hoping that another 5-6 years in school will pay off by allowing me to have a career related to the area...if not, i'll basically be several years behind my peers, which reduces lifetime earning potential but in a moment-to-moment way isn't catastrophic.

ps i realize how that comment comes off, but i am totally talking out of hope and not experience here

lol @ seeing this thread-title every so often

reminded me of the group project stuff upthread:

http://mcsweeneys.net/2009/11/12schmidt.html

Lamp just out of curiosity how old are you?

This thread is so depressing.

well, no, reading caek's link from last week is depressing. never mind i will stay in my one-step-above-minimum-wage job instead that has far more prospects oh wait

EXACTLY. i feel like yeah, there's a lot of opportunity cost for people with successful fulfilling careers, but for some of us...honestly, what do we have to lose?

Last (non-exam) day of grad school tomorrow and I am sad that I am leaving. That said I have a great job that if it succeeds with allow me to come back a millionaire dilettante Phd. student and if it fails will give me a fantastic thesis topic. In the intervening period I will be working on some collaborative research between the company and the university which should hopefully lead to some publications and being listed as key personnel on an NSF grant.

oh, you are leaving!

find out tonight about thesis

(but staying to work in US, yes?) xpost

Work is down the hill in Pittsburgh I'm going nowhere. I helped write a proposal that has won us $5million from the DoE.

~*pound*~

i am having a moment of this fwiw

your program is a short one though, right? Like it's only one year?

Only a year, far too short in my book.

(excluding the mountain of expensive debt I have run up)

when u are a millionaire it won't matter!

yeah, srsly

Ed, can i just pimp some stuff my friends are working on? why because it ineresting and relevant to yr interests:

http://www.gr33nboxsystems.com/

http://bi0litest0ve.com/BioLite.html

(googleproofed obv)

both should actually go in dev world tech, actually

lamp what's your phd in/going to be in again? i remember the 3 of us talking abt immunology before

studying for immuno test atm btw, though it's more on the biotech tip

it is in immuno iirc!

immuno kids were the cool kids at my grad schools

biophys prolly least cool

today i'm bummed because i applied for the nsf graduate fellowship grant this fall, and recommendations were due yesterday, and one of my professors who agreed to do it a month ago but has been traveling and out of touch since around thanksgiving forgot. a huge fellowship that i spent a lot of time applying for, and i don't even have a chance for because someone FORGOT. this ever happen to any of you guys?

yes, one of my letter writers is good at doing this. i have to remind him a week out, and then again a couple of days before. on those occasions he's missed the deadline he's just sent it off late. i presume this has not reflected well on me, but it does at least get read.

are NSF letters submitted by a website that is now closed with no wriggle room?

they are submitted by website. there is still a link that says "submit recommendation" but i suspect my professor is not going to look at his email until 9 am monday morning (he's that type) and i don't know if it will still be there then. wish i could get in touch with him over the weekend but i don't even know if he's still traveling.

you've emailed him anyway though, right?

fwiw, assuming the website (or a human) has some discretion to accept the letter a couple of days late, i don't think the fact that it got in late will even be noted in the file that is distributed around the panel. so it's worth chasing!

(this is different when you are one of fifteen people applying directly by email to a professor for a job. there is more flexibility for stuff to come in late, but stuff like that gets noticed and noted.)

oh yes, i've emailed him. i hope you're right and there might be a chance. thanks.

This just happened to E., she got a GFY from one of her job applications because a recommendation went astray. My department, on the other hand, is really in favour of students being independently funded from their advisors and has a whole admin assistant dedicated to funding, conferences and job market. One of her main jobs is making sure that faculty get their letters off on time, (and students get their applications in). It seems to pay off though, students in my department won 5 out of 30 available nationwide NSF grants in the subject area last year and was able to expand the grad student intake this year as a result.

I should revive the caek job market thread as I am going through this by proxy right now.

maria this kind of stuff happens all the time in academia I suspect; call him on Monday, get it sorted and I'm sure you'll be fine!

a huge fellowship that i spent a lot of time applying for, and i don't even have a chance for because someone FORGOT. this ever happen to any of you guys?

yeah. professors, disgusting savages.

caek + dyao are right though, you should be fine!

I have met so many academics who are crazy forgetful/disorganised (one of them is my father so I grew up hearing his tales of forgotten deadline reminders etc*) that I would hope that any organisation dealing w/them is totally used to this happening and will just roll their eyes and not hold it against their students

good luck, Maria!

(* this is totally offtopic for the thread but I was just thinking last night that my mother has the gene for sleeping in in the morning but the gene for getting shit done well before the deadline; my father has the last-minute gene but also the getting up at 4am to do stuff gene, which has saved his ass on so many occasions; and I have the last-minute gene but also the not-getting-up gene, which leaves me kind of screwed and not about to be on the grad school thread for real)

thanks guys, i really appreciate the perspective. also, i talked to someone yesterday who had one recommender just fail to submit his letter completely, and he still got an honorable mention, so it's comforting to hear they don't just toss your application because of it. anyway, today also feels like there's more to life than grad school, which is good to remember.

hey guys

i don't uh want to be a journalist, and every day at journo school has reinforced this sentiment

waht do i do

i know the *answer* is finish the course because i can, but i have strong objections to getting involved with this shit on a paid and careerist level

luckily for you even if you wanted to be a journalist there are no careers left

so think about it as a dodged bullet

lj shook

finish the course, get a qualification, use it to get a job that isn't being a journalist.

that is the advice my parents have given me, thanks! just had to get that off my chest. have to be very careful abt not saying that to my supervisors

if i'm made unemployed next month as expected, i stand a good chance of getting paid to do a postgrad in september. hard to think of a downside to that tbh.

Lj, iirc it is a course in scientific journalism and good technical writers never starve. Might not be the most glamorous work writing documentation but someone has to do it and most engineers are terrible at it.

^ word.

I've spent 6 months of this past years writing a user's manual for our bespoke IT system, and it's the easiest (and most rewarding financially) work i've ever done. lol public service.

Ah, but it's not technical writing. It's a journalism course, except we write in a journalistic manner about scientific issues! We learn multimedia techniques. We discover how journalism and society interact. I want out.

i think what ed is trying to say is that your course will be useful to you in other areas besides journalism--scientists/engineers are not known for their writing skills