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

Langpo doesn't have an aesthetic rooted in Marxism, it has a justification (and perhaps comes from a scene) rooted in Marxism.

Not that that adds anything to the discussion, it's just something of an automatic reflex for me to say something like that when the issue comes up. Carry on.

i don't want to continue derailing this thing. just want to say "thanks" euler for your thoughtfulness. i bet this thread will be useful for people considering graduate school (my contributions notwithstanding)

Euler and kamerad's discussion is interesting, but for people thinking about grad school, it's worth noting that they're talking about an issue that either doesn't exist in my field or to which I am completely oblivious. I didn't recognize what you were talking about in my own experience. I went to state comprehensive and am doing PhD at Oxford, so it should be the kind of thing that would bother me, if it bothered anyone.

I don't doubt your concerns are real though. Perhaps I've been inoculated by four years as an undergrad here. Also, for good or ill, astronomers and physicists are probably less interested in the social skills that go along with being financially or culturally elite.

caek, I think you're right that these things probably matter less in the hard sciences. Although my grad work was in math in addition to philo and there was some of what I'm talking about in math, for instance the tendency of mathematicians at conferences to head for Asian food for dinner (which was jarring for me at first until I got familiar with things).

For instance I still dress like a mathematician (i.e. very badly), but philosophers are pretty fashionable (relative to academia) and so I feel out of place...fortunately as a logician (i.e. a little math, a little philo) I get away with it.

I get the feeling that the 5 sigma cool mathematicians are cooler than their equivalents in the hard sciences. You do get media-friendly/rock star physicists, but I would rarely call them cool. The most cosmopolitan/urban/stylish people at astronomy conferences are the ones in Hawaiian shirts.

Unrelated, but maybe tied in with kamerad's feelings, I do remember seeing culture shock among the American grad students I've met, both at meetings in Europe and in the U.S. when they're in a room full of European people. I guess this is tied up with wealth somehow. European students have an advantage here because they tend to know U.S. culture better, but this is not necessarily because they are particularly intellectual or well traveled.

That's interesting re. culture shock with Europeans. In my grad program in math, there were a lot of (eastern) Europeans, but this was in the mid 90s so they were...differently European than folks from e.g. the UK or France. I spend so much time in Europe (and to a lesser degree, Latin America) these days that I don't notice these things. I'm also generally at least twenty years younger than the average attendee at the conferences I go to, so I don't see young Americans in these situations often anymore.

I just marked a piece of work on which a student had written "lol" at the end of a brain-dump which he hoped contained the answer. I was sorely tempted to write "tl;dr".

grades: pissing me off

just got my first Bs of grad school (one b, one b+). i am depressed. mostly because the b+ is the class i worked hardest in, and the b prof gave me no constructive crit whatsoever.

have not even checked grades for past semester yet. maybe now i've plied myself with some gin i can deal with it?

i don't know i prepped with wine and it's making me want to cry.

yeah i just checked mine. :(:(:(

blurghhhh

well...if it makes you feel better i got a B-. total bummerz. and i'm out of gin, too

b prof gave me a b- on the final grrrrrrrrrr. fuck him, he never "got" me all semester, why should my gpa suffer?

i'm trying to figure out why this was the case w/o actually e-mailing my professor. this was the class i had the hardest time grappling with content-wise, though, so it's probably best i do anyway.

man. so upset right now

commiseration <3

kjndfkjndsgf. thanks, tho. are you finished w/ yr program now?

thesis + one more class (a seminar, should be easy)

well that's a relief i guess (depending on how far you on thesis). i think next semester should be less of a hassle (three classes and an internship as opposed to five classes) so hopefully i'll have room to improve...

just sent maybe-more-defensive-than-it-ought-to-have-been e-mail to prof about grade

you ARE on

yeah, i wanna call prof and be like 'yo 4 classes and a 35-hour a week job is a lot, give me a fucking break!' but i don't think it would go over well.

thesis + one more class (a seminar, should be easy)

How did you pull that off? My last semester is going to be 4 classes (one of them is a seminar, should be easy) + thesis, despite trying my hardest to make my last semester an easy one.

i dunno, that's how they schedule my program! first semester was 5 classes + 20hr internship.

my program is constructed in such a way that i have almost zero leeway with classes (i.e. nearly everything i take is a "required" class) BUT since i also went to this school as an undergrad in a similar major, i get to jettison a class i already took as an UG in favor of another one i'm really looking forward to, so that's definitely something

xpost five and an internship? jesus

Damn, first semester sounds horrible but I guess it's paying off now. My program, on the other hand, is designed to be scheduled by the students themselves. Which explains why I fucked it up so badly!

sorta paying off. i almost lost my mind this(last) semester.

Serious question: are Bs in some way qualitatively worse in the US system? Only most dudes I know would be reasonably happy with a B- ... hell, I would. Indeed, we got told to pretty much expect Cs; As are "approaching publishable level".

I've only had one grade back so far and I was delighted with it; once we settle into the endless round of returned coursework, I'd be chuffed to fuck with a B average.

Yeah, a B in the UK is really not the equivalent of a B over there. I was at Georgetown for a year and was perfectly happy with straight B's because they translated to 2.1s when I came back to the UK but my friends would get really stressed if they even started dipping towards a B+.

Interesting. I know some people like that here, of course ... hmm. Desire for excellence or unhealthy and unrealistic competitive panic?

I guess the answer to that depends on which side of the pond you're on, too.

It's certainly very important for some people going on to certain post-undergrad stuff at the best schools (medical, law, etc.) to avoid B's. I think a lot of this is to do with the granularity of transcripts and grading in the U.S. compared to the U.K., where we reduce 3/4 years to either "1", "2:1", or "2:2", and we don't normally issue transcripts breaking down scores. If employers could see individual grades they might be taken more seriously here.

I get the impression that grade inflation is a problem at undergrad level in the U.S. while it's a problem at GCSE/A Level in the U.K.

When I asked Oxford for a transcript, which I need every time I apply for something outside the U.K., they send me a document with my grades with "THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD DOES NOT ISSUE TRANSCRIPTS" in bold at the top. Right.

Also stupid is how the grades are raw marks and it doesn't say what they are out of. I guess people assume I got 86% on undergrad astro, when I actually got 86/150, and 24% for lab work, when I actually got 24/24.

This probably gives an idea of how seriously individual grades are taken in the U.K.

You're dead right about the transcripts: I hadn't thought about it like that. I had the same thing trying to get mine from Edinburgh earlier this year (graduated 1997): there was no useful information on there at all. Mind, I think that's changed now: with the major Scottish universities at least, there's a huge move away from a finals-based system to one in which coursework is a major part, and I imagine that in itself will begin to shift the focus away from one overall result and on to individual grades.

That said: I'd still be happy with a load of Bs ;)

Here is my theory:

In the US: Transcripts make individual grades as important as averages for grad school/jobs -> pressure from students/admissions, etc. on colleges/professors to award good individual grades -> grade inflation at college level -> B = not good.

In the UK: No SATs for university admission but rather individual subject grades instead -> pressure on governments, exam boards, etc. to award more As/A*s -> grade inflation at school level -> B = not good.

I do think, however, that breaking down grades by course/paper/subject is generally a good thing.

I agree with your theory and the overall idea of breaking down grades. The problem comes, I guess, when grades of any sort take on such disproportionate significance.

Key thing that would do wonders in the UK: not going straight from school to university. Given the current economic circs, that's a more forlorn hope than ever.

http://www.barrylutz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/noooooooooooo.gif

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

srsly

18 hrs. til first class of semester 2!

pro: For once I signed up for a "fun" 0 credit class. Twice a week, I will be meditating for an hour AKA chilling the fuck out.
con: For the rest of my life I will know that I missed a Historic Moment on January 20th, 2009 because I was chilling the fuck out.

whew. things are finally looking up
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/123101/
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009013001c.htm

Universities are fucked right now. State university systems are talking furloughs, unpaid leave (but you still have to teach your classes). My state's legislature proposed a 10% furlough for the entire 2009-10 academic year. Yay, a 10% pay cut. And I'm already on public assistance before that pay cut. And I am a full-time, tenure-line faculty member in the humanities at a research-I university. Things are worse for second-tier state institutions and many private colleges too. And we are being asked to propose exigency plans, i.e. who to fire first if the shit really hits the fan by 2010. That's gonna do wonders for faculty morale.

xpost

That Benton piece is very, very interesting, no matter what one is studying. Thank you for sharing the link. This:

they've been praised their whole lives, and no one has ever told them that they may not become what they want to be, that higher education is a business that does not necessarily have their best interests at heart

perhaps gets to the nub of it. Me: I've made an informed choice to go back to school after 12 years of what could be termed a successful career. I'm old enough and ugly enough to know that there are no certainties; if I do pursue my studies over a longer period and at a higher level, I'll be doing it primarily for myself and for my love of my subject, not because I think it's going to make me money in the future.

But I feel incredibly sorry for young, bright new graduates who haven't got that real-world experience/cynicism/realism: what are they to do? If there aren't jobs out there in the big, bad world, staying within the academy will look even more attractive ... but shit, what do you say to them? "Lower your expectations completely, do it for the love of the discipline and prepare to end up no further up the ladder when you're done?" Brutal, probably true ... but in a capitalist society where GETTING ON and MOVING ON UP is seemingly all that counts, it's not going to wash.

well good luck, it seems rigged, a country club pyramid scheme sometimes, like benton says ~

As things stand, I can only identify a few circumstances under which one might reasonably consider going to graduate school in the humanities:

* You are independently wealthy, and you have no need to earn a living for yourself or provide for anyone else.

* You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere.

* You can rely on a partner to provide all of the income and benefits needed by your household.

You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere.

But there's no way to know ahead of time if you'll be one of these or not (unless you go somewhere that rarely places anyone).

i took this as a veiled reference to the children of professors proliferating all over the humanities, family business and such

out and out filial nepotism is not something i've come across in academia. i think the prevalence of teacher's/professor's kids in academia has a lot more to do with them learning more from being around their folks.

either way they have a huge head start. i never met a professor's kid until i got to undergrad, and then in graduate school, it was like "where's your dad/mom teach?" but maybe they are genetically superior

(xpost) I just finished applying to grad schools, and am waiting to hear back. Sometimes I think that's an incredibly stupid plan, and then I remember that I have less income or job security than most grad students at the moment, and it seems smart again. One of the quotes from the second article makes me uncomfortable because it is how I'm thinking:

They think that graduate school is a good place to hide from the recession. They'll spend a few years studying literature, preferably on a fellowship, and then, if academe doesn't seem appealing or open to them, they will simply look for a job when the market has improved.

Well, yeah...if I get into any funded graduate program, the odds are very high that I'll be making more than I am right now, plus I'll be able to get health insurance, so why not try? I'm stubborn and insisting on working in the field I'd like to work in after grad school even if I can only get part time jobs that barely pay, but I'd probably be better off financially if I'd just applied for every random sales & marketing job listed a few months ago. My life feels like a bet with myself to see how long I can get away with having plans before I give up and go for "any full time job I can get." (I've never seriously planned to become a professor, and I have learned from former bosses and coworkers that an MA would help in the fields I'd like to work in, but I'm not sure if a PhD would help or harm the job prospects. The plan is not to worry about it until I have at least an MA in hand and hopefully the stupid recession's over. But maybe the plan itself is stupid.)

I agree with caek about filial nepotism. I've seen very little of it. You see a lot of advisor-nepotism, not sure what to call that.