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

Erica: I also really strongly suggest that you work in a clinical setting to get a feel for it and confirm that you don't hate it before you spend any more money and time. Planned Parenthood is always hiring, although the pay is shit.

Kate - I have worked in a clinical setting before, a family planning clinic and loved it. Like I said though I'll probably email you soon if you don't mind giving me some details from your experience.

Not PP but a clinic inside a major urban hospital.

whatever you do in grad-school learn some statistics, that shit is useful. (goes double for Eng Lit Phds)

I know some basic stuff and have used SPSS but what really seems to be in demand for what I'm interested in is SAS and I have no experience with it. :/

Stats is a required course for nurses.

I should hope so.

SAS is not difficult to pick up especially if you've used SPSS. It's conceptually pretty similar. They are really tight with their academic licensing so its not easy to get a copy to learn on. You can download a demo copy of JMP IIRC, which is the lovechild of SAS and Excel.

Right now I use R which is a lot like programming with punchcards, but its open source, free and the O'Reilly book for it has an Eagle on the cover so it makes a good solution until our Cognos/SPSS server is up and running.

whatever you do in grad-school learn some statistics, that shit is useful. (goes double for Eng Lit Phds)

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Wednesday, 1 December 2010 20:37 (17 minutes ago)

why do lit ppl need stats?

to be employable afterwards (boom-tish)

An exceedingly facetious comment, but it is a really useful skillset to have.

that was a serious question

like, yeah, generically useful....but not especially for lit ppl i'd have thought

just finished my phd thesis iirc

listened to cavalry cross (live) while it printed. very chilled out.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs1126.snc4/148868_10150352619855305_673235304_15822375_1218999_n.jpg

oh my god, a side dock in the wild

congrats btw! lol british plug

:D awesome - congratulations!

congrats caek

nice!

totes jeal

how many pages?

CAEK

CONGRATULATIONS

haha thanks guys! i am vibing to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFpv1LKrA9s&feature=player_embedded#! now

it is 236 pages, with a truth bomb per page ratio of about 0.01

#!

there ain't nothin on page 237

shhbang

who will become a doctor first, gbx or caek

BOOMING

can u post an edited highlights on 77 at some point or am I a cheeky scamp

'who wd u trust if u had a hernia on mars, gbx or caek'

Go caek!

congraets caek!

Well done, caek!

mazel tov / congrats

I remember this feeling

a printed out thesis in the hand feels so, er, heavy and thick and satisfying

enjoy it!

Well done!

Almost the anniversary of my viva, and now I realise I miss my thesis ......

(as well as not being able to remember any of it, much)

congratulations, caek!

congrats btw! lol british plug

― .\ /. (dayo), Thursday, December 2, 2010 2:57 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

aren't HK plugs british? britain, ireland, malta, hk i thought?

wow congrats caek - what is it on?

congratulations!

astronomy. title is "early-type disk galaxies", which is actually kind of funny for about 30 people in the world.

Finishing a dissertation is so funny. It seems like such a big deal, & then you do it, & you enter into a cadre of people who've all already done it & thus having a doctorate is just the lowest common denominator, nothing special at all.

So enjoy the good feelings while they last!

haha thanks!

Yeah, there's something wonderful about investing so much time/effort into a document that ~3 people in the world will read. At least, I think I mean "wonderful".

euler & sean bringin the good times

Finishing a PhD is just weird, is all.

aren't HK plugs british? britain, ireland, malta, hk i thought?

― caek, Friday, December 3, 2010 6:08 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah! I actually kinda love british plugs, they're so rugged, and putting the fuse into the plug is a pretty great idea. but it's always lol to see them grafted onto a macbook power supply

I think it would have felt like a bigger event if I hadn't already had a job for a year when I defended, & if I'd gone to my graduation ceremony. As it was, it was just a relief, like when a headache goes away...and then you can just do what you were already doing with one fewer obstacle.

My mother offered to buy me my robes when I graduated, but I've not taken her up on it. They're about $2,000. She just likes the tams, I can see why she's not pressured me to take her up on her offer yet (maybe if I had a job at Oxford, don't you have to wear your robes there all the time?)

http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?story_id=17723223

In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships.

In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting.

ha ha *tugs collar*

doesn't really break any new ground but still otm

interesting article thanks

Yay, another ridiculous article that by and large treats "Ph.D."'s as one large, homogeneous bloc looking for faculty positions. 100K Ph.D.'s and 16K professorships in the past five years ... that's a totally meaningless stat. It's like saying "out of X people with English degrees, only Y% of them are writing books for a living". How many of those 100K people are, uh, WORKING? That's what's important. I want to see these employment numbers broken down by discipline.

You also can't throw around employment numbers from different countries as if they can be straightforwardly compared to the situation in Britain or the US. There are far, far fewer faculty positions in Spain and Germany than in the US because the hierarchy is completely different. Most researchers work on a five year "temporary" contract as a necessary prelude to getting a permanent position ... there is no exact equivalent to this in the US. So it's misleading to complain that "45% of graduates are still on temporary contracts after five years in Germany".

The "earnings premiums" numbers are important, and huzzah, how about that: "only in medicine, other sciences, and business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile." That kinda ruins his whole thesis, doesn't it? But rather than acknowledge that the advantages of a Ph.D. is entirely dependent upon the chosen discipline, the author whitewashes them by averaging them out across all disciplines to give the impression that there's an across-the-board crisis.

lol @ "only in medicine, other sciences, and business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile."