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

Being able to summarize your work quickly is really important & useful, so it's not time wasted even if it doesn't come up at your defense.

My defense began with me giving a twenty-minute lecture on the thesis, which I'd prepped ahead of time with slides; it was the normal thing to do.

Is it cool to talk to this algebraist before your defense? In my department that was totally standard, a pre-defense interview of both sides if you will. That's where the real work got done, ultimately; the defense itself was more of a celebration.

haha that's a great great quote - cheers.

mathematicians is biters etc

xp

btw the umbral calculus is rad & I expect to write a paper about it in the next few years

yes ppl i've spoken with who did their defense in the states talk about this presentation but that's def. not the case in the UK (at my uni at least)

i don't think we do 'pre-defense' interviews or anything but i've had a chat with the external guy so might be worth having a brief conversation next week.

fucking hell, after spending forever stressing over that application I have very quickly received a "no soz" on the basis of them not being able to identify a suitable academic supervisor. This after getting in touch with the person I wanted to study with, him saying "hm area X sounds interesting but I have reservations about area Y because I know little about it", and me going to a lot of effort to stress that 1. it's really about area X with area Y as a kind of supplementary thing and 2. quite literally no one is a specialist in both, or even really a specialist in X and dabbler in Y, so it's the specialism in X I need and I'm set up to work around the rest. RAAAH.

I guess instead of sulking I should try to find (more) other options.

general advice/rfi/me grinding my gears: i published a review in a journal published by edinburgh uni press, so not a small outfit, and they're saying they'll only send a pdf! no free copy! get a 40% authors' discount

is this a thing, and if so, when did it become so?

they're attributing it to the_current_climate

but i did a review for some other journal within the last year and got a 'free' copy

obviously no-one questions the whole 'not getting paid' bit...

never signed a contract for it neither, which was odd

by "copy" do yo u mean a physical copy? how long was the article? like if it's monograph length that seems a bit lame, but free offprints stopped being a thing for science articles 5+ years ago.

From the one journal I've ever had an article in, I got a year's subscription.

more typical now not to receive free copies for reviews, i think?

sending copies to reviewers (even in pdf, though that makes it a little easier) is labor-intensive, and i guess unlike proper articles there's not as much expectation that the author might want copies to distribute.

by "copy" do yo u mean a physical copy?

ya-hah

how long was the article? like if it's monograph length that seems a bit lame, but free offprints stopped being a thing for science articles 5+ years ago.

it was like 2,500wds

i got free offprints *and* a free copy for a review for a blackwell/wiley (iirc) journal last summer

sending copies to reviewers (even in pdf, though that makes it a little easier) is labor-intensive

ehhh not really... well, compared to writing an article that someone is getting paid to publish

problem is too many desperados willing to put up with this shit

i have never even seen a physical copy of any of my articles, other than ones i've printed myself. apparently libraries have them. live in the now, man.

I stopped getting free paper offprints maybe two or three years ago (I publish in the sciences & in the humanities). Now I get PDFs. I don't care b/c I have stacks of paper offprints that just waste space, b/c who wants them? I just post my articles on my webpage anyway.

dudes really?

imo it doesn't exist till you have it in your hands

I've seen a few paper copies of my articles recently when I've been traveling & visiting libraries, which is cool, but I'd rather someone else store it than me.

may as well post this here: learned recently that I got the big T. in the humanities, at a research university. so from my pov its death has been overhyped.

still kinda numb about it. Every big step feels like nothing once I cross it.

well done!

I've seen a few paper copies of my articles recently when I've been traveling & visiting libraries, which is cool, but I'd rather someone else store it than me.

― Euler, Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7:25 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah, pieces of paper... s0 hard to find space for

yeah yeah yeah...but 50 paper offprints per article adds up pretty quickly, and whilst maybe having a couple on hand to send to dinosaurs is useful, the others just collect dust in my already-cluttered office.

Wow, congrats Euler! Such things are far off for me...

whoa congrats euler!

^^

congratulations euler!

dudes really?

imo it doesn't exist till you have it in your hands

― for all the fucked-up children of this world we give you 1p3 (history mayne), Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7:22 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rip humanities.

congratulations!

do u guys all have sweet lives as academics getting articles published

Thanks! Contrary to what yahoos think, it's not like you coast after this: you then work to get promoted again & preferably to find a hotter job. But those further challenges are pretty far from this thread so I'll shut up about them.

The oddest part of the t track is that you'll need people to write letters for your promotion, & you don't get to pick these people...so it's super critical to get to know lots of people. This is not a professor for the loner, but I suppose that's well-known since you have to teach...I guess I didn't realize how important professional socializing was until pretty late in the game; fortunately it's something I love to do & that I'm good at, so it was no stretch; but it's worth keeping that in mind as you wonder what the fuck you're getting yourself into with this grad school stuff.

Thanks! Contrary to what yahoos think, it's not like you coast after this: you then work to get promoted again & preferably to find a hotter job. But those further challenges are pretty far from this thread so I'll shut up about them.

haha yes, i like that line about winning the pie-eating contest where first prize is more pie.

xp my life is pretty sweet aside from the fact that my family qualifies as a low-income household; but that'll change with my promotion. And getting flown around the world to give talks on someone else's dime is def. sweet.

It's easy to say all this now, though; a couple of years ago when the economy was crashing & I knew my t clock was running out, things didn't seem so sweet. And working 7 days a week for the last, er, 15+ years, hasn't been that awesome. My friends who've entered industry after doctoral work tell me that it's nice to have weekends free. I wouldn't know! But such is the price of (intellectual) freedom.

7 days a week!?

"Professional socializing" is my main academic talent, I feel.

his is not a professor for the loner, but I suppose that's well-known since you have to teach...I guess I didn't realize how important professional socializing was until pretty late in the game; fortunately it's something I love to do & that I'm good at, so it was no stretch;

I rather wish someone had said that to me.....

Not a loner, exactly, and I like teaching and all, but the socialising is a strain - bluntly, I find I have little, apart from our subject, in common with my peers, and I'd (much) rather be at the football than eating bad food at a conference dinner.

Ah, well.....

yeah I mean "days off" is a concept that's pretty foreign to me; if you get into this, you'd better love it more than anything, because if you want to make it (to the biggish time at least) it's going to take all your time & focus. When things are going well I think this is a great thing, but when you have to cancel holidays because you have an article or talk that needs to be finished, or when someone flies you to another continent & you spend the whole trip in your hotel rushing to finish something up, then giving your talk & going home, it's not so great. Not to mention when you can't see how to solve a problem that needs to be solved...

Professional socializing is an awesome talent to have, though b/c of my personal background I feel pretty Vampire-Weekend-y when I do it a lot of the time, & then eventually at home you're a tourist; I mean it obviously beats work where you have to lift things or get shot at but this life has its costs too.

yeah sonofstan I'd recommend trying to find people with whom the socializing is less of a strain---this is gonna sound a little dickish but even as a grad student I had way more fun hanging with the profs than with other grad students b/c grad students can kinda be all over the place wrt focus & intensity, whereas with the profs I felt more at home...and after a bit of hanging with them it quickly got the point where I could more closely ~~be myself~~...also I worried that the grad students I'd be hanging with were gonna end up out of the profession soon & so why should I bother getting to know them, when I could instead cultivate relationships that could last. I know, it's kinda dickish, but it's worked for me...both in the sense of being comfortable having fun at meetings & the like, & (obv.) with getting professional support as I've gone on.

congrats, Euler!

euler otm re: grad students

rip humanities.

― caek, Wednesday, February 16, 2011 9:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

imo paper has a longer lifespan than computer gizmos

i do write internet-only stuff too!

you want to make something real

i was there, the first time pedro costa decided 'fuck it, let's just let it run', i said to him 'don't do it that way, you'll never make a dime'

i sometimes wonder how much money ppl like him make

if he can afford to buy a lexus then perhaps he can say it was all worthwhile

someone who knows told me he's personally rich

he used to get money from the portuguese government i think, can't imagine that's still a goer

congrats oiler!

Congrats!

If I may, I'd like to ask anyone on ILX of the North American persuasion who went to grad school in the UK, if/how doing a degree there has limited/opened your experience for doing things afterward (in North America or wherever). (This is re: studying modern/contemporary art in London, so the fit is very solid).

I've heard schools (precisely which shools I don't know) are soon going to be phasing out physical copies of theses as well, giving you PDF's instead.

already, in the first half of the last decade, my doctoral university eliminated physical copies of the thesis in favor of PDFs.

trying to carve a 500 word supporting statement out of what seemed to me like an already pretty concise 1000 word supporting statement - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

bullets and more bullets!

i can do 2000 to 1000, but 1000 to 500 is impossible for me. i start again, and (especially) forget my favourite sentences.

583 words! many tragic losses. and nowwwww for some german-style compound nouns, i guess?

drop in copious footnotes. they do not count as words, right?

Depends...one journal I'm writing a paper for at the moment insists that the bibliography contributes the word count ffs.

contributes to obv.

caek do u know

http://www.phy.bris.ac.uk/people/hussey_ne/portrait.jpg