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

been stressed lately, mainly about final papers but also because most of my classmates seem so dorked out about what we're studying, like they're really into it and know all about it and have conversations about it, while i basically am just doing what i need to do to get through school and i feel guilty for being bored by a lot of this shit, especially because that's how i treated college and i feel like i didn't really "take advantage" of being in college educationwise and careerwise (making connections etc).

i wouldn't feel guilty--you're using grad school as a means to an end. i was bored by college too (and i've been bored in grad school 75% of the time) but i've gotten enough other stuff out of it that i feel it's worth it and stuff

tehresa, I am giving you a virtual high five that reverberates loudly into the digital night!

It sounds like this:

Wha-POW-ow-ow-wwwwwwwwwww

^_^

btw next week, I think Wednesday/Thursday, if all goes well I'll be here soliciting digital high fives because by then my thesis will also be approved. :)

i think we need to have an end of the semester sing along to School's Out

omg awesome congratulations tehresa!!!!!!!!

Awesome job Tehresa. caps and gowns all round.

Roll on May 11th for my final deliverables.

zs, i will reciprocate your fiveness!

YAY TZA. Pretty soon the only person writing 8000 words of speculation around here will be...me.

yay i passed yay

good job

Pretty soon the only person writing 8000 words of speculation around here will be...me

*Waves, weakly*

Hoping to have the year's final assignment finished tomorrow, ready for polishing (did someone mention turds?) and submission, along with its friend, on Thursday. Then comes SUMMER, during which I fully intend to catch up on interesting reading for which I didn't have/make time this year; read ahead for next year's courses; and work on my research-project proposal. Oh, and spend a bit of time thinking about what the fuck I'm going to do next, and e-mailing course directors going REMEMBER MY FUCKING NAME (note to self: must work on that e-mail before sending it).

Also: congratulations gbx! Sorry, didn't read that bit before posting :)

i mean, guys, i passed a 30-minute practical exam (doing a physical), still have two weeks of finals and 3.5 years of medical school left

hey I'm doing a Masters, I technically belong here. But then my experience as a part-time student is nothing like the immense stress and so on you're all on about, I heartily recommend it (although two years to do a Masters is one thing, seven or whatever to do a PhD is slightly different). It's like cheating, but legit. I handed in my work for the semester, a single 5,000 word paper (okay, 6,600, brevity is a skill I've yet to develop), and now I'm technically off until September. But in that time I can start working on my 15,000 dissertation, which is due in in sixteen months. O yeh.

But on the other hand, my experience of a long long line of tiny steps towards something big is making me envious of all you guys with your big scary events.

I just drop into this thread to congratulate the grad-school folk at each hurdle passed; my assigned 8k words is for something else entirely.

Friend is doing a curatorial PhD and is scared she'll get booted off, but over the course of the degree she has been sacked from job for being pregnant, had kid (both mum and kid nearly died), brought successful sex discrimination/constructive dismissal case (org is now trying to play 'if we pay you, we go bankrupt' BS), moved under extreme pressure and has had to do all of this plus lecture part-time at a uni 100+ miles from home with no help whatsoever from her former partner.

It's good to see people making progress! I just finished 6000 words of PURE UNADULTERATED SCIENCE myself (but don't ask how long it took)

i mean, guys, i passed a 30-minute practical exam (doing a physical), still have two weeks of finals and 3.5 years of medical school left

So? Every little counts ... I just put the final fullstop on an essay (which still needs some editing and tweaking, and a reference section) but FUCK IT, YAY ME :)

hey I'm doing a Masters, I technically belong here. But then my experience as a part-time student is nothing like the immense stress and so on you're all on about, I heartily recommend it (although two years to do a Masters is one thing, seven or whatever to do a PhD is slightly different)

Ha, exactly ...

I handed in my work for the semester, a single 5,000 word paper (okay, 6,600, brevity is a skill I've yet to develop)

Wait, what? Jammy sod. Last semester: 11,000 words. This semester: the same. *Shakes fist* :)

y'all made me curious so i checked - mine was 9,730 words.
i think my hueg marketing project last year was twice that though. lol @ joek thesis.

anyway, gbx doing a physical is nothing to sneeze at! lots of doctors suck at it!

ah, you guys with your requirements of less than 100,000 words not including appendices.

yeah, i know i got off relatively easy, but also i'm doing more of a professional thing than a research thing.

: )

I really envy you writer-types. I have 2500 words of a 6000 word paper written and I have absolutely no fucking idea what else to write about, and the damn thing is due in two weeks! There's only so many examples you can write about to support your argument before the reader is like, "OK, I get it. Move on."

caek, I take it that was your dissertation?

one paper between me and freedommmmmmmm

i have a while to go, but I don't remember the last time someone turned in a phd thesis less than 50k in our dept, xp

I have 12K at the moment, but I've got probably another 6K to add on (IN THE NEXT WEEK AAAAAAAAAGH).

travails of the grad school student:

A few hours ago, I was happy because I had added on 3 1/2 quality pages to my thesis. I had it saved on the desktop at the library (note: DUMB). I stepped outside to make a phone call. I got sidetracked, and then was coerced into stopping into a little wine and cheese event, and then I came back about an hour later. It turns out that after an hour, the computers here automatically reboot and delete everything on the desktop. So now I'm sitting here trying to retype the ideas and structure of what I had written before. Aggggggggggh

can i just

http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/content/images/2006/10/19/dmu_head_in_hands_315x420.jpg

gmail urself

yeah I know how to do it. I didn't expect to be out for an hour and have my data deleted, whoops.

dropbox.com

advice like that is what people who lose files love to hear

Especially people who already know how to use the internet.

Next time I see someone drop their keys, I'm going to walk up to them and be like "hey man, if you don't want to drop your keys, you should think about attaching them to your belt loops with a clip." Later, if I find anyone who didn't finish their taxes on time, I'll inform them that they should probably file their taxes before April 15th next time.

saying "be careful" to someone who has just stubbed their toe

'wear a condom next time'

I like how dropbox.com is not even a legit website.

You need a nice computer monitor?

http://www.nicecomputermonitor.com, duh

Feel your pain! I lost like 2 pages when I was working at the laundromat and my battery decided to randomly die (gotta get this checked out bc it did it again last night!). So frustrating!

hey i dunno if apple are still doing this but they replaced mine for free http://www.apple.com/support/macbook_macbookpro/batteryupdate/

if apple *is* still doing this

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/04/the-dilemmas-of-graduate-education.html

i don't really have an opinion about this debate and thinking about it doesn't seem like fun, but ymmv.

I only had to learn once that in this neck of the woods, if you open a file from email and forget to save as, you'll be saving to an irretrievable temporary files folder. ho boy.

I think even if I wasn't part-time my workload would be pretty low. Suckas. Another couple of 3,500 word essays would've been me for this semester (although I'd be expected to have a good chunk of dissertation work done by now too. That, though, is only 15,000 words itself).

thanks, harbl! i installed that update but my cycle count is still low. genius bar appt on sunday!

lol i accidentally did that at work last week and almost had a heart attack at the idea of 3 hours of work GONE. i was like 'NO I HAVE BEEN SAVING IT EVERY 5 MIN WHERE DID IT GOOOOOOO?' but the weird thing is i had saved as bc i changed the doc name but it still saved to the temp folder bc i must not have been paying attention!

Ah, man: I feel your pain, Z S. That is seriously sucky. And it happens once in a while to all of us: eg the time I managed to answer "No" to "Save Changes before closing?" (this was at work, with a page that was meant to have been on the press 10 minutes previously) despite ... well, despite obviously meaning to click fucking "Yes".

Grah.

i feel the pain too Z S. could be worse. my tale of grad school geek woe is i spilled water on my laptop two weeks from finishing dissertation chapter 2. all panicky i had that thing upside down like a tent on my rug for two days running, hoping somehow the water would drip out. it didn't of course and my computer was totally fried. after mooching a ride to best buy i found out rust had started forming on my hard drive. somehow they saved all the data though and transfered it onto the new laptop i had to buy i couldn't afford. and then after all that i still had to finish the chapter on time