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

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WoooWoooWoooWooo

uh

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WoooWoooWoooWooo!

CONGRATS TZA!

:D :D :D

congratz

good work tza

thanks guys :)

i graduated 3 weeks ago (my "official" grad date on my transcript is not till next week even) and today i got a call from my school's area code, no message left, so i googled the number and it turns out it's the alumni association already asking for money! great. i don't think i'll ever donate (like i already gave them $70k or something wtf) but if i do it'll be after i pay off my loans so maybe next time they call i'll say no thanks call me back when i'm 50. that's ridiculous imo.

my alumni association sent me my first invitation to donate a week ago. i don't finish for a year. lol at the idea of me donating even when i have finished.

The alumni association of the university that I teach at (and hence PAYS ME) calls and asks for money. Absolutely ridiculous. My grad school called us probably 100 times this spring; I guess "no" didn't mean no to them; it's enough to change my phone #.

Just went apartment hunting with friends in the city where I'll be moving for grad school...of course there's nothing cheap AND convenient, lots of tradeoffs, but it's making me really excited to move. Two and a half more months!

currently enjoying a fight with the referee of my first paper, journal probably going to have to adjudicate. my experienced co-author describe the referee's report as "the most unprofessional i have ever seen". i used to work for a journal and have read literally thousands of the things, and, yes, it's pretty weird.

example slightly passive aggressive passage from our reply to the latest report:

Moreover, a number of the referee's objections have seemed to us to be
presumptuous (they assume we cannot show things rather than ask us),
pedantic or poorly thought through, and we begin to suspect they have an
agenda toward the field in which we work. Indeed, while their reports
have been long and detailed, they do not seem to have invested as much
time in reading our paper as they have in writing their replies. This
was most clearly demonstrated when they wrote a very long and detailed
report on the previous version of the paper. While we do not blame them
for the clerical error, we were extremely surprised they did not notice
that the paper they were reviewing bore little relation to the list of
changes that accompanied it. This is surely something they would have
noticed had they really been judging the paper on its merits.

happy days

O_O
good luck, man :(

also i don't read that as slightly passive aggressive but more 'i am fucking pissed off and you are a moran'

Ha, Caek, that's beautifully worded! And no, I don't think it's passive-aggressive; more like quiet, measured anger.

Good luck with it all, though: it sounds like a shitty battle to have to fight.

the referee's a wanker amirite

good grief. sample from our latest reply:

We would also like to take the opportunity to draw attention to -- and _strongly_ reject -- the anonymous referee's suggestion that we are disingenuously pretending not to understand their arguments and the premises of dynamical modelling in order to expedite the publication of our paper. This is an extremely serious accusation which they slip in to their report only parenthetically and with no support whatsoever. We ask that it be ignored by the editors.

seriously, i used work in publising and run the peer review process for a journal. i have read maybe 5000 referee reports in my life, made accept/reject decisions on over 2000 papers and taken part in probably 200 adjudications, appeals or complaints. with the exception of a plagiarism case, i have never seen a referee behave like this. and it's my ruddy paper.

:( that is horrible!!

find out who it is and IRL yellow-card them

seriously though, why is this person being so darn obnoxious? did you become sworn enemies with someone when you were a lot younger?

referee reports can be kind of like the internet. you feel protected by anonymity (ok, you don't lj, but other people do) and are aware of other people reading, and you become a sociopath.

so there's that. also in this case our working assumption is he has a problem with our field rather than our work within that field, and we're bearing the brunt.

you need to find this referee and casually explain to him over a cold beer that you are a real person with real needs, and that your area of astrophysics is goddamn exciting

that how i break it down to an extent

he could just be a douche on a power trip. Those definitely exist in academia.

so fucking ready to be done with this (just a little over three months to go)

me too! three months! we can do it!

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

you can do it!!! said this before and will say it again: totally impressed by anyone who can get through, or even begin, grad school. it sounds like one of the worst things ever.

you can totally do it! sometimes i am amazed that i did! but i did! way to go, guys! you got this!

If everything goes to plan, this time next year I'll have an M.B.A. with a concentration in Information Systems. Then I'll get my D.B.A. and pretty soon y'all are gonna be callin' me Dr. Snrub.

first day of school 2day, no end in sight

me 2 :(

ugh my class starts thursday. but i'm part-time.

i keep thinking i should have gotten an mba instead but then i talk to ppl with mbas who are like 'nah'

year 2 of 2. BRING IT.

totally won the adjudication that paper by the way, big fat publication on my cv and the acceptance removes a bit of a logjam on couple of follow-up papers (which depend on its methods). boss.

mad congrats 2u!

mad congrats to my lovely co-authors too!

: )

I'm studying for the GMAT, and it's only going to get harder from here

woo got a quarter scholarship, bumping the price down from extortionate to merely grotesque :D

"basically it's now about as much as a cheap hatchback, so instead of buying me a car, you're getting me *employability*"

ah, i love how these things work

but yeah, uh, what the fuck am i getting myself into XD

what are you doing? starting this year?

starting in 2 weeks, doing (you're not gonna believe this) science journalism

it being a new course designed to get people writing about science in a way that is both engaging and relevant to the actual science, unlike the majority of science journalism

basically i may LOOK like one of the people you hate, but i'm ACTUALLY some sort of saviour ;)

Waffling about saving the world instead of actually saving it. (Actually it sounds cool and worthwhile; technical writers never go hungry even especially if they don't do journalism).

I am at the end of week three of my semester and just about managing to juggle school work and employment, I am now in a quandry as to whether I should continue working with this startup post graduation or go onto Phd. Its so hard as I find both options stimulating. I am wondering if it is possible to combine, high pressure employment with amateur academia.

ah, science as art, scientists as people, all that stuff?

where? QMW and Cardiff have courses, don't they?

not so much science as art, as science as dignified and engaging journalistic consideration

at City, which tbf is usually pretty good for journalism (if not science)

I am starting another round of Jew School on Monday!