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

gbx i already have one of these babies
http://salestores.com/stores/images/images_747/HP12C.jpg

I've thought about the nursing thing too but I'm still undecided. We'll see how I feel after I finish MA in January.

Bell - you can do it. It's only a year. It's going to be tough but also so worth it!

oh i see you just totaled how much you're spending on books

xp

you don't need a prescription for SMILES, kevin!

just as you cant crush a smile and snort it through a straw either evan.

http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/5349409/2/istockphoto_5349409_smiley_face_button.jpg + http://www.prezzybox.com/data/media/5370.jpg

gbx what school are you going to? what kind of doctorer are you wanting to be?

lol i have that calculator

wife hates the reverse polish

minnesota.

right now i want to do either emerg. med. or pediatrics or both. basically i want to do aid work abroad, and they're desperate for primary care docs and ER docs.

i just wish they had some kind of military/indian health service style debt relief program for people that want to work in the third world R U LISTENIN BILL GATES

then again, surgery is basically the coolest shit ever, but i will actually be forty years old when i get out of residency :-/

xp wife is crazy dogg, polish is the jam. i have trouble with other calculators now

"the reverse polish" sounds like something from the pages of cosmo magazine :X

eat a bratwurst from the middle

my best grades in law school were in finance and urban policy - uhhhhh

someone make a joke about money and living in nyc

more like 'these are not actual law classes'. urban policy has interested me since like half my best friends majored in it in college, but i have never been especially interested in money or math.

there is an MPH at columbia that i want to get...deals with public health and the built environment. ie "whoops maybe we did it wrong"

i have a friend that basically wants to do the same thing as you once she gets over that cancer thing

i just wish they had some kind of military/indian health service style debt relief program for people that want to work in the third world

i wouldn't be surprised if this happens in an O admin

sorry to hear about your friend's cancer, gabb.

i think i would be surprised! not sure it'd go over well politically to earmark public funds to send american docs (most coming from public institutions) to third world countries when so many people here lack adequate access to health care. that's why i was thinking gates foundation: set aside an endowment, let it accrue interest. the care and feeding of a doc abroad is relatively cheap, so whatever money there is left over could be used to aggressively pay down debt. a relief doc could have all their expenses covered, make a pittance abroad (but vastly more than the locals), and have 50k/year plowed into their loans and it'd still be cheaper than having them practice in the US and be paid a low-end salary. i think?

not sure it'd go over well politically to earmark public funds to send american docs (most coming from public institutions) to third world countries

yeah I disagree with this personally because I think the answer is putting funds into local public health programs up to and including better continuing education for local doctors and nurses which also means local/regional journals so that the arbiter of all research in the developing world doesn't have to be the fucking Lancet

nb I basically borrowed that whole opinion from the letters section of New Scientist

i know that there are similar loan forgiveness programs for teachers (and landscape architects who work for state parks) within the US...

A little late here -- my thoughts on here from four years back. They still apply.

Library school people:

1. 3 classes + full-time is doable, just barely. I would actually recommend 1 or 2 classes plus full-time, but I'm kind of a perfectionist, academically. Most of the people went to school who worked full-time took about one class at a time--it's easier financially that way too. It will not be challenging intellectually, though the tedium is sure to challenge.

2. I didn't even have to take the GRE for my program. Choose another program? It's totally not worth doing all of that math for library school.

3. Today I walked in on a woman changing her granddaughter's dirty diaper in my program room. I had a program in about 20 min. and had to aerosol the smell away.

Choose another program?
I wish it could be as easy as that. I can't really afford another program. A large chunk of it gets paid for by the University as long as I am a full time employee. I have to keep my staff position, too, since I have MS and can't go off my health insurance. Can't believe the bastards won't let me in to the program b/c of Math! I got A's in the hours I've completed so far. I hate life sometimes.

can you study and retake the GREs?

Yes, that's my plan. It's just kind of spirit-crushing.

You can retake the GRE once a calendar month and up to 5 times a year, but at $170 a pop I'd rather not. Studying helps, despite what ETS says.

The maths is conceptually not that hard so just practice practice practice at it.

Hey gbx what made you choose Minnesota? How many schools did you apply to? I'm applying to med schools now and I'm increasingly convinced my chances of getting in are about 0.

It is almost a universal thing after sending in your AMCAS to start worrying that your application will get laughed at and nobody will let you into into their medical school. At the risk of sounding all self-helpy, this is totally the wrong attitude, especially since you are going to have state and re-state the reasons why you should get in over and over again once you start getting secondaries back. You need a ton of positive motivation to slog through the 15th or 20th time you have to write 250 words detailing your research experiences or complete an 800-character box about an extracurricular activity that had significant meaning to you.

it's so ridiculous that you have to take GREs for graduate school.

Hey gbx what made you choose Minnesota? How many schools did you apply to? I'm applying to med schools now and I'm increasingly convinced my chances of getting in are about 0.

-- Lamp, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 16:19 (Yesterday) Link

they let me in

i mean, it's also where i grew up, it was one of my top pics, and MPLS is awesome. BUT, it's also the only school that accepted me (I applied to 15). not to be debbie downer or anything.

I am scrambling to finish a paper that is due at 2am Saturday (basically late Friday night) because I procrastinated all day yesterday and this afternoon. This is dudder than heck.

That's a weird time for a paper to be due.

No kidding. His last assignment had a similar due date. I hate it, because it assures that procrastinators like myself are going to have horrible, lonely Friday nights, because there's no way we'll bust our asses this hard on Thursday night.

hahaha, I like this professor's style.

I have a feeling he's passing down the pain from his own grad time.

Well, I have to give him credit. Originally, the due date was Friday, 2am (AKA late Thursday night). But their was a classroom uproar among a group of non-procrastinators, a collection of people I can't understand. They DEMANDED that the due date be changed to late Friday night instead. The prof put it to a vote. By a near unanimous vote, everyone chose to delay it to where it is now. In the other corner, the only other person who voted to keep the due date on late Thursday night, a Thai man with a lazy eye who I've never heard speak out loud, made eye contact with me and I felt like we had a little "moment".

God this paper is driving me nutz.

GET OFF OF ILX

just got my student aid refund the other day, so it's good to know i'm not gonna starve for the next four months

also i am another sucker doing grad work on a friday night so yr not alone, Z S

I got off ILX for an hour and got a good amount of work done. It's nearly over now. To reward myself...I'm gonna get back on ILX for a minute.

Two weeks done, and I am completely digging it. But it has been reasonably smooth sailing so far, and there are choppy seas ahead...

I am happy about one thing, though. The other day I got into a class with David P1m3ntel. For the last 35 years straight, he's had a year-long class where a group of 10-12 students get together and write a paper with him. Each year, it's been published my a major peer-reviewed journal, often by Nature or Science. This year we're writing on the sustainable population of Earth in 100 years, with no fossil fuels. It may prove to be controversial. But it's cool to think that in May, unless my colossal bad luck manages to ruin everything for the first time in 35 years, I'll have my shabby name out there in a peer-reviewed journal (probably for the only time in my life, but hey)!

It may prove to be controversial.

You might want to remove the part about how only members of ILX and your class will survive.

I am scrambling to finish a paper that is due at 2am Saturday (basically late Friday night) COB tomorrow because I procrastinated all day yesterday and my boss dropped the task on me this afternoon. This is dudder than heck.

welcome to the working week already

Shit, I've gotta stop putting fake smartass working titles at the top. Just now, I almost submitted a paper titled "The Worst Paper Ever: My Paper"

when the share drive fails and your 0900 briefing summary winds up retaining your placeholder bullets (e.g. BADMINTON, MARIO KART, CURLING) instead of the actual stuff you spent an hour or so updating, you are allowed to complain

What if I told you that my share drive is failing right now, and my 0900 is in shambles?

Shit though, this title should just be titled "What the fuck am I getting myself into?", and opened up to all

THIS TITLE SHOULD JUST BE TITLED

alright I'm going to bed now