It's been a rough semester

Rather than spend an entire post complaining, again, about the difficulties I've been having at school I'll just give a quick update.

Yeah, I'm still pursuing my degree. I started out this past semester with some pretty lofty goals: submit one of my master's chapters to a journal, finish my first analysis of my first dissertation project, submit my dissertation proposal to the department. What ended up happening was that I started reanalyzing my master's data and coming up with new ways to deal with it. Then I go caught up with teaching and grading. Then I got caught up with trying to get the dissertation project going and I haven't touched the master's work for months. In short, everything has been started, but nothing is done.

The one thing I did mange to do in the past week was submit an abstract to a conference where I will be presenting my Chapter 1 work. That conference isn't until March, which seems like a lot of time but it isn't. The past 4 months have taught me that everything I want to do is going to take at least twice as long as I plan. So, having said that, here is the game plan for the next semester:

Over winter break, write a first draft for a departmental grant, and get the modern museum data for my chapter 1 project.
First two weeks of school, grant done for the department.
End of January, have a first analysis completely done of the chapter 1 data.
End of February, finished analysis of chapter 1.

This list can't be changed, which means anything else without hard deadlines will have to be flexible. It's amazing how little things here and there can chip away at what seems like limitless time. I'm supposed to be the teaching assistant for a different course than I normally teach, which will likely have significantly less grading than has been expected of me before. My adviser is also the instructor, so we'll see what her expectations are.

I think I have to make something perfectly clear to everyone, including myself. I am in graduate school primarily to graduate, and everything else in my graduate school life that doesn't move me in the direction of graduating is not my primary concern at this point. I need money to survive, and teaching is a means to an end. Things that cause me stress and make me miserable don't need to be a part of my life, either. I need food, shelter, exercise, a social life that balances out my work, and to graduate. That's it.

It's been a very rough semester.

The "Uncle Rico"s of Graduate School: I Don't Care Where You Went to College

In the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" there is a particularly pathetic character: Napoleon's uncle, Rico. He's kind of a sad dude for a variety of reasons, but what really sticks out in my mind is that he is a full grown adult that bases his entire self worth on the accomplishments and dreams he had decades earlier, in high school. He's sad because on the exterior he seems very confident, but you know that deep down he is barely hanging onto his sanity and security of self. 

After having been in graduate school for a number of years I find it very surprising when I run into an "Uncle Rico". The people who act like anyone gives a damn where they managed to get into college when they were in high school. The kind of people who at the drop of a hat will brag about where they went, how prestigious, exclusive, etc. etc. barf barf etc. it was. Maybe that was impressive then, but it isn't now.

Don't get me wrong. I went to a decent college, and I'm proud of what I feel culminated in an excellent education. My education was a means to an end. I consider my undergrad a piece of trivia of my life, and it only comes up if it is relevant to conversation or if someone explicitly asks, for the following reasons...

Where you went to school has little to no bearing on your quality as a graduate student/researcher/whatever

Where I went for undergrad was a reflection of where I was as a person at age 17. I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't a fully developed human being when I was 17, when I barely squeaked my way into a university. I was NOT a good student in high school, not good enough to go to the schools I wanted to. I wasn't even a fully developed human being when I LEFT college. 

If you've found yourself in graduate school and are still bragging about something you did a decade ago, open your myopic little eyes and take a look at the people around you. Chances are they come from all different walks of life and found their way to the present on their own unique path. You probably have people around you that went to an ivy league, or a small private college, or a public university. You might even find someone who got a later start, worked, and maybe even went to community college for a while. My point, and the good news, is that these are all equally valid ways of navigating academic life. If graduate school has taught me anything it's that there is no "right" way.

Very Few People Care

By the time you're in graduate school, your undergrad is almost nearly irrelevant. The only people that care are as follows:

You

Your parents or immediate family

-- Its ok if other people brag about your past accomplishments, but doing it yourself is sad (see Uncle Rico).

Other alumni if you bump into them

-- Bro-like hand slapping and "We Are!"s when I bump into a former school mate are guilty pleasures. Then I calm myself and return to reality.

Those annoying bastards that call looking for money from your alma mater

-- Please. Stop. Calling. Me. When I finally manage to make piles of cash to donate, I'll call you.

Your CV/Resume

-- Not really a person, but you get the idea. Older and lesser accomplishments are inappropriate on this document, anyway, even if your basic education information stays on it. That's not my rule, that's common knowledge.

If someone asks where you went to school, it's just polite small talk. And unless you're talking to an old friend that you haven't seen in YEARS, you would be better served to talk about more recent things.

No one likes a bragger

Nuff said, and it's a transparent facade.

The Cost of Research

I've been kind of in the research doldrums. Right before I went to CT I got a lot of bad news regarding research funding. This isn't uncommon, most research proposals, even good ones, don't get funded right away. I'm not going to starve to death or anything like that, I have a TA stipend to live off of for the next two years. The issue is finding money to pay for the research that will ultimately get me my degree. There's costs with travel, lab samples, overhead costs for the university... it kind of goes on and on.

While I've been working to find research money for 3 out of the four projects I want to do, I have been working on a project that doesn't require any money what-so-ever. It's a computer modeling project that uses databases, which are free. I also have access to geographic information systems software at school, which is also something I don't have to pay for. I'm thinking this project is going to take about a year to finalize.

Once the fall semester starts again, I'll get back into grant writing mode, try again with some other agencies, and cross my fingers that the funding gods decide to grace me with some good luck. In the mean time I've been seeking out alternative ways to jump start my research. A friend recently tried out a website for personal donations to fund some field research to look for thought-to-be-extinct Costa Rican frogs. As of today he's made about $200 of his $1200 goal, so it's a start. I decided to try making one for myself. I'm hoping I can get enough to travel to a few museums to get some preliminary data. Here's hoping!

And if this doesn't work, perhaps some bake sales will bring in some much needed revenue...

Post Written Exams

Hello friends, I'll be recounting the last couple of months from the comfort of my mother's couch in CT.

Don't worry. I didn't drop out of graduate school, I'm just taking a short holiday now that the semester is officially over.

I guess the big event since my last entry would be my comprehensive exams, which was quite the adventure. Part of what made it so "exciting" was that I made the decision to have an extra person on my committee, even though by guidelines it wasn't necessary. I only needed 3 people, but I opted for 4. Personally, it felt necessary. Comps are viewed by many as a hoop that needs to be navigated to get on with the PhD process, and that just seems pointless to me. They were going to make me do this anyway, so I decided to get as much out of it as possible and poke the brains of as many smart people as I could. Now that it's all over, I feel like I have a much wider base of knowledge, and that I set a precedent for what my expectations are for myself and the people I work with.

Originally I was scheduled to have the big day on April 25th. Then, my committee had some scheduling issues and the date was in limbo before we landed on May 2nd as the only available day everyone could get together for a 3 hour block of time. I was really upset about the change. It was the lowest part of of the ordeal for me, especially since this news came during my second set of written questions. I was livid that they were putting my through that stress during a time where I should have been concentrating only on my exam response. Eventually, however, I accepted it as just another inevitable thing and got over it. Part of the issue was having a larger committee than usual.

In the end I passed, with distinction. Phew. It actually wasn't so bad in retrospect. The hardest thing was not really knowing what they were going to test me on. I had people from three disciplines who were going to be testing me, which leaves a lot of fair game. In the end I taught myself population and community ecology, and read as many papers as I could find that were relevant to my research. I had made a short talk to give at the beginning, but we ended up spending two hours going through each slide, and they completely directed the conversation.

I learned some important things during the process, unrelated to my actually dissertation.
1. If not given guidelines on the length to a written response to a question I will produce 12 pages, on average, not including references.
2. Faculty are far less intimidating if you treat them like colleagues.
3. Scheduling meetings that include more than 3 people is a lot like herding cats.
4. When you are the focus of a discussion, be in control.
5. Nothing is so important that you should make yourself psychologically or physically ill over it.

I've actually been aware of that last point for a while, seeing as how I've been doing the whole grad school thing for many years now. During my exam preparation, I didn't isolate myself or go into seclusion. I decided from the beginning that I was allowed to have a life. That's my attitude toward grad school and life in general, and it kept me sane during comps. I didn't give up weekly hang-outs with my friends, game nights, etc. Studying and planning my PhD research became my job for a couple months, and I treated it different from the rest of my life. No job is worth being miserable over.

I came out of comps as a well defined PhD candidate. I'm sure my research will change, given  unforeseen hurdles or funding issues, but I have direction at this point and can get this ball rolling finally.

It's Comin' On Comps

Hello my lovelies.

We're about 4 weeks into the spring semester of my third year (give or take, I lose track about 2 weeks in), and I've been focusing most of my attention on preparing for my comprehensive exams.

Comprehensive exams, or "Comps", is the gauntlet equivalent that determines if a PhD student advances to candidacy and stays in a PhD program. In my particular program it involves writing research proposals for a four chapter dissertation, an extended period of time where faculty on an academic committee ask written exam questions, and culminates in a face-to-face oral exam with the entire committee. The exam material is basically anything they feel I should know, and they will ask me questions until I can't answer them anymore.

I'm kind of looking forward to this in some ways. I kind of want to know what I know, and know what I don't know. I'll also be showing off my biology knowledge to my non-biology committee members, and showing of my geology knowledge to the biology folks. On the other hand, however, they can ask me anything. And I don't really know what to expect from some people.

The written part of the exam has me less worried than the orals. They will very likely be open book questions. I already know that one of my committee members is going to give me 48 hours to do his part, and my adviser typically gives a week. The other two committee members are kind of wildcards for me. They are from different departments that do comps differently than the biology department, so they might throw me a curve ball.

The trick to passing the oral portion of the exam is not cracking too soon.

My oral exam is April 25th, and the 5 weeks before are set aside for my written exams. I start the week after spring break. Between now and then I'm trying to do as much reading as possible. This afternoon I turned in a draft of my proposals for my committee to look at.

So we'll see what happens over the next couple month.

Plans

"Plans are nothing, planning is everything" - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Plans certainly can change. I recently returned from my winter break, during which I did as little work as I could manage. I spent yesterday cleaning my kitchen, and will be tackling the rest of my apartment, room by room, over the next week or so. I came into work today to clean my desk and get my thoughts organized for school, which starts next week.

There exists a file on my computer that is rather vulgarly titled "Sh*t Melissa needs to f@#king get done.docx", which is a list of things I need to do, divided up by months. This was my feeble attempt to get organized and give myself some direction last fall. I looked at the file today.

I did almost nothing that was on that list last semester.The things I did complete didn't happen during the allotted times, either. I remember being busy last fall, with most of my brain power going to writing a very large grant proposal. I didn't do "nothing", I just didn't do most of the stuff I initially set out to do.

Plans are pointless. They change. They are good intentions. There are things I absolutely need to do, but priorities shift around, and I'm finding that despite my best efforts, planning out work is an almost comical endeavor.

But I'm going to do it anyway. I can at least say that I tried.