The university that I attend is famous for the ridiculous amount of administrative staff its hiring in the past few decades (who continue to get paid more and more while tuition has gone up by a factor of ten). The graduate school has shuffled nearly all of its responsibilities back to the individual graduate programs. What do they do? Graduation.
I received the graduation packet in the mail the other day. Although everything looked A+ online when I submitted my request, I've received a form that my committee has to sign in the next ten days (i.e. before the first working day of the month of defending). Which is rad, but ... the four people listed on the form? They're not my committee. Well, two of them are. But one was removed three years ago, and one, well, I've never even heard of this person before. In any of the biomed departments.
Really, graduate school? You have minimal shit to do now. And of all of the things to fuck up...?
Really?
Really?
Monday, February 18, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
The saddest post ever
I am a charming, engaging individual. I enjoy giving seminars. I'm animated and engaged with the audience. I get by on charm relatively often. I understand that. I entered graduate school and joined a lab with no prior experience relevant to any of the fields of study involved in that lab. I'm on my second round of interviews for a position I'm not really qualified for. I'm the face of my department, both in the interactive involvement sense as well as the literal "face on the department pamphlet" sense. I enjoy it. I'm good at it. I like PR. I'm analytical and strategic, and I like to be involved. I'm not here just to get a degree and run off. I abide by the campsite rule, and I genuinely want to make my department a better place to be for incoming and current faculty and students. I want to see my department grow and succeed. And I have worked hard to contribute to that.
That said, I have spent many years being taught that this is wrong. I am not, in fact, here for any of these things. These things are, I assume, a waste of my time. I am here to do a job, and that job is to get a degree and get out.
The re-occurring theme of my graduate experience is that my thesis committee does not think I am serious enough. Now, that hasn't been brought up since my prelim, but the bossman seems to think it will be an issue at the defense. In fact, he has begun telling other, uninvolved people that it will be an issue at the defense. Combined with my experience as a graduate student of the bossman, these are the things I have learned (outside of technical, scientific facts):
1. Science is a career, it should not be fun.
2. Whether or not you enjoy your work is irrelevant.
3. You should never, under any circumstances, be excited about new findings or results in your data.
To appease these items, I will not be submitting an acknowledgements or dedications page of my thesis. I also will not have a "thank you to friends and family for putting up with me" slide during my oral presentation. There will be no ice breakers at the beginning of the presentation about the fact that the only room I could schedule is in the bowels of some unknown building halfway to another zip code. There will be no chuckles about repeating experiments, no segments on data trends I thought were really fascinating. There will be no congratulatory thrills after the seminar. No cookies, no coffee. I will wear a business suit, no makeup, and sensible, neutral shoes. There are no celebratory events planned after the defense. Even if I receive a pass, there will be work that needs to be finished; additional revisions to the thesis, additional revisions to the recently submitted manuscript, and potentially any other stipulations that my committee feels necessary. I will not be getting paid after the defense, but there will be work to do, and I will do it.
Remember, science is not fun. It is not exciting. You are here to do a job. Complete the job and leave.
That said, I have spent many years being taught that this is wrong. I am not, in fact, here for any of these things. These things are, I assume, a waste of my time. I am here to do a job, and that job is to get a degree and get out.
The re-occurring theme of my graduate experience is that my thesis committee does not think I am serious enough. Now, that hasn't been brought up since my prelim, but the bossman seems to think it will be an issue at the defense. In fact, he has begun telling other, uninvolved people that it will be an issue at the defense. Combined with my experience as a graduate student of the bossman, these are the things I have learned (outside of technical, scientific facts):
1. Science is a career, it should not be fun.
2. Whether or not you enjoy your work is irrelevant.
3. You should never, under any circumstances, be excited about new findings or results in your data.
To appease these items, I will not be submitting an acknowledgements or dedications page of my thesis. I also will not have a "thank you to friends and family for putting up with me" slide during my oral presentation. There will be no ice breakers at the beginning of the presentation about the fact that the only room I could schedule is in the bowels of some unknown building halfway to another zip code. There will be no chuckles about repeating experiments, no segments on data trends I thought were really fascinating. There will be no congratulatory thrills after the seminar. No cookies, no coffee. I will wear a business suit, no makeup, and sensible, neutral shoes. There are no celebratory events planned after the defense. Even if I receive a pass, there will be work that needs to be finished; additional revisions to the thesis, additional revisions to the recently submitted manuscript, and potentially any other stipulations that my committee feels necessary. I will not be getting paid after the defense, but there will be work to do, and I will do it.
Remember, science is not fun. It is not exciting. You are here to do a job. Complete the job and leave.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
How to format your thesis: A step-by-step guide to the most challenging aspects
Importing Figures:
1. Import 20 multi-panel high-resolution .tif figures and marvel in their clarity.
2. Cry after Word crashes and is no longer able to open or recover your most recent save.
3. Bang head on available flat surface.
4. Import figures again.
5. Repeat steps 2-3 several times.
6. Post to Facebook about how and why your computer is a piece of garbage and why can't it open the stupid file, it isn't that big and this is a stupid problem and Word is a stupid program and this whole thing is stupid anyway.
7. Reach through the computer screen and punch the person who comments and tells you to write it in GoogleDocs.
8. Abandon all hope for clear, high-resolution figures. Import fuzzy, low-resolution images.
9. Continue onward after losing several hours.
Page Numbers:
1. Follow guidelines: "Click on the first page of the document. Insert page numbers as specified, lower right corner not in the margin space. Start with "i" and continue with Roman numerals. Then add a section break at the first page of your thesis body. Insert page numbers and start with "1" and continue with Arabic numerals. The first three pages of the dissertation (title page, signature page, and copyright page) should NOT be numbered."
2. Spend two hours staring at formatting options, trying to figure out how to avoid having page numbers on the first three pages of the document when you are supposed to start on the first page of the document to insert page numbers.
3. Try all of the page numbering options.
4. Click every button on the toolbar.
5. Insert section breaks on the first three pages. Click every button again, several times.
6. Magic.
7. Continue onward after losing several hours.
Table of Contents:
1. Enter pages and sections/subsections/etc into table of contents.
2. Spend two hours typing "........[number]"
3. Realize you have 115 subsections to your thesis and that you have typed "......." for 115 different lines.
4. Align to the right side of the page so the page numbers line up.
5. Align back to the left side of the page because the indent formatting for sections --> subsections --> subsubsections no longer line up.
6. Justify.
7. Align back to the right side of the page.
8. Align headers to left side and things that end in page numbers to the right.
9. Undo.
10. Align back to the right side of the page and hope that nobody looks too closely.
11. Continue onward after losing several hours.
12. Re-number approximately 75 sections every time you edit your thesis. Daily.
1. Import 20 multi-panel high-resolution .tif figures and marvel in their clarity.
2. Cry after Word crashes and is no longer able to open or recover your most recent save.
3. Bang head on available flat surface.
4. Import figures again.
5. Repeat steps 2-3 several times.
6. Post to Facebook about how and why your computer is a piece of garbage and why can't it open the stupid file, it isn't that big and this is a stupid problem and Word is a stupid program and this whole thing is stupid anyway.
7. Reach through the computer screen and punch the person who comments and tells you to write it in GoogleDocs.
8. Abandon all hope for clear, high-resolution figures. Import fuzzy, low-resolution images.
9. Continue onward after losing several hours.
Page Numbers:
1. Follow guidelines: "Click on the first page of the document. Insert page numbers as specified, lower right corner not in the margin space. Start with "i" and continue with Roman numerals. Then add a section break at the first page of your thesis body. Insert page numbers and start with "1" and continue with Arabic numerals. The first three pages of the dissertation (title page, signature page, and copyright page) should NOT be numbered."
2. Spend two hours staring at formatting options, trying to figure out how to avoid having page numbers on the first three pages of the document when you are supposed to start on the first page of the document to insert page numbers.
3. Try all of the page numbering options.
4. Click every button on the toolbar.
5. Insert section breaks on the first three pages. Click every button again, several times.
6. Magic.
7. Continue onward after losing several hours.
Table of Contents:
1. Enter pages and sections/subsections/etc into table of contents.
2. Spend two hours typing "........[number]"
3. Realize you have 115 subsections to your thesis and that you have typed "......." for 115 different lines.
4. Align to the right side of the page so the page numbers line up.
5. Align back to the left side of the page because the indent formatting for sections --> subsections --> subsubsections no longer line up.
6. Justify.
7. Align back to the right side of the page.
8. Align headers to left side and things that end in page numbers to the right.
9. Undo.
10. Align back to the right side of the page and hope that nobody looks too closely.
11. Continue onward after losing several hours.
12. Re-number approximately 75 sections every time you edit your thesis. Daily.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Foreign languages
Today, I cried at work while revising my thesis. A real banner Monday in K land. I had received several iterations of the same comment that I did not understand in the past few versions of revision suggestions from the bossman. I tried to address it each time and failed. We've been in discussions about this topic several times, and I never leave our discussions fulfilled. I either can not follow the bossman's logic or he tells me to look it up myself. I usually flounder around on my own, reading unnecessarily detailed journal articles for several weeks, confusing myself more. The topic is a ridiculously detailed and somewhat unknown immunology mechanism, and I'm trying to summarize decades of hypercomplicated research into three sentences at most. It turns out, most of what I understand about this mechanism is completely wrong. How did I figure that out?
The post-doc, whose first language is not English, explained it to me in a couple of sentences.
Over a year of ridiculously detailed information on this mechanism from the bossman and multiple meetings and I never understood it....
Does this tell you anything about my experience as a graduate student? It should.
The post-doc, whose first language is not English, explained it to me in a couple of sentences.
Over a year of ridiculously detailed information on this mechanism from the bossman and multiple meetings and I never understood it....
Does this tell you anything about my experience as a graduate student? It should.
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