Yes indeed to #5, going to the gym is one of my favorite ways to stay sane when under crazy pressure.
Excellent list.
If #9 is anything like the real world this means listening at least twice as long as you talk.
That *is* an excellent list. Thanks, Labs.
Wow -- good thing I'm already doing all of these things without exception.
Great comments, and I agree with 12 much more than with Burke. In fact, I'd add that a lot of the things in 8 are fun--most visiting speakers like to talk to people, and if you're lucky you'll get a free lunch out of it. In re 9, etc., Tripp is right; at least, I think that meeting someone and talking to them for a while about football may leave them with a positive impression of you, as much or more than if you talked about philosophy the whole time. "Network" can basically mean "make friends."
I've had several conversations with a well-known Derrida translator about the show 24, and I recently recommended that he give Prison Break a try.
Man, can that guy pick out a good wine! Screw the job market -- if I can just get invited along to a party once in a while, I consider the relationship a net gain.
4 & 5 go well together, and can also be done with 9. Then, when you're getting drunk after a softball game with some friends from outside your program, you can claim you're multitasking.
Not that SP's 8 isn't great advice--in fact I spent a lot of grad school that way.
Also important: the departmental secretaries hold all the keys and can arrange exceptions, exemptions, and escapes. Be very very nice.
This one works in law firms, too -- having the partners' secretaries like you is immensely valuable. (And it gives you someone to talk to while you wait for the partner to get off the phone.)
I found this of great help yesterday.
Yes, inquiring minds want to know, Ben.
It's all a lie; I didn't even see it until this morning.
Dude, the wording of nos. 3 and 7 (at least) makes it impossible for me to point aspiring and beginning grads to this list (I am not urban). Otherwise I so would. Can I just rip it off and bowdlerize it?
Oh, yeah, ditto having secretaries like you. Besides, it's fun and lets you practice your charm.
the departmental secretaries hold all the keys and can arrange exceptions, exemptions, and escapes.
Hohoho. Heheheheheh. Muwahahahahahahahahah. HEEEEEEEEEE! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
*Devolves into silent convulsions, tears running from the corners of her eyes*
Do you know what makes us hate you, grad students? When you jam the copier, and do not even try to unjam it yourself, but call the receptionist away from the phones, then leave her to deal with it while you go downstairs to make copies. At least try to learn to use the copier people. Incompetence isn't a charming quality; it's only something people tolerate once you're important. You're not important yet.
Okay, I'm done now.
I can't stress enough how important (4) is. In particular, don't forget that it's OK to be reading books for fun - I went a year without reading fiction and really regret it. And don't forget to enjoy yourself!
Actually, yes, it is fun. It's just that most of what is institutionalized about graduate education has an orthagonal relationship to the fun parts, whereas many undergraduate educations, the fun and the institutional program may actually collaborate.
13. This is not undergrad. It bears repeating. This is also not a 9 to 5 job. Your day is not divided up neatly into little chunks where you are required to be in classes or at the office and into time that is just yours.
If you do not force yourself to have a division between work time and rest-of-life time, you will go insane. There is always another article to read. There is always another book to read. There is always another rewrite to be done. Sometimes stop, put it down, do something else and do not beat yourself up for doing something else.
The sanest people I know in graduate school are the ones with small children, because they have to treat school like a job, have definite breaks where they are NOT doing anything, and have to focus themselves when they ARE working.
14. Network with your fellow graduate students, especially the ones in your year. It is easier to get past quals and the prospectus if you are not all alone. It is easier to remember to work on your dissertation if you talk with others that are working on it. It is comforting to realize that you are not the only one that is reconsidering your career choice, that feels intellectually underpowered, etc.
15. And know when to detangle yourself from your fellow graduate students, or else all you'll do is obsess about the job market. What do you get when you assemble a roomfull of graduate students? The sum of their neuroses.
Adding to 13: Different people have different working habits. I would often work pretty much all day for a couple of days, then wake up, try to start my brain, listen to the "rrr! rrr!" sounds for a while, and decide that that day I was going to check out a novel from the library and read it. But that method won't work for everyone. (Important: Try not to string together a year of off days.)
Also, going out, so I wouldn't go more than a day without speaking to anyone. That was important.
Really, the key to 13 is to know yourself and know when you're going to have a day of your brain just idling and then, (this is the hard part) going and doing something else. I've found that I tend to have an every-other-day-can-be-a-writing-day schedule. If I try to write on the non-writing days, I will a) produce crap and b) end up hating myself for being dumb.
Non-writing brain days are much better spent researching, or prepping for teaching, laundry, cleaning or anything else.
17. Work somewhere accessible. If you have an office (often a rarity), USE IT. Leave your door open. It's nice to have senior faculty pop by and ask what you're working on, or mention that they heard of a class in another department that you might be interested in. Find a way to talk to people or else you will end up paying a shrink just for the conversation.
18. Learn to count and don't forget sixteen!
All these suggestions and no one has mentioned blogging.
20: In fact, if you can get by just using the school's internet connection to check your e-mail twice a day, do it.
Internet = bad.
20: In fact, if you can get by just using the school's internet connection to check your e-mail twice a day, do it.
Internet = bad.
This could be a stumbling block.
Actually I got into blogs via the dissertation--a form of procrastination that kept me at the computer and could be mingled with writing. Helped that I was on a dialup connection so I would try not to stay connected for long during hours people might call me. (And blogs are Relevant To My Research, sort of. Really. Shut up.)
When Glenn links to me, it's like being published in the JAMA or some other scientific journal published on paper. (from Weiner's link.)
No. It's. Fucking. Not.
They don't call me "ogged" for nothing.
Hurricane Ogged!
("I can, like, ya know, think about things too! So I'm a philosopher.")
21. If your procrastination tool is the Internet, you may occasionally feel the need to smash things. Do not fear. If you smash a jug in anger, say "I have smashed a jug!" For then you will not be upset.
Probably wouldn't hurt to read the collected works of profgrrrrl, either; she's blown off a lot of steam about annoying student habits.
Students have been known to be annoying? Why wasn't I informed of this, I thought we were perfect.
In item 3 -- "a fellatio"? Surely, if any article is required, it's "teh fellatio".
You can see the previous discussion of Labs' use of "a fellatio" here.
Yes, always listen to your peers. My peer advisor shared his own grad experiences with me and knew where several of the bodies were buried. The ones ahead of you on the path can warn you about academic pitfalls and demonic faculty members. We had a network of grads from various disciplines within our school and an exceedingly sympathetic faculty member who organized mock quals (orals) and biweekly reading/editing seminars for qualifying exam papers and dissertation drafts. Since the professor in question was not from my own field of specialization, I might never have stumbled on to that lifesaver without the informative grad network.
P.S.: Peers can also provide examples of what not to do. My peer advisor accepted a tenure-track position before he finished writing his dissertation. I can hardly blame him, but I finished my degree and he didn't (or at least hasn't, so far).
Bah. Bits of that list give me the fear.
Particularly the networking bit, which is great advice and which I realise, as I come to near the end of my own doctorate, I haven't done anything like enough of.
One thing to realise is that some people are very good at impressing people with their cleverness. And some of those people are extremely clever and it comes naturally to them, some people are extremely clever and aware of the 'rules' of the game and up for a little gentle self-promotion, and some people really aren't that clever but *really* excellent at the self-promotion bit.
Those are the people that easily impressed department members will tell you are 'bright' and destined for great things. *You* may know that you have been kicking that person's ass in seminars for years, that they barely scrape into the top 50% of your peer group, and so on. But...
Don't make the mistake of thinking that anyone gives a crap that you are better than those people. If no-one *knows* you're better, and if you haven't made *sure* they know, then it's just a smug delusion that will ensure that you'll lose out to those people in the job market.
Self-promote!
I did know some people who did graduate work--not second B.A.s but Ph.Ds and D.Phils--at Oxbridge who did almost approach it as super undergrad. They were fully funded and not all of them were planning to go into academia.
One was just a brilliant Classics/Sanskrit person who got funding from the American Philological Association for two years, and got funded by Christ Church, Oxford for a third year to finish up. She'd been extremely intense as an undergraduate, and I don't think she could have put up with teaching. She'd gotten into a Comp Lit. doctoral program at Harvard, but then she decided that she didn't want to stick around any longer.
The other was a Rhodes Scholar who was getting a Ph.D in psychology, but I think that she was planning on doing some sort of commercial venture related to children's learning styles.
Networking is easy. Just make friends. That's really what it is. Also, go to the conferences. For once there are no worries about not having things in common with people--- you have ready made stuff to talk about. You are all dweebolicious academics in teh x discipline. Just be friendly and approachable (and get publishing quickly when you get out!) and you will be someone people want to know.
Networking is easy. Just make friends.
Class, what's the hidden, false premise here?
How about a restatement: "Networking is easy. Just make friends with people you don't like, primarily because they're not very likable, by using the simple expedient of agreeing with really stupid things that they say."
Perhaps I overstated the problem slightly, but at least that's a pretty good one-off explanation of my own career path. In particular, I never figured out how to relate to people who I was convinced were wrong about important questions, or who needed people to take an interest in some of their little hobbies.
There recently was a more detailed discussion of academic networking (in which Scott McLemee ?sp? took part) which went into abstruse detail about clothes, tastes in wines (not beer, except perhaps in areas where microbrews are modish) and so on.
As I noted to John Holbo whose wife is a classicist, that particular specialization has been banished to the ends of the earth. I know classicists in Sarawak, New Guinea, and Singapore (Mrs. Holbo being the last of these).
The problem with networking is that you need to network in the right way.
It's no good, from a cynically career-advancing perspective, to get on really well with all your grad student peers. I mean it's nice to be liked but you really need to get yourself known by people who are in a position to help your career - i.e. senior staff.
Personally, for example, I genuinely like most of my peers and I think they mostly do really good and interesting work so have never had a problem interacting with them. Furthermore, I work in a department where the grad students are pretty active and enthusiastic.
But, because I work in a topic area that falls beneath the radar of the senior people in my department *and* I've stupidly never made the effort to cultivate them I've started noticing far too late that the people who did make that effort are the ones being written references by the top people, recommended for research fellowships, given a heads up on opportunities in ways that others aren't etc.
This isn't a criticism of the people who were astute enough to know the value of networking properly, more an indictment of my own dumbness. :-)
But making friends with people around your age or a couple of years older than you, from other schools, can also be useful as well as fun.
There were only three faculty from my 8 years of undergrad schooling whom I ever anted to see again, and two of them were in music, a field in which I have no talent.
11b. If you are thinking about dropping out, find out what happens to your status if you take a leave of absence to think things over. Some programs will take everything away (like funding) and keep the deadlines the same, while others will allow you to delay everything for the year, and come back - if you choose to do so - without having lost anything (except perhaps intangible things like momentum).
I know someone who took a leave, then got disenrolled for a couple years, and still came back and just finished. That required a supportive adviser, but it worked out.
note: some really hip profs are actually black. as are some grad students suffering from in the faux-cool relationship you describe (about the nature of the relationship, you are certainly not wrong). i know you were going for the joke and it was funny, but you might want to rein in that solopsism, dude.
=> intangible things like momentum
p = mv.
Or, if you prefer, for angular momentum where the velocity and radius vectors are orthogonal,
L = mvr
Couldn't be more tangible. I'm surprised that someone of your stature would make such a claim and...
Wait, is this the Physics Doctoral Prep Forum?
My apologies.
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