Classes, the Unnecessary Evil

I've always thought that the purpose of graduate school was to become very specialized in one topic.

For a bachelor's degree you learn a lot in four (plus or minus) years and it covers a wide variety of topics. For a master's degree you hone in on one topic from your bachelor's and specialize; becoming the master of that area. And finally for a doctorate you become really really specialized in one area from your master's degree.

I think the following comic from PhD Comics says it well with the following graph:

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

It's so true. And if you don't already subscribe to PhD Comics you should. Seriously.

Throughout that period of school you take a lot of classes. Because the bachelor's degree is so general you have a wide variety of options to chose from. The same, more or less depending on where you do your master's at, goes for the master's degree. But by the time you get to your doctorate all your research is cutting-edge - or at least to new to have classes devoted to the topic. So you take the classes that you think will help you pass the qualifying exams or the few that you find interesting.

Classes then become this evil, time-consuming thing that helps to foster procrastination. Why work on that journal article when you have homework to do? So few classes are applicable (at least for me) that it's almost a waste of time. Professors don't like teaching them because they take away from time they could be writing grants, students don't like taking them because it takes time away from research.

Classes at the graduate level are one of the really big differences between the educational system in the United States versus Europe. Here in the US it's classes and research until you fill the credit requirements and then just research. In Europe, or at least the UK, it's research-based where students work mostly towards the end goal (thesis/dissertation) without having to fiddle around with classes.

I'd like to just get these classes done so I can focus on my research! Especially right now when I'm trying to learn MATLAB (and failing, sigh) but still have a large "to-do" list accumulating. Perhaps this is just me complaining but how do you feel about class-work at the graduate level?

Bribery

I respond well to it.


These cookies were baked by my research advisor's wife and yes, they're as delicious as they look. Because I was at work when the advisor brought them to campus I didn't get them till late in the evening but from the sounds of it there was a large bag of cookies for everyone in my lab. That's a lot of cookies to make!

Coxie Pt. 3 (or Wordless Wednesday)

Coxie has recently undergone some severe changes. I'd rather not share Coxie's deep dark secrets but I will share an updated photo.

If you remember my last update on Coxie there is much more going on now. Yay, Coxie!

What Editors Want

I'd like to share another article on writing that I found through Julie from A Very Focused Blog About School and Work. Julie is the person who originally introduced me to The Chronicle of Higher Education and subsequently the article on How to Write Less Badly.

This article is called "What Editors Want," a self-explanatory title in my opinion. I'm actively working on two grant proposals and one paper right now and I want my work to be as polished as possible. This article offers several key pieces of advice as to how to make editors happy; after all, they're the ones who have the final decision as to if your work is going to be accepted or not.

If you're writing something to be published:

1. Know the journal you are attempting to publish in
   
2. Proof-read, proof-read, proof-read!
3. Don't deviate from the style guide

The article has more pieces of advice but those are the main ones. I really like reading articles like these because although the information they convey is very basic it is still very applicable. Proof-read your e-mails, proof-read your tweets, proof-read your status updates. If you're limited to 140 characters don't exceed that amount. If you have a graduate school blog don't post about your grievances with city parking tickets (oops).

The article does end with a positive suggestion: Develop a healthy attitude toward rejection.

It's necessary to stay sane.

Promoted!

This past Tuesday I was officially promoted! What that means is that I was (finally) given my Research Assistant (RA) paperwork...tax forms, direct deposit forms, benefits info, etc. Exciting!

Working in the lab

What does that mean for me other than the fact that I get paid and get things like health insurance? Basically nothing. I'm doing what I was doing before. This is actually two months late in getting set up which is a tad frustrating and disappointing. Frustrating because I would have gotten paid for all I've done and disappointing because this is a joint venture between a university and my company. The university says it would like to do more with industry but then when a company steps up and says they want to corroborate the university does a poor job at getting everything together. My company approached the university in April about this corroboration, I started in late August, and all the paperwork was just completed this week. For a school that wants to increase their presence in Milwaukee for engineering this slow-to-act approach is not ideal. Disappointing, yes.

In any event, I've felt much more official working in the lab this week! The fact that I'm getting paid now is also quite motivating.

MATLAB

MATLAB, short for the MATrix LABoratory, is a strange program. Throughout my bachelor's and a bit during my master's I would hear people complaining about the program but I never had the opportunity to use it. Looking back on it now I wish I had!

One of the two courses I am taking this term is a modeling class; modeling how pollutants move/travel by dispersion/advection/diffusion/etc. I'm not sure how worthwhile the actual class will be because I don't forsee myself needing to model pollutants in the future but MATLAB has the opportunity to be a great tool.

The only problem is that I don't understand what I do wrong when it doesn't work! Take the following for example:

r=zeros(1,5);
i=1:600;
ufs=uf(i:end);
ufs=[uf(i:(i-1))];
Ru(i)=mean(uf.*ufs)

Do you understand what that is saying? Me either. That's what my professor gave me for the answer but it's not one that MATLAB is recognizing. I'm just trying to do an autocorrelation! And what I have above is not correct.

I'm sure MATLAB will be a very useful tool...once I figure it out. Until then it's a big pain.

Nail Bitting vs Sickness

This fall I've been pretty sick. The current score is Research 0, Sickness 3. Basically I've been sick for the last three weeks and it's been a pain. The urge to sleep all day, the puffy sinuses, the throbbing headaches, and let's not forget my nose.

What gives? I'm usually really healthy. In fact, I'm usually the one who picks something up, walks around with it for a few days with no symptoms giving it to everyone, and then marvelously gets over being "sick" in a matter of hours. I'm the carrier! I don't get sick! I've attributed this tendency to my hearty Minnesota blood but uh, that seems to have failed me now. Plus there was this article last week in the New York Times about how my body may not have been "making the normal amount of inflammatory agents. "

So what's this different about this year as opposed to all the previous ones? This year I suspect my nail biting habit may be playing a part in my ceaseless illness. I'm a horrible nail biter, especially in times of stress (can you say graduate school?). Countless times I have bitten my nails down to bloody, painful stubs. Countless times my eyes have welled up with tears because of how much it hurts to try and grasp something with a finger who's nail I've bitten down too far.

I can't say that nail biting is a particularly good way to relieve stress but it is a good distraction -- hold on, I've got a hang nail -- but it does pass the time. Thankfully I've been biting my nails less and less. I'm attributing it to better time management. For the first time for as long as I can remember I have finger nails that I can use to scratch/open/use and it's amazing. I am a bit fixated on them - they look so pretty now! And I'm sure George is sick of hearing "look at my finger nails! Aren't they pretty?!?!" But perhaps biting my nails was a blessing in disguise.

I started noticing something about when I got sick this fall. It always seemed to occur a day or two after I bit a couple of nails down. I was hoping to find statistics on the number of times nail biters get sick as compared to non-nail biters but all I found in my very scientific Google search was this article from a dentist. According to Dr. Connelly:

Your fingers are pretty much involved in almost everything you do. Even with frequent hand-washing, your fingers are still dirty. Your fingernails are almost twice as dirty as your fingers. Since fingernails are not the easiest places in the world to clean, there's all manner of germs and bacteria underneath there-- germs you really don't want in your mouth. And when you bite your nails, you are inviting these germs into your mouth (and chewing them, etc.) Plus, bitten nails can be jagged, and may cut the gums, allowing these undesirable germs to easily access your bloodstream. [emphasis mine]

What he said makes sense and truthfully it's a little scary. But perhaps decades of biting has helped me build up an immune system that can take on anything! Or perhaps it's just a coincidence that I'm getting sick when I bite my nails after going cold turkey in the summer. In any event, it's one more reason why I really need to keep these nails looking pretty.

"Look at my finger nails! Aren't they pretty?!?!"

I do hope George never tires of me asking him what he thinks of my nails. Especially if not biting them keeps me healthier!

Anniversary

Today was my five year relationship anniversary with George. Thanks to Facebook and it's reminder system there was really no way for either of us to forget the date. In celebration of the big day (since it is in the middle of the week and all) we had a nice fancy dinner at home. George even got me roses! George is not a buy-you-flowers-randomly guy so this was a big deal.

A Dozen Beautiful Roses!

For the fancy dinner we stayed in and had a home cooked meal. But fancy! Ha. We had seared steak with caramelized onions and Gorgonzola, crushed red potatoes with buttermilk, and steamed asparagus. This meal was one I found on EatingWell.com's 500 calorie dinners and since George and I are trying to eat healthy this seemed like the perfect meal. It turned out really well too!

Mmmm...tasty.

We had a nice dinner together with angel food cake (plus strawberries and whipped cream) for dessert.

So here's to George. My number one fan. The only follower of this blog. My foundation.

The Chronicle of Higher Education & What to Call Yourself

Julie from A Very Focused Blog About School and Work, recently introduced me to the website The Chronicle of Higher Education. I'd been on this website before due to people linking the articles on Facebook but I had never paid it much attention. Now I visit the site once every few days looking for advice, ideas, and just to check the news. The chronicle isn't just another website though, they have a print edition too that one can subscribe too. I'm a poor graduate student so I stick with the free content I can get.

One of the front pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education, print edition.

A few weeks ago I had posted about wanting advice for several burning questions I had. One of the questions I had was "How do you manage publishing papers under one name (maiden name and then another name (married name) later on?" Of course the simple answer is to never marry or change your name. By this point in my life I'm pretty confident that I don't want to use the simple answer. From the Chronicle of Higher Education's forums I was able to learn what others had done. For those curious, most people in that position had either done something like:

"Really Neat Paper on Something" by Jane Smith (as Jane Doe)

or

"Really Near Paper on Something" by Jane Doe-Smith.

I'm not a fan of having to write out a long name for myself. If I wrote out my full name as it stands today it would be 22 characters long (not including spaces of special character) and to include a married last name? That would put me at 29 characters (again, not including spaces or special characters). I'm a fan of the first option.

If you were in this position which would you choose?

Research vs. Sickness

I'm onto my second sickness of the fall season and let me tell you, it's really putting a hamper on my research. I feel so listless and tired that it's hard to scrounge up the motivation to get out of my apartment to go to my research lab.

Today I slept in past when I would have normally gotten up to start my day and so I didn't get any new papers read. Bummer. Then while I was at my school's research lab my pain killers that I took before going to class wore off and I couldn't take anymore so I went home to sleep.

It appears that my ability to research is no match to me being sick. You would think I would be more inclined to work on my paper or find more articles to read but that is not happening tonight. It's hard to focus and keep my eyes open. Plus I just set a towel on fire in my apartment and melted the top of my George Foreman in the process. Oops.

I hope I get better real fast otherwise I'm going to have to suck it up and just go work in the lab till I get caught up. And I don't want to do that!

Research: 0 Sickness: 1

Parking Tickets

I have a problem with the City of Milwaukee. A very large problem. It involves their parking regulations.

If I park in a spot without paying the meter and get a ticket? I'll pay it with no qualms.

If I park within 15 ft of a crosswalk or in 4 ft of a driveway and get a ticket? I'll be wiser next time and pay the ticket.

Basically, if I do something wrong, screw up and break the law, I'll suffer the consequences. I can live with that. I mean, you can't just have people staying in a metered spot for hours monopolizing a prime parking area.

Recently though I feel like these parking checkers (meter maids? ruthless bandits?) are taking things too far. This past summer I had paid for my vehicle registration and was waiting and waiting for the little sticker to come in the mail for me to put on my plates. Three days before the sticker arrived in the mail a parking checker wrote me a ticket for "improperly displayed vehicle registration." What?! Are you serious? I can't display my vehicle registration sticker if it hasn't come in the mail yet! That's a $20 ticket...on top of the $20 wheel tax that every vehicle registered in Milwaukee has to pay when you register your vehicle. Ridiculous. And apparently this isn't a common thing. Just this past week this article ran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about certain areas being more prone to tickets than others. Unsurprisingly, I live in one of those areas but the fifth most written citation is improperly displayed vehicle registration and the officer who wrote my citation ranked third for most citations issued in a six-month period. I am disputing this citation, this is a crazy thing to be able to write a ticket for!

In the last week I have gotten three citations, one that I rightfully earned but the other two I feel are unjustified.

To park on the street in Milwaukee you need a night time parking permit and a daytime parking permit. Last December I went down to the courthouse to get a new residential parking permit because my old one was expiring soon. I was there just after midnight and the officer on duty didn't give a lot of daytime permits out (odd period to renew a permit but you don't have to worry about the meter running that late at night!) so she may not have known exactly what to do. I had my $10 ready, she told me "it's actually free now!" and I got my permit. Fast forward nine months: I'm parked in my typical spot across from my apartment building and find a citation on the car. Violation of Residential Parking Permit Program. "What's this?" I say to myself, "I have a residential parking permit." So I photocopy my permit, the citation, and fax it in to the city. A few days later I get a letter in the mail thanking me for my payment but saying that I still owe money...the same amount that the citation was for. The same day I get another citation for the same violation. I figure no big deal, someone obviously can't see my permit sitting on my dashboard. I call the city up and it turns out that I actually don't have a residential parking permit, I have a commuter permit. Why would I have a commuter permit? I live here! I park across from my building, in the same spot, with the same people everyday. I'm not sure of a way to dispute these tickets but I am pretty upset that I did not have the permit I used to / received the wrong ticket. I mean, I've been parking under a certain assumption (that I received the permit I asked for) for the last nine months without error, I didn't have any reason to think that trend would not continue.

The most recent citation I deserved. I broke a law (no parking during street cleaning) and my vehicle was issued a citation and then towed to the city impound lot. My fault, my mistake, I'll pay the price ($145, ow) to get it back. At least I wasn't the only one! But you know what the silly part of this all was? My truck was towed but the street wasn't even cleaned.

Like I said, I have no problem admitting when something was my mistake and I screwed up but parking citations that are unjustified make me very upset. I'm pretty sure my alderman was voted in because he said that he would decrease the amount of parking citations written (who knows if he actually had that power) but it's only gotten worse. And for a city that ranks 4th poorest in the nation? We can't afford all these fines, things are out of control. I need a way to put a stop to it but how many letters to my alderman do I need to write before something happens?