Post Punk Kitchen Forum

It's still ok. Mostly I wish my supervisor were faster about getting important information (e.g. his half of the stuff we have to annotate) to me. If he'd given me this in August or September as originally planned, life would be great! Instead it's November and I'm only just learning that we pretty much have no inter-coder reliability. Growl.

Massive paper due for a class tomorrow. Of course, it's a group paper. Of COURSE. And of course, one of my group members is flaking. He hasn't submitted even a hint of a draft of his section. Yesterday he was like "wait, this is the final paper for the course? it's due Thursday?" Um holy shiitake guy yes.

The good thing is that in terms of length and content, my section and the responsible guy's section probably constitute an entire paper on their own. I am not above banging out a single paragraph for each of the third guy's sections and then submitting the paper with a note saying who wrote what.

I just want to shake this third guy by the shoulders and tell him he should've just stopped at undergrad.

Disgustingly irresponsible. I'd do the same [call out who wrote what to the prof.].

Just popping in to complain, since I know ya'll can commiserate. Suffice it to say that after the week I've had so far (and it's only Wednesday!) I'm ready to pick up, move to Portland, and start a hippie vegan commune animal sanctuary where I never have to think about science ever again and all I do is bake cookies and knit sweaters for my ani-pals. Or something. Think I can get an NSF grant to fund that? :)

Aahh sweet dreams... Can I come too? I'm quite good at baking and knitting.

Yeah, definitely speak to the prof. When I had to work with that super flakey dude, I went to the prof and said that I did not want to have my grade affected by my seminar-partner's inability to get his shiitake together. I ended up with an A when I'm sure I would have been kicked out of the program for plagiarism had I not said anything.

Anyway, count me in on the commune? What is the point in setting a compulsory paper when it doesn't count towards my grade, and I'm not allowed to write on the same topic for my assessment? I'm under a lot of stress here, you jerks.

Nah, they've gotten too many proposals in that field this year...

I'm not a grad student but I am totally down for the commune if we can do it in Canada!

Why do they make grad students do group projects? Very few of us play well with others.

Well, one of the key features of the program I'm in is that EVERY course has some group component, on the basis that computer engineering people 1) almost never work in isolation in industry (or academia, even) and 2) are not generally skilled in working in groups.

I think it's legit and makes sense and is probably teaching me people skills I will use in my career but shiitake balls do I hate it this particular minute.

I will do it extra much if it's in Canada.

I hauled my butt to a conference today to try to network, but I am terrible at it. Also, I'm realizing that I hate academic/professional conferences. I don't think I've ever actually gotten anything from sitting through a session. So I went home and ate lunch and then promptly got food all over my suit pants. Definitely a wanting to run away and join a commune/start an avocado farm moment.

Ugh. I had a nightmare in which my colleague was sick and I had to teach the course alone, and everything went out of control and I didn't know how to deal with that. Blehhhhh.

In case any of you need motivation writing: http://writtenkitten.net/

Stoked to have pretty much cemented an external rotation at an animal shelter and another one at a zoo studying wildlife conservation. I cannot wait for my 4th year to start.

impressively terrible presentation to a research group i'd love to join yesterday.
arg.

I just resubmitted a proposal for a special issue - this time to an even fancier journal than before. I reread everything 20 times, sent it, read it again, found an embarrassing mistake [last author's abstract still contained previous journal's name, OOPS] and resent it. I hope the Ed in Chief doesn't notice. (I also hope the Ed in Chief decides this special issue proposal ROCKS.)

>.<

Why are there so many presentations in grad school? I can get used to the papers, but talking in front of groups is killing me.

I hate group projects SO MUCH. I have to do two group presentations tomorrow, one of which is an hour long, and one of my group members is sort of not the brightest bulb. It's going to be so hard for me to sit there and not jump in and try to do it the way I want to do it.

You realize that the reason why so much group work happens in school is because most work in the real world(™) is group work, right? People rarely work in voids, and those skills have to be taught somewhere.

I need to get my time management under control. Been trying to do more stuff in my free time to prevent madness, but I think I'm getting the balance wrong.

I'm somewhere between delighted & terrified to realize I only really have a couple of deliverables left this semester:

- 1 group presentation. My slides are done.
- 1 group paper. I have outlined my section but need to actually write it.
- 1 individual assignment. I finished this 3 weeks ago!
- 1 group business proposal (essentially another long paper). 2 small sections (< 5 pages) left to write, plus some edits to earlier work.
- 1 "extra credit" assignment. I put this in quotes because the shouting man railroaded us into signing up for it and then said if you signed up to do the extra credit and you don't deliver it, he'll take 5% off your course grade. Yes really.

And that's it, aside from exams.

Oh, also, the class schedule for next semester is horrible and I am probably going to end up having to take ANOTHER class with the shouting man (who I am back to feeling negative towards) in order to graduate on time.

Semester...almost...over! I'll be done with my Instructional Specialist certificate (Only need to take the test in the spring)!


Then I get to start applying for PhD programs, and start the existential crises cycle all over again. Um...yay.

Congrats, AutumnLeaves!

Reading list and quals time approaches for me. I'm thinking about defining my own field as something crazy like "19th and 20th century American Animal Studies" or "Animal Aesthetics in the 19th and 20th century," and I'm really excited about this idea but am not sure how tenable it is. But my reading list would be so forking awesome.

T minus 12 days until the most stressful internship ever is over.