Closure WIN!

I turned in my final thesis yesterday. All the tasks that I expected to be roadblocks -- obtaining forms, getting signatures, paying fees -- fell into place one by one. The grad college guy said he'd look over it early next week and then let me know if there are any formatting issues.

I'm so pleased to have this phase over, and to have it over before my post-doc starts. woot!

Closure FAIL

I thought I could deposit my thesis today. But I could not.

By the time I went home yesterday I had done all the revisions required based on the defense, checked over all the data, and did and most of the formatting. This morning I got a later start than I intended and then I had to stop to buy the fancy paper on my way to work. Buying the paper took a while, as I had to consult with two different associates to make sure I had the right stuff. When I got to work, I spent some time making the last of the formatting changes, and then decided I needed to read through the whole thing one last time to make sure I hadn't done anything weird during the revisions and formatting. Then I printed it. Then I did the copyright form. Then I did the Earned Doctorates form. Then I got it all sorted into the proper envelopes. Then it was almost 3 pm and I still had to get a money order for bound copies I want, drive to the university, pay the stupid get out of jail grad school fee, pick up the signed forms from my adviser, and hand it in at the graduate college office. Cutting it close.

I got on the highway without stopping at the bank for the money order, so I had to turn around and go back for it. Then I forgot exactly where the building with the cashiers' office is and lost some time circling it and finding a parking space. I thought that office closed at 5, but in fact it closes at 4 and I got there at 4:04. Fuck. And why the hell can't I pay this lame-ass fee online? So I went to my adviser's office to get the forms, thinking I'd at least be able to get the packets all ready. Nope, he wasn't there despite an email yesterday saying he'd be there all day. he was probably expecting me earlier than 4:15. Whatever.

I was inordinately disappointed that I couldn't just get it the fuck done. I even had a bit of a tanty in the car after I left the closed cashiers' office. I still have plenty of time before the deadline to graduate this semester, but I just wanted this phase of life to be over. I don't want it to drag on another day. And I really wanted to have it done and dusted before I start the post-doc.

But whatever. I'll suck it up, and go back tomorrow and try to take care of it.

The day did get significantly better after all that, however, since EGM made a positively outstanding chicken makhani. Yum!

Defense Part III: Aftermath

One thing I learned about myself at my defense is that I absolutely cannot do any kind of math on the spot. At all.

There are many regressions in my thesis, and Dr. X was suspicious of some of my r^2 values. He asked, if the r^2 is 0.41, what is the r? Um, um, um, ...0.2? Embarrassing. He also asked me the difference between standard error and standard deviation. This is something I know, of course, and of course I mixed it up in my answer. To top it all off, Research Adviser noticed an error in some calculations she had me add at the last minute. There are two ways to make the calculations, both valid, but she thought that I had made the calculation one way and written that I did it the other way. So she asked me to describe the algebra for solving the equation the way I said I did it. It was like she asked me to give my answer in Russian. So, thinking it would help me, she asked me to solve the equation on the white board. I got all flustered and bumbled through it. I tried to diffuse my humiliation by joking that this was my fifth-grade nightmare. That got a laugh and got them to help me through it.

At several points when I felt things were getting unnecessarily serious, I joked around a little bit or said things that were a a little lighthearted. I'm not sure if that annoyed the committee or relaxed them, but it definitely relaxed me. I figured I've had lots of successful discussions with scientists at meetings or during visits, and I felt like I would do my best if I pretended that this was like any other conversation about my work.

Three hours and 15 minutes after it started, Academic Adviser asked if there were any more questions, and then asked me to leave the room. They deliberated for over 20 min(!) during which time I was in my office around the corner with EGM. According to Research Adviser, the deliberations weren't about whether I passed, but about what kind of revisions I should make. Academic Adviser finally came to get me and after we were back in the room told me that the decision to pass me was unanimous. As he shook my hand, I asked if there were any major revisions. He said there were just minor ones that we would discuss later. The others shook my hand, congratulated me, and then went off to pee. Neither Research Adviser nor I are hugging types, but when I went to shake her hand she said I needed a hug instead. Seriously people, I rarely cry , but I misted over when I hugged her. It was awesome.

After that, we joined my labmates for champagne. Then my two advisers and most of Academic Adviser's lab went to dinner at a decent restaurant nearby, which was a lot of fun.

The following Monday my (non-university) office was covered with mini Twix's and decorated with congratulatory paraphernalia. They even had a surprise pizza lunch for me, complete with brownies baked with Twix bits -- Awesome Technician's best stab at a Twix cake. It was terrific. It reinforced my conviction that I have some really wonderful colleagues and made me feel really special. Research Adviser gave me a copy of a high quality text book that is considered the bible of our field - a gift I highly value.

I met with Academic Adviser the next week to get the list of required revisions. Fortunately, they're pretty minor. Basically, he wanted me to ensure that all the numbers were correct but told me not to spend my time changing the text. Rather, he wants me to focus on preparing my chapters for publication, and to incorporate the committee's comments in the papers, not in the thesis.

Before the defense, I promised myself no regrets. Based on positive feedback from my committee before the defense, I was pretty sure I'd pass. Still, I knew I'd flub some questions or wish I had answered some differently, but I think that's par for the course. You can't beat down a barrage of questions for several hours without missing some. So I decided that as long as I passed without huge conditions, I'd allow myself to be happy with my performance and not beat myself up over any mistakes.

So, between the challenging questions at the defense, the champagne toast, the celebratory dinner, the surprise pizza lunch, and the relatively minor required revisions, I say my defense was pretty climactic. I'm grateful to everyone who had any part in it and I'm so glad it's behind me.

Defense Part II: The interrogation

This post is the second installment of the story of my defense...

Contrary to a new departmental policy that mandated we have annual committee meetings, I only met with my committee once between my candidacy exam and defense. Annual meetings seemed unnecessary since I basically did everything I said I would do in my thesis proposal, which they all approved at my candidacy exam. I called the one non-exam meeting when I wanted to make a major change to one of my chapters, which everyone agreed on after some discussion.

I distributed my thesis to my committee three weeks before my defense. I initially emailed a word file of the thesis, and I offered to provide printed copies as well. Four of them wanted printed copies, which I had spiral bound for $6 each at Kinko's. The binding was such a small thing to do (and what's the alternative, giving them a pile of loose pages?), but apparently was very impressive, as everyone commented on how professional this looked. Per Academic Adviser's advice, I asked each of the committee members if they had any questions about the thesis and offered to meet with them before the defense. Only one person took me up on it, but I think it helped clear out some sort of odd questions that would have derailed the defense a little bit. That was Adviser's intention, in fact, since he says he has seen defenses where one person misunderstood a basic concept and then got really defensive/aggressive during the defense to save face.

On the day of my defense, I wore what for me is dress-up clothes: nice-ish pants, a fitted turtleneck sweater, and low heels. Budget cuts meant that the department no longer provides refreshments for defenses, so I brought some drinks and snacks. I also prepared a 15 min PowerPoint presentation synthesizing the highlights of my thesis* (i.e. not going chapter by chapter).

Once everyone was there, Academic Adviser asked me to leave the room. During that time Academic Adviser apparently reviewed my academic history and they discussed how they would conduct the exam. After about 5-10 min, Academic Adviser invited me back into the room and I started my presentation. I think the point of the presentation is to break the ice and to give the student a chance to start with something she's prepared rather than having to answer a difficult question right off the bat. I felt fine delivering the talk, but later both advisers commented that I sounded nervous.

After that, I sat down (the format of my candidacy exam had been pretty similar in that I started with a short PP presentation, but I didn't find a graceful point to sit down after it, so I regrettably stood for the entire 3 hour interrogation). Academic Adviser announced that they had decided to start by asking general questions and then shift focus to more specific questions. Dr. X started and asked a bunch of questions over a period of about 30 min. Others interjected, especially Research Adviser when she could see that I was being asked something I knew but for whatever reason wasn't understanding the question. They spent about 1 h 45 min going around the table that way once.

The second round involved very specific questions, like "Table IX on page 64 shows values above 10 in column 3, but values below 10 in column 4. Do you think that's ecologically significant?" or "the phrasing of the last sentence in the first paragraph on page 98 is logically flawed" or even some critiques that basically came down to style. At one point, I had to meekly point out that the chapter being scrutinized was published, so did they think I needed to make editorial changes for the dissertation? It was a tad awkward, but they agreed that it probably didn't matter.

The most general question I got was something like, "if I were writing a book about [your topic in a broad sense] and I asked you to write a chapter on [your specialty] what would you include as the most important points?" RA's questions were the most difficult because I thought I knew the sorts of things she would ask, but then when she formulated questions, I got all confused: does she want me to talk about topic X, or is she looking for a discussion of topic Y? There is so much history between us that each question seemed impossibly loaded. Academic Adviser didn't ask any questions at all except as follow-up to questions posed by others. These were mostly to shift the direction of the discussion to something that would help me make a good point, or away from something he didn't want to spend time on.

Tomorrow: stuff I struggled with and the aftermath.

*Defending students used to give a45-min seminar to the whole department then retire to a closed room with the committee for the defense. I guess there were some uncomfortable situations where an unprepared student had their friends and family at the seminar, then performed poorly at the defense but the committee felt pressured into issuing a pass because the family was present, with precipitated a change in policy. Now we have the closed defense and give a public seminar a couple weeks later.

Defense Part I: Forming the committee

I like people's posts about their birth stories because they demystify the labor and delivery process a little bit. In that vein, I thought I'd share my defense story since I think I have some readers who have to live through their own defenses soon enough. It might help them to hear how it went for someone else, although the particulars of any defense are unique to each student. Also, my impression is that a US defense is equivalent to a non-US viva (I'm basing this largely on JaneB's description of a viva in the UK system and EcogeoMan's knowledge of how they do it in Far Off Land), with the primary difference being how the committee of examiners is selected. So I'll start with that.

I established my committee about halfway through my third year, a few months before my candidacy exam. In my program (in most US programs?), the student personally asks each person to serve on her committee. I needed five people, three of whom had to be from the university, and one of whom had to be outside.

At my university (or maybe just in my department), the adviser is always the committee chair. Of course then I would also have Research Adviser on the committee, and while technically she counted as outside the university, she didn't really meet that criterion in spirit. So, I needed two more faculty from my university and I wanted someone truly outside of it, someone who had no personal interest in my project. At the time there weren't many faculty in my department with relevant interests due to recent retirements and sabbaticals, so I asked someone who is rather popular and whose interests only sort of overlapped with mine. He turned me down - in the nicest possible way - by saying that he was really too busy but if I couldn't find anyone else he would do it.

I regrouped, and then asked someone whose interests coincided with mine but only in a rather superficial way. This person has an aggressive personality that can be somewhat toxic in the wrong circumstances, but s/he also comes with a totally different point of view that I knew would force me to look at my work from a new perspective. Although annoying, that trait can actually be quite positive. We'll call this person Dr. X.

I still needed one more in-house faculty, so I asked someone from another department. I'd had a class with this person, and although s/he had a very different specialty from mine, s/he was the closest I could get to a person with any expertise in my field. S/he is also quite friendly with Academic Adviser, so it was a good match personality-wise. We'll call this one Dr. Other Department.

That left me looking for my outside person. The two students in the lab who had prelimed before me had both had relatively famous, out-of-town people serve as their outside committee members, so I felt like that was the standard. Looking back, there were some local people I could have asked but either I didn't know much about them at the time or I thought they weren't a close enough match scientifically; given the poor matches I had with the two other committee members, I really wanted to find someone with relevant expertise. For whatever reason, we (Academic Adviser, Research Adviser, and I) also eliminated potential scientists in a driveable radius. Instead, we settled on someone from way out of state who we respect greatly, does just what we do but different, and had an ongoing collaboration with us. S/he had a student visit our lab for a semester a few years before, and Research Advisor had been on that student's committee and traveled to Far Away State for that student's defense. Thus we felt like my request wasn't too outlandish. Happily, the person agreed and I had a complete committee. Let's call this person Dr. Out-of-state. The logistics were made simpler because s/he had a child who was starting college at a university in my town, so s/he was planning to be in my area around the time I wanted to do my exam anyway. It all seemed to be falling into place. Unfortunately, it turned out that Academic Adviser had travel planned for the dates Dr. Out-of-state was going to be in town, so I ended up having a one-on-one exam with Dr. Out-of-state and then a second exam with the rest of the committee. Luckily, they all agreed I passed without conditions, so the two-phase exam turned out to be fine.

This is getting long already, so I'll give you a play-by-play of my defense tomorrow.

They came through

All five chapters have now be read at least once by at least one of my advisors.

I planned to distribute the complete document next week. Research Advisor suggests I ask the other committee members if they plan to read it that far in advance in hopes of getting a little more time to polish. That would be great. Even if I get the extra time, I'm glad I planned to finish it this soon so I can maybe have time to "polish" rather than "frantically finish".

Reminding the Passengers that I'm not a special snowflake

The last two days didn't go so well. I got stuff done, but not as much as I wanted. My normal emotional stability vanished, and I was a bit of a mess. The passengers on my bus were screaming at me, and it really distracted me from my work. They were saying things like your dissertation is going to be a mess; your defense is going to be awful because Difficult Committee Member isn't going to understand this train wreck of a dissertation; you'll be wasting Out-of-State Committee Member's time with your shitty diss.; and so on.

But then today I was venting to Awesome Technician, as usual, and she reminded me that I'm not the first person to feel this way, which of course I know, and that I'm not the first person to have a diss. that's not perfectly polished, which I also know. But somehow her reminder kicked me out of my self-pitying state so I could work again. There's a reason I call her Awesome.

Another helpful thing happened today as well. Academic Advisor had indicated he wanted to review the main introduction to my diss., so I sent him a rough draft of it on Saturday. I ran into him yesterday morning when he was on his way out the door. He he said he had been reading it, had found some issues, and would finish with it and send me comments in the afternoon. Then I never heard anything else. So late this morning I sent him an email saying, basically, that it was shitty to tell me he had problems with my intro but to not tell me what they were. I got comments within an hour. They were super helpful, and really pushed me through the remaining work on that part.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I now have a finished introduction.

Final lap

Okay, I'm starting to spaz. I have a week, maybe a week and a half to finish my diss. I have a lot left to do. That means I'm in dissertation jail this week. Here's the status.

• Introduction: written, in the last 2.5 days. Still pretty rough, but I think everything's in there. Except most of the references. Emailed to Advisors today, because one of them expressed interest in providing guidance/feedback. Any bets on if it will actually get read before I have to distribute the diss to my committee?
  
• Chapter 1: written, needs revision. This is the Poopsicle, which was meant to be Chapter 2 but we decided to put it the first position to deal with the data issues (the conclusion will be: this method sucks, other methods are way better, I used the better methods in the rest of the chapters - see?). Thus, I had to revamp the intro to the chapter, which I did today. I also redid some of the stats, and I still have to incorporate those results in the results and discussion sections. Plus fill in some more references and some general editing for style.
• Chapter 2: totally done. This is the one that is already accepted for publication, so it won't change other than formatting.
  
• Chapter 3: written. First draft went to Advisors in July. One never read it. One gave me really general comments in September. I revised it and sent it back. No reply. I do, however, have comments from a friend to help me polish it.
• Chapter 4: written. Emailed to Advisors on Saturday afternoon. Hopefully at least one of them will at least skim it before I have to distribute the diss. Still need to fill in a few last references.
  
• Conclusions: not started. But this part will be short.
• Formatting: not done. Started last night, then Word crashed and took my formatted chapter with it. Gah! I will have lots of time after my defense to get it just right for the Graduate College, so for now it just has to be formatted well enough for my committee to navigate it.
  
• Abstract, acknowledgments, table of contents, references: not done. Although each chapter has it's own reference list that I will have to fold into one. Did I mention that I'm a jackass who doesn't use reference managing software? I will be doing this manually.
  

On top of that, there is some distracting post-doc drama going on, and I got the proofs for the in-press paper. It's going to be an intense week. I best stop blogging!

Countdown relief

So, things have gotten better for me lately, stress-wise. The change happened as soon as I got my defense lined up. This strikes me as a little paradoxical, since you'd think that once the clock was officially ticking, I'd be freaking out about finishing. I think the crux on my anxiety was that grad school was starting to feel interminable.

I had a committee meeting in May 2008, and at that point we all thought I'd finish in about a year. Actually, I thought I might be able to defend in March 2009. When it became clear that wouldn't happen, I thought I could do it in June. Then October. Finally I put my foot down with December.

I had sort of a low point mid-summer. The proximate reason was my frustration with the slow pace of paper revisions. The ultimate reason, however, was that I just could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It seemed like I should be wrapping up, but there was so much left to do and no one seemed to be thinking I should be nearing completion except me.

I was adamant that my defense had to be done this year. There's not a good reason for that, though, except for the psychological cost of waiting longer -- I've completely missed the graduation deadline for fall semester. I simply could not handle pushing it off any more.

Fortunately, I feel like the tension broke over the last few weeks/months for several reasons: 1) I got my advisors' blessings to schedule the defense in December; 2) my out-of-state committee member agreed to come and scheduled his travel; 3) I finished a draft of the pile-o-shit paper (aka poopsicle); and 4) I have all my data in hand.

Now all I have to do is finish the mother fucker.

Time for sprinting

Today on the way to work, we heard the results of some marathon and I thought, "I have absolutely no desire to ever run a marathon." I get the idea of training really hard and consistently for many months, and then having an enormous sense of achievement and personal satisfaction upon finishing the race. Even though I hate running, I can see the appeal. But after doing this stinking phd, I never again need to prove to myself that I can achieve a long-term goal. I know I can cope with delayed gratification. And I know that it kind of sucks.

From now on, I want everything RIGHT NOW!

Well, maybe not everything right now, but I know I never need to run a marathon.

Craving a break

I've heard lots of people exclaim, "I NEED a vacation!", which I always thought sounded a little melodramatic. I love taking vacations, I like breaks from work, but I've never felt like I needed a vacation. Until now.

I'm sick of work, sick of the pressure of finishing, sick of the worry about finding jobs, sick of the looming deadline. All of it. I want a break. But, I want the break to come with the relief of knowing grad school is over. I've been fantasizing about vacations, looking at travel websites when I should be working. My current favorite is a Caribbean cruise in mid-January with either EGM, my real-life BFF, or both. BFF, you in?

My ideal post-defense scenario involves staying a while in my hometown at Christmas break, then lazing my way through January taking said cruise, maybe going to the science blogging conference thing in NC and visiting a friend who lives in that area, and visiting a research institute in another state to give a seminar. Then I'd like to work part time through, say, March. I want to earn enough money to pay my basic bills while having time to polish my diss chapters for journal submission at my leisure. Actually, if I don't have a job lined up before I graduate, I think this scenario is a real possibility, but we'll see.

PhD Mommy made a good point in the comments on my last post -- that not having a contingency funding plan forces you to finish. I think this is another reason I've been reluctant to make arrangements for next semester - I don't want to give myself the option of pushing my finish date back any further. However, today I got news that changed that. I have a committee member in another state who wasn't sure he could make the trip here for my defense. Without his travel plan in place, there was still room to change the date. Now he has decided to come and has paid for a flight, so the date is final. I'm really going to do it this time!

...who is the tensest of them all?

Lately I fell stressed. Even when I am doing something relaxing, I can feel an underlying tension that I don't think will go away until after I defend.

Some days, I get to my office all wound up and excited to get to work. But it's like anxiously waiting to start a race, hearing the gun, and then running in circles instead of following the course towards the finish.

Other days are much, much better. On those days, I get a lot accomplished, enjoy my work, and have a good time with my coworkers.

As I get down to the wire, the good days need to far outweigh the bad. I want to finish in the fall term, and I have a lot of work left to do. I guess there is a chance I could take another semester. That's unappealing -- I've already done that more than once and really, I think this thing will just expand to fill the time I give it.

So when I look in the mirror these days, I see someone bound and determined to finish her dissertation. I revisited the Dissertation Coach's advice the other day and made a timeline for the work I need to do, week by week. It's tight, but I think if I focus I can stay on schedule and finish without panicking towards the end. Every day needs to count; every day I need to arrive at work knowing specifically what I need to do. I see a person who will pull this off and not write a sloppy dissertation that was finished in a hurry*. My committee may have questions about my research, but it's not going to be because I wrote a crappy dissertation**.

*yes, I know no one else will read my dissertation, but each chapter will eventually get published as an independent paper, so I don't want it to suck.
**it will be because of the very limited replication in my experimental design.

scientiae-carnival

Irony

I celebrated Earth Day today by ending my carpool. How lame.

I've been carpooling with the same person for about two years. It has gone pretty well overall. I have appreciated my reduced gas and car maintenance costs as well as the shared responsibility for our 35 mi one-way commute. However, my carpool buddy has to work a fairly strict schedule because of his childcare situation. The nanny for his two small children must be relieved by 5:15. That means we have to leave work by 4:00 (to give enough padding for frequent traffic jams). We're supposed to leave home at 7:00 am, which should put us at work by 7:45. But sometimes there's traffic, and dude's almost always late in the morning and on the rare days that he isn't, I am. So most days I barely get 8 hours in.

This schedule has been terrific in some ways. I sit in a lot less traffic than I used to because our schedule forces me to get up and out before the peak of rush hour and to leave work before the worst of the afternoon congestion. Also, the shorter day has made me much more efficient since I know that I can't stay late to compensate for goofing off. I'm more focused and spend much less time on the internet while at work. Those changes have been great for my quality of life.

But right now, a spare 8 hours is just not enough. I want to defend in the fall, but I still have a lot of work to do. I calculated some milestones based on a loose timeline that would get my dissertation finished by September/October. I think I'm at a point where I'll be okay if x, y, and z are done by mid-summer, but that means a big push now to get the last of my data collected and analyzed. And that means I can't carpool.

My carpool buddy seemed disappointed when I told him today, but such is life. The arrangement is more important to him than me since his family has only one car and his wife needs it sometimes. But the carpool isn't totally dead. His wife always needs the car on Fridays, so I said I'd continue to carpool two days a week so he doesn't have to drive on Fridays and I get a day in return. Plus, I only canceled through July. Who knows -- at that point, I might be burned out and welcome a return to bankers' hours.

The toughest part of grad school

I'm late to the party, but I want to write on Candid Engineer's Scientiae topic, overcoming challenges. So far, the most challenging thing I've had to do in grad school is assemble and meet with my committee. I think that sounds pretty lame since it's an integral part of doing a PhD, but the process of building my committee hit an irrational nerve (subject for another post) that had me nervous for weeks.

I know part of a professor's job is to serve on thesis committees. Some of them even like doing it. But everybody always seems so busy all the time, and I really hate the guilty feeling that comes with the notion of wasting someone's time. I think really the problem stemmed from the fact that there weren't many faculty for me to choose from. Thus I had to ask people whose interests don't overlap much with mine, which means I have a committee partially populated* by people who don't really get what I do, don't have a whole lot to offer, won't get a whole lot from me, and don't know me all that well. It makes me dread my meetings with them, and it makes the meetings a lot less pleasant than they should be because it takes so much effort to get anything done.

I have learned from this though. There have been several subsequent occasions where I've had to ask people to help me with something in a way not completely different from my thesis committee. I'm happy to report that I was much more confident, the interactions went better, and I actually enjoyed the experience of having a reason to talk science with some different people. So I may not have overcome the challenge directly with my committee, but I did overcome my fear and inhibition. I'd say I even learned a skill, and now I'm much more comfortable dealing with the interpersonal parts of doing science. I'm still trying to find a way to get out of my next committee meeting, but I'm excited by some new relationships that have recently developed. Yet another reason I can't wait to graduate!

*Of course, I do have my two advisors who are both great. Plus an outside committee member who is great but also very far away and s/he doesn't know me all that well.

scientiae-carnival

Local or Prestigious?

Reader Kris needs advice. She asks

I am going to grad school this fall. There is school that I can go to and it's mediocre, but its in-state (if I'm going to be going to classes in person it has to be in-state as I have a mortgage and have to work full time at a local job).

That being said, I can attend a more prestigious university but I can only take classes online (the whole degree would be online as the school is 1,000 miles away) because of my situation. What should I do? Opinions? I know that I will get a better experience going in person and that it would be more fun, but, that being said, is it worth the sacrifice in prestige? There are no prestigious universities that I can attend locally for my area.

Thanks, Kris

I think this is a tricky situation where considering what you want from the degree might help you decide what to do. Are you aiming for a master’s or Ph.D.? In science or another discipline? Do you plan to do experimental research for your thesis? What kind of job do you hope to get when you’re finished?

I don’t know anyone who has done an online advanced degree in science, but I know someone who is starting one in the fall. Like you, she didn’t want to move, but she couldn’t find a suitable program where she lives. In her case, she wants a master’s to get the credentials for industry jobs she can’t get with a bachelor’s only, but she isn’t especially interested in the grad school experience or becoming an academic.

I think a PhD based on lab or field work would be extremely difficult to do remotely unless you currently have a job as a technician or something that you could transition into grad work, making your boss your research advisor while taking your classes online and having an academic advisor at the remote university (this is what I did but with a local university). Motivation is difficult enough when you are surrounded by other students and have your advisor around for accountability and guidance. Doing it on your own, especially if you are keeping another job, will probably take a LOT of discipline and self confidence.

As far as I can tell, the importance of prestige varies by field. Some fields seem to have a well structured hierarchy defined by prestige. I think it's more about the lab in my field. Sure, there are some departments in my field that really rock out, so students graduating from them tend to be highly qualified with better networks and they often get good jobs. But for the most part, it’s the advisor’s reputation that’s vital. There are stellar labs in crappy departments that graduate excellent students who launch enviable careers. So you might find a star in an otherwise mediocre university or you might find that online program loses some of the prestige of the university if it’s not tied to a big cheese advisor. Can you investigate how important prestige will be for your career?

I think one of the biggest things you might lose with an online program is access to your advisor’s network. Given that you don’t want to move for grad school, are you willing to move once you graduate? If not, the prestige of the remote university may not help you find a local job as much as the contacts you would make by attending a local university. If you think you’ll be more mobile after you have the degree, then maybe the clout that comes from the Prestigious U’s online program would be beneficial.

That’s just my opinion. What does everybody else think? Anyone have experience with online grad school?

Impending transition

I’m still far from my next big transition (graduation), but I feel like I am on the cusp of a change in mindset; I feel like it is an adjustment for me to transition from a student with a long way to go to one who is wrapping up.

I recently finished one big chunk of my research that will become a chapter in my dissertation (huzzah!). I had been planning it for ages, then working on it off and on for the past 18 months or so, and now the data are collected. One of the things that way always in the future is now at hand. Add that to the manuscript that is in preparation, the lab work for another chapter that is 70% done (see sidebar counter), and the last chapter that was dramatically reduced after my most recent committee meeting, and I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I feel different preparing for Big Conference next week than I have for conferences in the past. People always ask if I’ll be finishing up soon and I always have to say no. This time, I get to say yes, I expect to be graduating in about a year and yes, I’m starting to think about post docs, will you have one available? I’ve even ordered business cards (I hope they arrive in time) to give out during all the networking I have planned. I feel similarly about the job ads that sail through my inbox every day. Occasionally, I’ll see interesting job listings, but I know I’m too far from finishing to pursue them. That will be changing soon.

It’s a little scary to realize the thing I’ve been doing for the past five years (seven if you count the time I was a tech in my current lab) is coming to a close. I love where I am, so it’s sad to think about leaving. But at the same time, it’s exciting to think about leaving to pursue something new, or even about staying but with a new project in the same lab. I’m really ready to graduate, but apprehensive about the thesis writing and defense process which I know will be stressful given my advisors’ lack of enthusiasm for reviewing my writing. So, while it may seem trivial to think of the last year of grad school as a transition, I think my mindset and even my daily routine will be changing quite a lot. I hope it’s good.

scientiae-carnival.

Selecting a lab

As a follow-up to these posts, I thought I'd write a little about how students in my field typically find and join labs. I am pretty sure my experience is generally representative of my discipline, but there may be departments that do it differently.

It’s very difficult to get accepted to grad school in my field without having an advisor who has agreed to take you on. Typically, students go straight into a lab; they do not join the department as a student at large*. When the faculty are debating who to accept, you must have an advocate in the department who will commit to mentoring you. This means that 1-8 months before applications are due, you have to start emailing faculty whose research interests are similar to yours. After determining that you have mutual interests, it’s good to ask if the professor has space for students in the coming year, if they have funding, what new projects the lab might be initiating, etc. It can take a lot of searching to find a lab that has everything you want in a location you can tolerate.

Often, after the applications have been reviewed but before offers are made, promising prospective students are invited to visit/interview on the university or lab's dime. This might be a group event where all prospectives visit at once, or students might be invited individually by a professor. This is the time to make sure the student and advisor make a good match -- they are interviewing each other. In the best visits, the prospective gets time to talk privately with current students to learn what life in the lab/department in really like. Often, the visitor stays with one of the current students, so they get a chance to ask lots of candid questions. Although as Mad Hatter pointed out, labs that don't value "fit" so much may not provide one-on-one time with each member of the lab. Unfortunately, some students, especially internationals, are unable to make a visit for a variety of reasons. For students who can't visit (international or not) or who visit but don't get a chance to talk privately with current students, it's a good idea to contact current and former students to make sure the advisor's style is one that you can cope with.

I don't know of any departments in my field that do rotations. The department I'm in is rather small, so the faculty are so different that I wouldn’t want to work with any other than my advisor (if for some reason during the first 1-4 years I had had to leave my lab, I think I would have changed schools before I would have changed advisors. At this point, I would stay to finish up no matter what). Larger departments might have people with enough overlap that there are more options for students. People do change labs if there is a big problem, but it’s rare.

There are clear advantages to this system. The most obvious is that it can help ensure equitable distribution of students among labs, favoring new faculty if necessary, since students just aren't accepted if there isn't space in the lab they want. For example, I've heard that there can be more students wanting into a lab than the professor can handle after the students are already in the program. I imagine this must sort of typical for departments that do rotations. Personally, I think I'd be upset if were in a department for a year and then couldn't get into the lab I wanted. Of course, it's also not good for faculty to get swamped with students as Ianqui described. Another advantage of this system is that students can be sure they will work in a research area that matches their interests. On the other hand, this system is less flexible than other models. Student and advisor may meet only briefly, if at all, before committing to 4-6 years together. If the student turns out to be a poor match for a lab, they may have few alternatives but to leave the department.

I'm pretty happy with the system my discipline uses, but since I haven't experienced any others, I can't make a balanced comparison. I bet that the advantages I see might not be so important in fields where students research is less tightly associated with faculty research, or where there is more overlap in faculty interests.

If anyone reading this is considering grad school ecogeoscienceology and has questions about finding a lab/department, feel free to email me.we

*Since students join labs and not departments, the fame and quality of the professor is more important than the quality of the department.

Intellectual independence

Conventional wisdom* asserts that a student pursuing a master’s degree should be given a research project that’s ready to go. The questions should be developed, the field site identified, and the funding in place before the student arrives to begin work. These students have to complete lots of coursework and research in a short period of time, so they can’t fool around with harebrained thesis ideas. On the other hand, Ph.D. students are expected to develop their own project.

As I’ve progressed through grad school, I’ve noticed that there are many Ph.D. students who are unprepared to put together a project from scratch. The only people who are really capable of designing a new project in a timely way either have a master’s degree or worked in their discipline before starting grad school. Otherwise, students may flounder because they don’t have a deep enough understanding of the literature or the relevant experience to know what the pertinent research questions are.

I did have work experience (but no master’s) and still I came into an established project. I think the research has proceeded in different way than if I hadn’t been involved, but the fundamental idea was Research Advisor’s. In addition to the advantages of having the core ideas already worked out by an expert, I also had funding. I have heard of faculty who make incoming Ph.D. students rewrite funded proposals, tweaking them with their own ideas, in order to “take ownership” of the project. I think this is a waste of time. In my field, students usually have to write a research proposal to achieve candidacy. This exercise was very challenging and beneficial for me, even though I didn’t conceive the original project. By the time I defended the proposal, I had reworked it into something pretty different than Advisor had at the outset. But I couldn't have done that right off the bat.

It seems to be getting more common for students to embark on a Ph.D. straight from undergrad. I see the appeal for the students, since a Ph.D. doesn’t necessarily go faster after a master’s, and for the faculty, who get better trained staff with lower turnover. Still, I think this trend is a little disturbing because many students coming right from undergrad are overwhelmed by the independence of grad school. It’s not that they are incapable of doing the work, but that they don’t have the necessary experience to initiate it. In my opinion, people starting a Ph.D. right from university should either join an established project to which they can contribute something new or vital, or they should be given a small project to get them started. I think it’s not right for faculty to take on inexperienced students without giving them something to start with. They are, after all, students.

*This whole post comes from my experience with how things work in eco-, geo-, and/or ecogeoscience.

Committee meeting: done

I had a committee meeting yesterday. My department didn't require annual committee meetings until this year. In the past, the committee would only meet together twice: once at the student's prelim exam and once at her defense. I guess a few "uncomfortable" defenses made the department decide it needed to be like other decent programs and require annual progress meetings.

I guess because the annual meeting was an unknown entity, I got super anxious about it. I knew it wasn't supposed to be a big deal so I'm not sure why I was so worried. I guess I thought they would tear apart the work I had done so far or not approve the changes I wanted to make to one of the chapters. Also, I felt very disorganized and irresponsible because I hadn't fully checked out the room arrangements. I was right to be worried about that because the room had a speaker phone with no speaker* and an expired calling card (one of my committee members had to participate by phone).

The phone stuff eventually worked out and the meeting went fine. Thank goodness for Research Advisor, who just the day before had passed a paper to me that covered exactly what I needed to substantiate the revisions I wanted. After two hours (!) of discussion, we agreed on a much reduced version of a chapter I proposed two years ago at my prelims and they nodded approval at the data I have so far for the other chapters. I even received some very positive feedback from my outside committee member (delivered in restrained and measured verbiage) that made me feel really good. He told Research Advisor he thinks I am "a winner". Can't beat that.


*Me to Academic Advisor in a most shrill voice, "I don't deserve a Ph.D. if I can't even set up a meeting room with a phone that works!" How melodramatic of me.

Production is up!

I had a small breakthrough today. I took some advice from How To Write A Lot and ended up writing a lot this afternoon.

First, I got permission to turn off my internet connection and did so for several hours. It made a huge difference, even though I could easily turn it back on when I wanted. When I'm working on data analysis or writing, I often briefly check my email whenever I get to something that requires a little thought. Not having that option really kept me on task.

Second, I re-read the bit about writing introductions. Silvia recommends a three-section template for intro's: stating the problem, expanding on the problem, and stating how the present study will address the problem. This sounds so simple it's verging on silly and of course the advice in the book was more elaborate. I have always struggled with intro's because I have a hard time seeing them as a whole. I can write good paragraphs presenting the relevant ideas, but I have trouble organizing them in a logical structure. I shuffled around some text I already had and then wrote some more. I think my draft is much better now.

I told Academic Advisor that I would be giving the lab group a draft of my manuscript on Tuesday so we can discuss it at lab meeting the following Tuesday. I think I really need a deadline goal. Undoubtedly, it will also be extremely helpful to get the comments of all those readers, even if they don't read it very thoroughly (which I doubt they will).