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?

Facebook

Motivated by CAE's post about Facebook games, I signed in for the first time since I created the account in like, March. I have an account with my real name and one with my pseud, but I'm not completely happy using either one. I'd like to just tell my real name to other bloggers who are interested in interacting with me, but I'm not ready for my real life and blog worlds to collide (only EGM and BFF know about my blog; and of course I can use my real-name account with real life people). Also, I just don't really get Facebook. Anyway, I discovered there is a science bloggers group! I scrolled through the members wondering if I read any of them through a pseud (aside from a few I recognized who blog under their real names) and I joined. I'm Eco Geofemme if you want to friend me to play games or whatever (or see my picture), although I'm not sure how to do that yet. Even though I've never played Scrabulous, I will add my opinion that Hasbro was stupid to shut it down.

In other news, we seem to have an ant infestation. They are coming in through a wall nowhere near the kitchen, and we're on the third floor so they must be all through the building. Interestingly, they are tiny black ones not the giant ones you normally see eating wood and such. I'll call the landlord tomorrow. Yuck.

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.

Office Space, here?

One of the many things I like about my job is that it rarely feels like I'm in the movie Office Space. However, things have been changing lately at the institution where I do my research. Sometimes it's hard not to confuse my lab notebook with a TPS Report.

Yesterday we had a staff meeting where they gave people awards for doing their regular jobs. Well, that's not really true. They did an extra good job at their jobs during a crisis, and while that is commendable, it still seemed a little over the top that we had an all hands meeting about it. There was a cake, which I swear looked exactly like the cake in Office Space, so we were all making jokes, saying things like "just pass" and stuff.

Lately several signs have appeared on things like electrical panels with warnings about working in confined spaces. ? And one warning you not to get your hand caught between the banister and the wall. And since we're all worried about piles of reprints attacking us in our offices, a senior scientist in my group kept getting reprimanded for his messy office. So, he just piled the stacks of papers that had been on his floor onto a cart that has now been sitting in the hallway outside his office for like, 6 months. Apparently, that is an acceptable solution. What gives?

Book Meme

Mad Hatter tagged me for this meme. I had been avoiding it because my short list of books read is embarrassing. So, the books I've read are in bold, books I started but never quite finished are italicized, and if I saw the cinematic adaptation, there is an asterisk.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Assigned readng my last semester of high school that I didn't do. I think it's the only assigned book that I didn't read and had to fake the report.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I'm sure I started this at least three times, but just couldn't get into it. Even after reading 75% of it.)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (But I did suffer through The Brothers Karamazov in a college seminar course where that was the only topic. One bitchy student ruined it by revealing the killer way too early, since she had read it before but no one else had.)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (Loved it! Loved East of Eden more.)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden*
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne*
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Confusing, what with all those names to keep track of, but wonderful.)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Could this book have been more irritating?)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding*
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Could this book have been more boring?)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (But I did have a part in my junior high's rendition of the stage musical version. I was in the "workhouse gang". I had to play a boy. Yet another negative aspect of being short.)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (I think I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school. That was plenty James Joyce for me.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker*
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (I read Lady Chatterly's Lover. That's similar, right?)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (one of my two(!) copies just went to the book exchange)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl* (I read many of his other books and LOVED them. Will definitely read them to my kids if I have any.)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Lots of people have already done this one...I'll tag JaneB, Sciencemama, Silver Fox, and uh, Unbalanced Reaction. If you guys have done it, sorry. If anyone else wants to do it, GFI*!

*Go For It.

Who are you?

Drugmonkey has a post up that he wants to make all memey, so I will run with it. Most people who read blogs don't leave comments, so even with a dynamic medium like a blog, it's hard to know your audience. So the question for readers, originally from the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science, is

Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments.

So, Readers, please delurk if you care to.

Book Swap

We had a little book swap at work today. Awesome Technician and I were chatting about having books to get rid of, so we decided to organize a little exchange. All it took was putting out a sign in the common space near the microwave and people brought it novels and such they were finished with. Some people forgot or didn't see the sign, but seemed interested in the pile. There were still many books left when I left, but I think some folks who didn't bring any were waiting till the end of the day to take books out of curtesy to the people who contibuted. Hopefully more will be gone by tomorrow, but we'll take whatever is left to a second hand bookstore. I think we'll do it again in 6 months or so to include more people.