Mistaken For An Undergrad

The curse of the graduate student is the word "student"; most people I meet seem to lump us in with undergraduates, as not having real jobs, or incomes, or being adults at all. If I were a few years older, I would be pleased to be mistaken for a teenager; as it is, I'm usually amused at my ability to blend in.

On Tuesday, the second day of classes, I cut across the dorm lawns on my way to the administrative buildings. I blended in perfectly, just another person wearing jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, carrying a backpack. I doubt anyone thought I was a freshman - I overheard two upperclassmen carrying on the college tradition of being surprised at how young and/or tiny the freshmen looked - but I could certainly pass as a senior. My appearance hasn't changed much in the past four years; if anything, I probably look more like a college student than I used to, thanks to my recent rediscovery of denim.

That same afternoon, I was mistaken for either a high school senior or a college senior, I'm not sure which. I took three manilla envelopes to the post office, each containing the hopes and dreams of a job application. The postal service employee, noting the college addresses on each, asked if I was applying to school. I don't expect USPS personnel to recognize the subtle clues of packages addressed to "search committee", but I am going to assume that he was aware of graduate school, and assumed I was applying instead of trying to get out.

At some point in the next year, I shall have to decide what I should do with my wardrobe if/when I get a job. The faculty dress code is indistinguishable from the graduate students'; our department chair once caused quite a stir by showing up in a suit instead of his usual khaki shorts and socks-with-sandals ensemble. Faculty seem to rely on their extra experience to set them apart from their students, and I won't gain that much gravitas in the next year. I will either have to modify my wardrobe considerably, or decide that I don't care about blurring the faculty-student lines.

Passing Notes in Meetings

I was highly amused to have my advisor pass me a note during a meeting yesterday. It required a bit of acrobatics, and some assistance from an intermediary, since we weren't sitting that near each other. I accepted the note with some flashbacks to grade school, when such blatant note passing would have resulted in extreme teacher displeasure.

In this case, the professor started it, and the post-doc giving the talk wasn't about to call her on it. In fact, the note was extremely helpful - I knew the presentation should related to my research somehow, but it wasn't obvious, and her note explained it. And just to make it vastly entertaining, it was written on the back of her lunch receipt. I may just keep that for posterity.

Besides, NPR said just this morning that doodling can be useful during boring meetings. Note passing is a step up; maybe it's even more helpful.

Begging the Outside Member

My life is too insular for this "outside committee member" nonsense. I have a hard enough time imagining two people from my own department who would be willing to write my reference/recommendation letters, so going outside the department is by definition approaching a (seemingly) random stranger and asking them to do me a favor. Perhaps it's just the impression my advisor gives of being completely unavailable to anyone outside my lab, but I don't have much hope for this process.

The first email request went out today. Now I will cringe every time I see that I have a new e-mail, wondering if it's the response. If/When the response does arrive, I will probably stare at the email in my inbox in mild terror, and avoid opening it for a day. This is exactly how I dealt with sending emails to prospective grad school mentors requesting information about their research. It's nice to know how much graduate school has changed me.

Rise of the Machines

I have been stunned by the department copier. Not because of stapling and collating, which is simply how copiers have "always" functioned. Because the administrative assistant typed my email address into the copier, pushed a button, and by the time I was back at my desk across the hall, I had the .pdf of my form waiting in my inbox. The .pdf doesn't make the "foom" sound (and I missed the new-email "ding"), or look as impressive, but I found myself completely amazed nonetheless.

All this stands in complete counterpoint to my much-less-thrilled amazement that the journal publishing company, based in the Netherlands, of all places, requires a full-page document of refusal to pay $700 to have a figure published in color - a document that could not be modified on the computer, and had to be printed out. Perhaps they were aware that my department copier must be able to make new .pdfs in under 10 seconds. They couldn't really have wanted me to pay to snail-mail or fax something from midwest USA to the Netherlands.

Mental Preparation for Teaching

Just as I consider doing a bit of my nascent mindfulness practice before going to teach, I see that PhD Comics has its own commentary on the need for mental preparation before teaching. The sad thing is, abandoning hope isn't all that far off from my goals before setting out to teach, mindfulness or no.

The aim is to be in a state where I am no longer personally attached to whether my students enjoy my class, whether they participate or fall asleep, whether I sound like a knowledgable professional or can't avoid saying "uh" and "um" every few sentences. You might say that I'm just getting rid of the stress that makes "what if I do a bad job?" a self-fulfilling prophecy; or you might say I'm abandoning all hope that the class will go well. It's all a matter of perspective.

Graduate Student Survival Kit

Our lab coordinator is leaving for graduate school. We encouraged this, perpetuating the great circle of no-life. We were, however, nice enough to provide a Graduate School Survival Kit. It contained:

-Combination coffee mug and french press. Caffeine is vital.
-Dial-An-Excuse wheel. A must-have for all advisor meetings.
-PhD Comic Scrapbook. Rather than conducting research, time was spent selecting a dozen PhD Comics, putting them in a nice scrapbook, and adding advice. For example, "don't take bad papers personally".

This kit was presented as part of my advisor's Fourth of July lab barbecue. The departing lab coordinator then gave a thank-you speech, to all members of the lab. I was singled out for being very organized (this makes a lab coordinator's job much easier). It is my defining feature.

Back to the Library

I'm not sure which shocks me more: That for the second time in two months (and the second time in three years) I had to resort to the campus library to get hold of a reference, or that the book was actually checked out. Technically, the article was available online, thanks to the magic of Google Books, but I don't actually like this resource; I prefer my downloadable .pdfs, particularly since I'm too cheap (grad student stipend, after all) to pay for internet access at home.

I think the fact that it was checked out is the shocker. Generally speaking, anything that starts "Multidimensional" from the 1990s is probably not high on anyone's reading list. I recalled it, quite easily, but then had to go back an reassure myself that it was due in 2008 and wasn't lost sometime years ago. I'm actually curious who has it out, and whether they're in my field/department. Odds are, it's sitting in my advisor's office, or the other faculty member involved in this project's office, but there was no way to tell. My own experiences working at my undergraduate library tell me this may or may not be returned as recalled, since professors often take books for their year-long checkout period, renew them automatically regardless of use, and come to think of them as their own property.

It's not as if I'm eager to read the 40-page article starting with "Multidimensional" myself...

Procrastination Lite

Jorge Cham, the mind behind Piled Higher and Deeper Comics, is giving a talk in my area this evening. This will be his second appearance since I arrived on campus. Fortunately, the first was within months of my enrollment in graduate school, and this one occurs after I've received my master's diploma, so a second visit doesn't make me feel like I've been in graduate school far too long.

The talk itself hasn't changed much. The title ("The Power of Procrastination") is still the same. But then, I'm not going for the talk. I'm going because I've had a complicated and stressful week, and probably need some refresher instructions on how to procrastinate purposefully. I'm going because it's fun to see how the actual talk matches up to the "Tales from the Road" he creates. I'm going to see if the talk has improved over the two years (last time, he had to borrow a computer, and PowerPoint version discrepancies caused his "What I Learned In Graduate School" fancily animated point about learning PowerPoint to fail completely, to tremendous laughter). I'm going to get an autographed copy of the 3rd book, to match my autographed copies of the 1st and 2nd books.

And I'm going because my name has an uncommon spelling, and I want to see if it will stand out in the mind of a man who must sign hundreds of books a year. There's always the possibility of being notable enough to get mentioned in the Tales from the Road myself.

Circle of References

My thesis is being turned into two submissions. They cover two separate ideas, two separate sets of analyses, even two mostly-separate subsets of tasks. But just to demonstrate how interconnected the papers are, they refer to each other. It's not as bad as it could be, which would be each referencing the other as being "in preparation". The short conference submission referenced "X, Y, & Z (in preparation)"; XYZ references "X & Z (submitted)". Still, I couldn't help but hear theme music from "The Lion King" started running through my head. If I had any brainpower left over from writing them, I'd try to parody the music into "The Circle of References".