I mentioned to one of the other graduate students in my lab that I had achieved my goal of applying to 10 jobs this semester, and he was suitably impressed. Not at the number - like me, he has no idea how many job applications would be reasonable - but at the fact that I was applying for jobs and finishing my dissertation at the same time. He didn't think he could do it.
I'm not really doing it. Applying for jobs, yes; making progress on my dissertation, not so much. It's not the job applications that have delayed my dissertation progress, so much, although checking the various job posting sites has become my new means of "productive" procrastination. Teaching, and mentoring my undergraduate students, and just dealing with the daily influx of emails and small requests, are taking up all my time. Even telling myself that I would dedicate one day a week to working on the dissertation has not motivated me enough; there are always things with nearer deadlines, or straightforward end-of-week burnout.
In my defense, I have written drafts of the first four chapters - my introduction, and the first three experiments. I have also been kept busy with the design and data collection of my fourth experiment, so it's not as though I've done nothing. I've just done very, very little since the semester began. I had planned to have my introduction ready for my advisor's approval by the end of the semester; that's not likely to happen.
The good news is that our department colloquium lacked a speaker last week, so it became a q&a on dissertation requirements. The one member of my committee who was present advanced his opinions on length of the dissertation, explicitly stating a preference for an introduction appropriate for a journal article, and definitely not in the style of our huge comprehensive exam. I am relieved that my procrastination does not come at as huge a cost as I thought (I'm only 20 pages behind, not 50). I might even be motivated enough to turn to that introduction and start revising. Or I might be one of those people who only gets to writing within a month of the due date. At least my job applications get out several months in advance.
Showing posts with label time management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time management. Show all posts
Friday, October 30, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Timing Recommendation Letter Requests
Would you rather worry that a professor will forget to write your letter of recommendation before application review begins, or discover that a professor has sent out your letters when you haven't prepared your application yet?
Four years of graduate school have trained me well when interacting with faculty. I know that if I show up five minutes after the scheduled start of any weekly meeting or colloquium, I will not be "late", because many faculty will still be on their way. I know that my committee members want any drafts at least one and preferably two weeks in advance, but will not read the drafts until the night before, or possibly the morning of the meeting.
Knowing the usual turnaround time for requests from faculty, I made my requests for recommendation letters as soon as I found jobs worth applying for, all with deadlines in mid-October. Two and a half months' notice seemed about right: Enough time for the faculty to write two or three pages enthusing about my teaching or research skills, but not so much time that they might forget or misplace the request. The challenge is that with three different professors, I get three different responses.
The first letter was requested of my advisor. Her response typifies what I have come to expect of faculty; hardly surprising, I suppose, when she's the faculty member with whom I interact the most. She responded by instructing me to keep our lab coordinator copied on all these emails, a necessary step to make sure she meets the deadlines. Two and a half months is cutting it a bit close for the busy faculty member just starting her sabbatical.
The second letter was requested of the instructor for whom I taught an advanced laboratory course. I asked in person, and received an enthusiastic agreement and instructions to tell him exactly what he wanted me to say. I emailed the list of addresses, and have heard nothing since. In a few weeks, when the hectic start of the semester is over, I'll arrange to pass him in the hallway, and check up on the letters as part of the small talk.
The third letter was requested from a the director of my school's graduate teaching office. Here is where I got my surprise, a faculty member who had been trained to deal with student requests in a timely and efficient matter. Barely a week after I made the request, I got an email - the letters had been sent. I had barely thought about my cover letters, and colleges would receive a letter endorsing me within a few days.
This certainly provided the impetus for me to get on with my applications. A week and a half later, I had written, revised and finalized my cover letter, and finished revising my teaching and research statements. Surely the search committee, or whichever staff member was delegated to deal with the incoming mail, could not hold such a brief delay against me. After all, there were graduate schools who received my GREs and nothing else.
As panicked as I was the first three days after I learned the letters had already been sent, I find I much prefer the faculty member who is completely on top of such things. I will spend the next two months worrying whether the other letters have been written or sent; given the choice between a brief panic and a lingering mild worry, I'll take the brief panic any time.
Four years of graduate school have trained me well when interacting with faculty. I know that if I show up five minutes after the scheduled start of any weekly meeting or colloquium, I will not be "late", because many faculty will still be on their way. I know that my committee members want any drafts at least one and preferably two weeks in advance, but will not read the drafts until the night before, or possibly the morning of the meeting.
Knowing the usual turnaround time for requests from faculty, I made my requests for recommendation letters as soon as I found jobs worth applying for, all with deadlines in mid-October. Two and a half months' notice seemed about right: Enough time for the faculty to write two or three pages enthusing about my teaching or research skills, but not so much time that they might forget or misplace the request. The challenge is that with three different professors, I get three different responses.
The first letter was requested of my advisor. Her response typifies what I have come to expect of faculty; hardly surprising, I suppose, when she's the faculty member with whom I interact the most. She responded by instructing me to keep our lab coordinator copied on all these emails, a necessary step to make sure she meets the deadlines. Two and a half months is cutting it a bit close for the busy faculty member just starting her sabbatical.
The second letter was requested of the instructor for whom I taught an advanced laboratory course. I asked in person, and received an enthusiastic agreement and instructions to tell him exactly what he wanted me to say. I emailed the list of addresses, and have heard nothing since. In a few weeks, when the hectic start of the semester is over, I'll arrange to pass him in the hallway, and check up on the letters as part of the small talk.
The third letter was requested from a the director of my school's graduate teaching office. Here is where I got my surprise, a faculty member who had been trained to deal with student requests in a timely and efficient matter. Barely a week after I made the request, I got an email - the letters had been sent. I had barely thought about my cover letters, and colleges would receive a letter endorsing me within a few days.
This certainly provided the impetus for me to get on with my applications. A week and a half later, I had written, revised and finalized my cover letter, and finished revising my teaching and research statements. Surely the search committee, or whichever staff member was delegated to deal with the incoming mail, could not hold such a brief delay against me. After all, there were graduate schools who received my GREs and nothing else.
As panicked as I was the first three days after I learned the letters had already been sent, I find I much prefer the faculty member who is completely on top of such things. I will spend the next two months worrying whether the other letters have been written or sent; given the choice between a brief panic and a lingering mild worry, I'll take the brief panic any time.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Productivity vs. The Blizzard
My plans to be productive over spring break worked great for the first three days: Data was (alright, were) collected, proposals and papers were written, lessons were planned. Then Thursday brought a blizzard. What I'd last heard of as 3-5 inches expected turned into 8 inches by the time I woke up Thursday morning, to a text message telling me that the university was closing at of 10 a.m. due to the further 8 inches expected that afternoon.
This is one of the few times that might make it worth it to shell out for internet access from my apartment. After all, severe weather doesn't mean a break to the grad students. There were certainly some things I could keep working on, but almost all of my plans for Thursday were tied to being on campus. So I gave up on work and read novels (yes, plural) all day. I can't decide if I should be frustrated at the loss of productivity or grateful to have an enforced day or two off. I might not decide until after the conference, when I find out whether I'm behind or still on top of everything.
This is one of the few times that might make it worth it to shell out for internet access from my apartment. After all, severe weather doesn't mean a break to the grad students. There were certainly some things I could keep working on, but almost all of my plans for Thursday were tied to being on campus. So I gave up on work and read novels (yes, plural) all day. I can't decide if I should be frustrated at the loss of productivity or grateful to have an enforced day or two off. I might not decide until after the conference, when I find out whether I'm behind or still on top of everything.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
April Showers
April always showers me with work, not rain, and this year it's started raining all the way back in mid-March.
April is the end of the semester. Officially, the last day of classes is May 1st, and there's all that "final exam" stuff, but that doesn't mean anything to the graduate student. Only the run-up to the last day of class matters. It's always a combination of papers I need to turn as a student, papers I need to grade as a teacher, the yearly progress report, and whatever milestone has to be met by the end if the academic year - this time, my dissertation proposal. I foolishly offered to give my department presentation that first week of April. And to top it all off, this year I attend my very first conference ever, complete with two poster presentations, April 1-4th. It's almost enough to set off a mild panic.
On the bright side, my posters are beautiful (barring complications in the poster printing process), I've already gone several rounds of revisions on my dissertation proposal with my advisor, I don't care about my grade in my one class (I need a B- to get the Cognitive Science Certificate, and no paper is that hard anymore), and I gave myself two weeks to grade my student's final papers. Next week is Spring Break, and I will spend it here, at the office, using this as my last opportunity to prepare for the April deluge.
April is the end of the semester. Officially, the last day of classes is May 1st, and there's all that "final exam" stuff, but that doesn't mean anything to the graduate student. Only the run-up to the last day of class matters. It's always a combination of papers I need to turn as a student, papers I need to grade as a teacher, the yearly progress report, and whatever milestone has to be met by the end if the academic year - this time, my dissertation proposal. I foolishly offered to give my department presentation that first week of April. And to top it all off, this year I attend my very first conference ever, complete with two poster presentations, April 1-4th. It's almost enough to set off a mild panic.
On the bright side, my posters are beautiful (barring complications in the poster printing process), I've already gone several rounds of revisions on my dissertation proposal with my advisor, I don't care about my grade in my one class (I need a B- to get the Cognitive Science Certificate, and no paper is that hard anymore), and I gave myself two weeks to grade my student's final papers. Next week is Spring Break, and I will spend it here, at the office, using this as my last opportunity to prepare for the April deluge.
Monday, February 2, 2009
No-Work Weekend, All-Work Week
Last weekend I took the entire weekend off guilt-free, because I had absolutely nothing to do; my e-mail inboxes were empty, any research tasks were in the hands of collaborators, and I was three weeks ahead in my lab planning. I had a normal life for two and a half days.
This weekend, I still kind of took the weekend off, but with plenty of guilt. There were any number of things I could have been doing, should have been doing, but I was seduced by a sale on the "Chuck" Season 1 DVD, and couldn't quite pry myself away from my TV. I still got something (one, tiny thing) done, and I'm not behind - but I'm not ahead any more, either.
Much as I said in my response to ScienceWoman's poll on taking time off between semesters, and in the graduate school survival kit I gave to a friend, I refuse to stress out about my failure to get work done. I have no home life, and can make up for it by just working 10- to 15-hour weekdays. And even if I don't make it up, there's no point fretting about it now.
Still, I do need to develop a strategy for getting work done on days when I have no meetings or classes or any reason to leave the apartment. That's the downside to a studio apartment; it's impossible to have one productivity area set aside.
This weekend, I still kind of took the weekend off, but with plenty of guilt. There were any number of things I could have been doing, should have been doing, but I was seduced by a sale on the "Chuck" Season 1 DVD, and couldn't quite pry myself away from my TV. I still got something (one, tiny thing) done, and I'm not behind - but I'm not ahead any more, either.
Much as I said in my response to ScienceWoman's poll on taking time off between semesters, and in the graduate school survival kit I gave to a friend, I refuse to stress out about my failure to get work done. I have no home life, and can make up for it by just working 10- to 15-hour weekdays. And even if I don't make it up, there's no point fretting about it now.
Still, I do need to develop a strategy for getting work done on days when I have no meetings or classes or any reason to leave the apartment. That's the downside to a studio apartment; it's impossible to have one productivity area set aside.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Trade-Offs on Time: Quantity vs. Flexibility
Whenever I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do, and begin to wonder why I'm in graduate school and if it's all worth it, I try to remind myself of some of the beneficial trade-offs that come with all that work.
A few weeks ago, in the throes of comps writing, I ran into an undergrad RA at Panera Bread. She was there on a date with her husband (yes, even the undergrads are getting married); I was there as an intermediate step between the public library and Borders Cafe. The undergrad, who is considering going to graduate school at some point, was put off by the seemingly never-ending stream of work we graduate students seem to do. And I can certainly understand that impression; it was a Saturday evening, and I'd done nothing that day but work, would do nothing that weekend but work. During the school year, when research requirements are met with teaching, classes, and an amazing quantity of colloquiua, I easily work 40 hours a week; some weeks, I easily top 60.
On the other hand, there is flexibility here too that often makes it seem worthwhile. Today the weather is an unseasonal 74 degrees - in the middle of November, we're talking record highs. In a "real" job, working 9-to-5, I wouldn't be set free from work until the sun was almost setting and the chill was rapidly returning. As a graduate student, I abruptly decided to take advantage of this weather in the middle of the day, embarking on a leisurely walk to the pedestrian mall downtown to shop for a birthday present. It took a bit over an hour, and it was not my lunch break. I don't know of a "real" job that would allow me to disappear for an hour in the middle of the afternoon because I felt like enjoying the unseasonal weather.
I'm not sure this freedom always makes up for the times when I work non-stop for an entire week. I've never counted the number of weekend days I work or the number of weekdays I slack off. At the moment, however, right after a brief sojourn in the sun, that freedom to decide when I work feels like it completely makes up for the excessive amounts I work.
A few weeks ago, in the throes of comps writing, I ran into an undergrad RA at Panera Bread. She was there on a date with her husband (yes, even the undergrads are getting married); I was there as an intermediate step between the public library and Borders Cafe. The undergrad, who is considering going to graduate school at some point, was put off by the seemingly never-ending stream of work we graduate students seem to do. And I can certainly understand that impression; it was a Saturday evening, and I'd done nothing that day but work, would do nothing that weekend but work. During the school year, when research requirements are met with teaching, classes, and an amazing quantity of colloquiua, I easily work 40 hours a week; some weeks, I easily top 60.
On the other hand, there is flexibility here too that often makes it seem worthwhile. Today the weather is an unseasonal 74 degrees - in the middle of November, we're talking record highs. In a "real" job, working 9-to-5, I wouldn't be set free from work until the sun was almost setting and the chill was rapidly returning. As a graduate student, I abruptly decided to take advantage of this weather in the middle of the day, embarking on a leisurely walk to the pedestrian mall downtown to shop for a birthday present. It took a bit over an hour, and it was not my lunch break. I don't know of a "real" job that would allow me to disappear for an hour in the middle of the afternoon because I felt like enjoying the unseasonal weather.
I'm not sure this freedom always makes up for the times when I work non-stop for an entire week. I've never counted the number of weekend days I work or the number of weekdays I slack off. At the moment, however, right after a brief sojourn in the sun, that freedom to decide when I work feels like it completely makes up for the excessive amounts I work.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
To TA or Not to TA
The current and recent economic situation, and specifically the funding climate of the past few years, is starting to put a pinch on my advisor, and thus on her four graduate students and professional research assistant. We are the in the hellish process of attempting to renew her main grant, which has been going on for over a year now. Naturally, they decided to shift from "3 rounds of submissions, and expect to go through all 3" to "2 rounds, and you'd better hope you make it in 1" just as we got back the reviews on round 2. So I was a bit thrown off by my advisor saying it might be better for me to RA than TA next semester. How exactly does that work?
It turns out this is just my advisor's attempt to be equitable across graduate students. It's very likely that this would be the last semester she can put us all on RA-ships, so if I want to have a semester I don't teach for the remainder of my graduate career, this might be it. I explained that I would much rather have all that money set aside for summer, when TA-ships are few and not enough to keep you out of debt. Besides, the department is woefully short of TAs once again.
I'm not concerned if I'm the only of her graduate students teaching; it was a frustrating pain in the neck the first time, when the grant proposal was being thrown together at the exact same time I was throwing together a lab course, but I've since achieved some level of balance. Often I feel like I need teaching requirements, to give me something to do besides the frustrating and sometimes pointless research. Of course, all this positive feeling might not do me any good if I'm assigned to teach stats. At least next semester is relatively light in the formal requirements...
It turns out this is just my advisor's attempt to be equitable across graduate students. It's very likely that this would be the last semester she can put us all on RA-ships, so if I want to have a semester I don't teach for the remainder of my graduate career, this might be it. I explained that I would much rather have all that money set aside for summer, when TA-ships are few and not enough to keep you out of debt. Besides, the department is woefully short of TAs once again.
I'm not concerned if I'm the only of her graduate students teaching; it was a frustrating pain in the neck the first time, when the grant proposal was being thrown together at the exact same time I was throwing together a lab course, but I've since achieved some level of balance. Often I feel like I need teaching requirements, to give me something to do besides the frustrating and sometimes pointless research. Of course, all this positive feeling might not do me any good if I'm assigned to teach stats. At least next semester is relatively light in the formal requirements...
Monday, October 6, 2008
What Am I Doing With My Weekends?
Recent posts on ScienceWomen about striving to find balance between work and the rest of life dovetail nicely with my own ponderings this past weekend, about what work I had achieved and whether it was sufficient.
My obsessive time-keeping experiment is over, so the weekends are no longer a push to get up to the theoretically correct hours of work done for the week. Instead I try to focus on accomplishments, starting each day with a short list of things to accomplish and trying to manage it despite whatever comes up during business hours. Still, there is a temptation to see weekends as "wasted" time: time that could be spent in the lab coding on computers that are suddenly free from people, or working on comps in chunks of time uninterrupted by visitors, meetings, and incoming email.
Overall, I have no hard concerns about the balance I am achieving in my life. If I am unbalanced, it's in favor of "life" not "work". This comes of having no ambition whatsoever, a "maybe I'll just join the Peace Corps" philosophy to what I'll do after graduation and what I'd do if I left the program. I have no stress over working on weekends because I know I'm spending a decent chunk of my weekdays on things unrelated to my research - either teaching, which my advisor is not going to see as particularly productive, or doing something completely unrelated to graduate school.
So I spent my weekends not working, and feeling like I should because I also spent some of the weekdays not working, which is an entirely different take on "I didn't get enough done this week!". I could just declare my "weekend" to be Thursday and Saturday - the typical days for getting no work done - but I think the five-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week schedule suits both my ability and my will for getting work done.
The only real question is whether I'm productive enough in my focused time slots. Tick tock; the semester's deadlines for data collection and comps defenses are rapidly approaching.
My obsessive time-keeping experiment is over, so the weekends are no longer a push to get up to the theoretically correct hours of work done for the week. Instead I try to focus on accomplishments, starting each day with a short list of things to accomplish and trying to manage it despite whatever comes up during business hours. Still, there is a temptation to see weekends as "wasted" time: time that could be spent in the lab coding on computers that are suddenly free from people, or working on comps in chunks of time uninterrupted by visitors, meetings, and incoming email.
Overall, I have no hard concerns about the balance I am achieving in my life. If I am unbalanced, it's in favor of "life" not "work". This comes of having no ambition whatsoever, a "maybe I'll just join the Peace Corps" philosophy to what I'll do after graduation and what I'd do if I left the program. I have no stress over working on weekends because I know I'm spending a decent chunk of my weekdays on things unrelated to my research - either teaching, which my advisor is not going to see as particularly productive, or doing something completely unrelated to graduate school.
So I spent my weekends not working, and feeling like I should because I also spent some of the weekdays not working, which is an entirely different take on "I didn't get enough done this week!". I could just declare my "weekend" to be Thursday and Saturday - the typical days for getting no work done - but I think the five-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week schedule suits both my ability and my will for getting work done.
The only real question is whether I'm productive enough in my focused time slots. Tick tock; the semester's deadlines for data collection and comps defenses are rapidly approaching.
Monday, August 18, 2008
New Year Career Crisis
Two weeks ago, I was not entirely successful in my struggles not to cry in the middle of a presentation directly relevant to the current section of my comps paper. For most of the past week, I have had an intense urge to either put my head down and cry onto my keyboard every time I have received the latest draft of four of the five papers I'm co-authoring. Diagnosis can go one of three ways:
1. Depression is rampant in our society, and every member of my immediate family (except maybe one sister) has been on medication for depression or manic depression at one point or another. I msyelf have a dubious diagnosis of depression hanging over from my freshman year of college. Perhaps it is time for professional help in regards to regulating neurochemicals.
2. Workaholicism also runs rampant in society and in my family. The pressure to get two abstracts submitted by Friday, two papers submitted before Advisor's impending delivery, help a student with her paper before that deadline, and get through a huge hurdle of my comps paper before Advisor's impending delivery, while attending two major multi-day conference/workshop sessions in two weeks and organizing the new TA orientation, has created an overabundance in stress. I spent too much of the past week and weekend working (i.e., pretty much all of it, aside from ~2 hours of exercise or leisure reading each day), and have no reserves left from my day at the beach in San Diego. I need to take a day away from campus, email, my work laptop, and reading in general.
3. What the fuck am I doing in graduate school? Progress is stalled on my comps because I have no interest in tackling the huge theoretical debate I have to tackle, but everyone else finds this interesting and worthwhile (it was the participant debate that set me off at the presentation). Endless drafts and post-review revisions and trying to write three papers on the same research is what academia is all about, so I should be thrilled to have so many studies worthy of submitting after the dearth of worthy reserach my first two years. Obviously I'm not cut out for this. Perhaps I should consider a brand new career path, maybe flipping burgers.
Deeper consideration suggests it can't just be #3. I'm giving myself a pass on my comps problems, because the huge theoretical debate is addressed in my comps only as a stumbling block: "if this take is correct, we can look at this cool manipulation; if not, well...". I would be totally into my comps if they would have just let me say #(*% the debate, it's not going to get resolved, and the evidence in favor the useful take is convincing enough to proceed. There are reasons I'm stuck with four drafts on the same idea (revisions to a publication I wasn't even part of are half of them) that are unlikely to repeat at any other point in my career (please!). There has been an ongoing career crisis in that direction for the past year or so, however.
Addressing the work overload is difficult. Thanks to comps, there's always something that needs to be done pressing on the back of my mind, so it's a matter of just ditching work rather than getting to a good stopping place. Re-evaluating assorted commitments means Friday, and probably Saturday, are now Grad Student Skip Days. My newly re-validated bus pass and I are taking off for anywhere not here. I am turning off the computers, ignoring the books, and either getting some sunshine or getting some expensive sugar.
Addressing the career crisis is less difficult. A very timely email has pointed me to a "Turning Points" career workshops just for graduate students. I will totally pay $60 for a six-week course on figuring out what I want to be when I grow up and how to be it. (Mild paranoia that three more people won't sign up to meet the 10-person minimum is adding to my stress load, however). And, I've enrolled in an entirely irrelevant education course I know nothing about (the title is probably Religion, Spirituality & Education, but abbreviations make it diffiuclt to tell) becuase I'd already maxed out tuition and fees anyway, so it's free!. Technically this adds to my workload, but the possibility of having non-optional chores with absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my research is well worth it.
And, this day is ending early. There is absolutely nothing I have to do that is better off being done today poorly than tomorrow (hopefully) rejuvenated.
1. Depression is rampant in our society, and every member of my immediate family (except maybe one sister) has been on medication for depression or manic depression at one point or another. I msyelf have a dubious diagnosis of depression hanging over from my freshman year of college. Perhaps it is time for professional help in regards to regulating neurochemicals.
2. Workaholicism also runs rampant in society and in my family. The pressure to get two abstracts submitted by Friday, two papers submitted before Advisor's impending delivery, help a student with her paper before that deadline, and get through a huge hurdle of my comps paper before Advisor's impending delivery, while attending two major multi-day conference/workshop sessions in two weeks and organizing the new TA orientation, has created an overabundance in stress. I spent too much of the past week and weekend working (i.e., pretty much all of it, aside from ~2 hours of exercise or leisure reading each day), and have no reserves left from my day at the beach in San Diego. I need to take a day away from campus, email, my work laptop, and reading in general.
3. What the fuck am I doing in graduate school? Progress is stalled on my comps because I have no interest in tackling the huge theoretical debate I have to tackle, but everyone else finds this interesting and worthwhile (it was the participant debate that set me off at the presentation). Endless drafts and post-review revisions and trying to write three papers on the same research is what academia is all about, so I should be thrilled to have so many studies worthy of submitting after the dearth of worthy reserach my first two years. Obviously I'm not cut out for this. Perhaps I should consider a brand new career path, maybe flipping burgers.
Deeper consideration suggests it can't just be #3. I'm giving myself a pass on my comps problems, because the huge theoretical debate is addressed in my comps only as a stumbling block: "if this take is correct, we can look at this cool manipulation; if not, well...". I would be totally into my comps if they would have just let me say #(*% the debate, it's not going to get resolved, and the evidence in favor the useful take is convincing enough to proceed. There are reasons I'm stuck with four drafts on the same idea (revisions to a publication I wasn't even part of are half of them) that are unlikely to repeat at any other point in my career (please!). There has been an ongoing career crisis in that direction for the past year or so, however.
Addressing the work overload is difficult. Thanks to comps, there's always something that needs to be done pressing on the back of my mind, so it's a matter of just ditching work rather than getting to a good stopping place. Re-evaluating assorted commitments means Friday, and probably Saturday, are now Grad Student Skip Days. My newly re-validated bus pass and I are taking off for anywhere not here. I am turning off the computers, ignoring the books, and either getting some sunshine or getting some expensive sugar.
Addressing the career crisis is less difficult. A very timely email has pointed me to a "Turning Points" career workshops just for graduate students. I will totally pay $60 for a six-week course on figuring out what I want to be when I grow up and how to be it. (Mild paranoia that three more people won't sign up to meet the 10-person minimum is adding to my stress load, however). And, I've enrolled in an entirely irrelevant education course I know nothing about (the title is probably Religion, Spirituality & Education, but abbreviations make it diffiuclt to tell) becuase I'd already maxed out tuition and fees anyway, so it's free!. Technically this adds to my workload, but the possibility of having non-optional chores with absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my research is well worth it.
And, this day is ending early. There is absolutely nothing I have to do that is better off being done today poorly than tomorrow (hopefully) rejuvenated.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Graduate School Is Not My Entire Life...I Spend More Time Sleeping
The second achievement of my obsessive time-keeping experiment was to demonstrate exactly how much time each week I have been dedicating to graduate school, specifically my research and my comps paper. This could alternatively be described as "not as much as I should" and "exactly as much as I feel like". The actual number is around 25 hours per week.
Keep in mind that this is time actually spent working on a task, not time spent in the lab but surfing the internet. Still, the number seems a bit sparse, given the usual informal expectations of graduate student time commitments; hence, "not as much as I should". I can come up with various excuses - no time-consuming data analyses to run, assorted stalls in attempts to spend time collecting data, no summer classes - that would explain how the summer has been an aberration. The reality, though, is that time spent is "exactly as much as I feel like".
If I don't feel like working in the evening, I don't work. It doesn't matter if I slept in, and only spent 4 hours of work on graduate school so far today. I have no deadlines; even meetings with my advisor have become "sign up if you want one". I have no significant other breathing down my neck to get on with it already, no parents demanding surcease from tuition payments. The only thing making sure work gets done is my own interest in getting it done.
This provides some excellent perspective. Sometimes it feels as if graduate school eats up my entire life; days where I stay at the office until 7:30, going home only to eat dinner at the desk while continuing to work (last Tuesday, I believe). The constant nag of assorted deadlines, imagined pressures, "I should be doing...", and doing work on the weekends makes it feel like the workload never ends. The workload might never end, and my subjective perceptions might be off, but I'm obviously very good at not spending excessive amounts of time on grad school.
Or, I'm obviously very good at not spending sufficient amounts of time on grad school...but that's all a matter of opinion. There is no exact number for time on task (our lab coordinator does have to keep such track of time, and the random conversations with undergraduates never seem to be made up elsewhere).
There is a lot to be said for working more efficiently, not longer. On the other hand, if I were truly a driven grad student, I wouldn't take that efficiency as a cue to take a break; I'd take it as a cue to excel and get the Nobel prize or get published in Science. Reflections on whether I will start spending more time on work come later.
Keep in mind that this is time actually spent working on a task, not time spent in the lab but surfing the internet. Still, the number seems a bit sparse, given the usual informal expectations of graduate student time commitments; hence, "not as much as I should". I can come up with various excuses - no time-consuming data analyses to run, assorted stalls in attempts to spend time collecting data, no summer classes - that would explain how the summer has been an aberration. The reality, though, is that time spent is "exactly as much as I feel like".
If I don't feel like working in the evening, I don't work. It doesn't matter if I slept in, and only spent 4 hours of work on graduate school so far today. I have no deadlines; even meetings with my advisor have become "sign up if you want one". I have no significant other breathing down my neck to get on with it already, no parents demanding surcease from tuition payments. The only thing making sure work gets done is my own interest in getting it done.
This provides some excellent perspective. Sometimes it feels as if graduate school eats up my entire life; days where I stay at the office until 7:30, going home only to eat dinner at the desk while continuing to work (last Tuesday, I believe). The constant nag of assorted deadlines, imagined pressures, "I should be doing...", and doing work on the weekends makes it feel like the workload never ends. The workload might never end, and my subjective perceptions might be off, but I'm obviously very good at not spending excessive amounts of time on grad school.
Or, I'm obviously very good at not spending sufficient amounts of time on grad school...but that's all a matter of opinion. There is no exact number for time on task (our lab coordinator does have to keep such track of time, and the random conversations with undergraduates never seem to be made up elsewhere).
There is a lot to be said for working more efficiently, not longer. On the other hand, if I were truly a driven grad student, I wouldn't take that efficiency as a cue to take a break; I'd take it as a cue to excel and get the Nobel prize or get published in Science. Reflections on whether I will start spending more time on work come later.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Job Flexibility
Graduate school has the reputation of being a time sinkhole: 40 to 80 hours a week spent on work despite a 20-hour stipend, Friday nights spent analyzing data rather than going out. To a certain extent, this is true, although I personally don't push my time much past 40 (of real work, not of browsing the Internet from my office). The upside to the time sinkhole is that it doesn't really matter when you work. My advisor doesn't care if I show up to the office at 9 a.m. or at all. There are offices out there that work 10/4, or take every other Friday off, or treat Saturdays as required work time. My schedule can do any of these, depending on my need. It took my advisor three days to notice that my computer clock was accidentally set 12 hours ahead; who notices whether a grad student sends emails at 3 in the morning, unless it's three in the morning tomorrow?
The upshot of this is that informing my advisor that I would unexpectedly be out of town and out of contact for a given weekend is more of a courtesy than a necessity. I'm not entirely sure it would be noticed if all emails went unanswered for a four-day weekend. Normally I'm not in a position to think about, let alone take advantage of, this flexibility. Impulsive trips to Cancun are not in the graduate student budget. At the moment, however, I have reasons to be thankful for this flexibility, as I plan to ditch research to attend my grandmother's memorial service.
My first semester as a TA, I received some advice about dealing with students who request extensions or make-up tests on the grounds of attending a grandparent's funeral. I can't remember exactly what the advice was - I think that it would be okay to request some proof of needing to attend a grandparent's funeral, but to accept a parent's funeral without question as if they're lying they're going to hell anyway. I never experienced the request from a teaching standpoint, although I did have to put up with any manner of other excuses. From a student standpoint, on the other hand, I got to make the request - my mother had a heart attack the last week of classes, so I missed an exam and a term paper deadline. I much appreciated the fact that the teacher didn't request proof. I even more appreciated that my advisor had no problems with me vanishing for a full four weeks; no one else in my family had that option.
Now again, I am the only member of my immediate family with an easy time attending this service. Three can't get out of work, the fourth is trying but has an even tighter budget than I do (yes, it's possible, especially if you have a house and two kids). Any time I think about leaving academia for the "real world", I think about how much more difficult it would be to drop everything; professors can cancel class, or call for guest lectures, but in a business there are bosses to appease and hourly wages to accrue. I have yet to decide whether this time sinkhole-flexibility trade-off would be worth it on a more permanent basis.
The upshot of this is that informing my advisor that I would unexpectedly be out of town and out of contact for a given weekend is more of a courtesy than a necessity. I'm not entirely sure it would be noticed if all emails went unanswered for a four-day weekend. Normally I'm not in a position to think about, let alone take advantage of, this flexibility. Impulsive trips to Cancun are not in the graduate student budget. At the moment, however, I have reasons to be thankful for this flexibility, as I plan to ditch research to attend my grandmother's memorial service.
My first semester as a TA, I received some advice about dealing with students who request extensions or make-up tests on the grounds of attending a grandparent's funeral. I can't remember exactly what the advice was - I think that it would be okay to request some proof of needing to attend a grandparent's funeral, but to accept a parent's funeral without question as if they're lying they're going to hell anyway. I never experienced the request from a teaching standpoint, although I did have to put up with any manner of other excuses. From a student standpoint, on the other hand, I got to make the request - my mother had a heart attack the last week of classes, so I missed an exam and a term paper deadline. I much appreciated the fact that the teacher didn't request proof. I even more appreciated that my advisor had no problems with me vanishing for a full four weeks; no one else in my family had that option.
Now again, I am the only member of my immediate family with an easy time attending this service. Three can't get out of work, the fourth is trying but has an even tighter budget than I do (yes, it's possible, especially if you have a house and two kids). Any time I think about leaving academia for the "real world", I think about how much more difficult it would be to drop everything; professors can cancel class, or call for guest lectures, but in a business there are bosses to appease and hourly wages to accrue. I have yet to decide whether this time sinkhole-flexibility trade-off would be worth it on a more permanent basis.
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