First Day of School!

[Good Intentions]

Oh yeah, honours was way harder than a masters for me. The step up from undergraduate is a killer. But you get used to it and start to look down on undergraduates toot sweet.

[G.C.R]

Dude,I looked down on undergraduates when I was one. #annoyingmaturestudent

[jess]

I have decided that I am staying up tonight and working (clearly very hard at the moment) until I finish a.) a section I am writing for a collaborative lit review that was supposed to be done earlier this week, b.) the cover letter, formatting and assorted stuff for a manuscript I am ready to submit, and c.) a first draft of an abstract due soon for the conference I try to go to every year (next Nov it's in Toronto). Expect some cracked out posts in about 3-4 hours...

[jess]

Success on the first thing, which ended up being more work than I expected, almost success on the second one (need to check with my mentor about a couple of very minor things first), and about half done on the third, but I think it's time to call it a... morning.

[alex]

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty productive night there - get some rest!

[G.C.R]

Wow, go Jess! That is Dedication.

[silentsigh89]

I'm about halfway through my last semester as an undergrad and I am already in and funded at my second choice grad school, waiting to hear back from my top choice. I am going to be a TA and I am going to be moving far away and getting a new apartment and starting a new life and it will be fantastic.

BUT.

Knowing all of that makes it nearly impossible for me to give a shit about my current work! I had to finish up a lot of junk this semester because I picked up a minor last minute. I am taking, for example, an intro-level American History class. We are studying Ben Franklin and Paul Revere and we have to turn in note cards and outlines! I just can't make myself sit down and do it! I've NEVER been this bad!

[Bernard]

Have you tried the list method? Sometimes when nothing else works, that will break the back of procrastibation (oh dear, typo) for me. Take the first task and break it down into super tiny chunks, and cross each one off as you do it. I often put down 'make list' as the first item so I can start crossing stuff off right away. In dire cases, I will draw little boxes next to each item and fill them in with colored pens or stamps. I have not yet had to resort to giving myself a gold star sticker for 'find pen' and 'make list' but that day may yet come.

[ellaguru]

One of my final course requirements just kind of ... evaporated. The software we were supposed to use turns out to be a little bit buggy, so we got a lot of other options instead. I am a little sad, because I would have learned something from the assignment, but now the alternatives are pretty much: (a) learn an unfamiliar and buggy piece of software in order to create a new piece of work during the same period when I also have final assignments to do in three other courses as well, or (b) just talk for five minutes about an assignment I already got an A on.

Makes crunch time that much less crunchy, at least.

[jess]

Any of the rest of you researchers use Mendeley? It's a newish website/app that organizes and backs up references for you, both on the web and on your computer, and also has a sharing/social networking component. Just joined, and I figured I'd see if any lptjers are on there, or if any of you would be interested in an invite. Seems useful—I'm planning on making a couple of groups, one for my lab's output (to be publicly visible) and a private one for all the articles we use and share.

Also, I think I might go to Stats Camp this summer to learn some advanced techniques that I want to use for my thesis—it's a 5 day session with an assortment of grad students and professionals, taught by some of the top stats people in my field. Stats camp! Oh man. So excited. That might be the nerdiest thing I've ever done, and that's saying a lot.

[guavacris]

I'm so acting like the grouchy old person, but I'm finishing my undergrad after dropping out six years ago and everything is cool until someone says something about being in elementary school on 9/11 or when they keep treating GW as a Daily Show character instead of an actual politician that you were pissed at for 8 years. It's kinda bizarre and I keep alternating b/w feeling like an intruder and like I'm having fun messing around with my time machine. I do love these guys for saying things like "Shakespeare is the Michael Bay of his time" though.

In other news, working and going to school full time is balls.

[Aglaya]

I'm all for getting your degree whenever you can, but we used to have a regular customer who was a non-traditional student who came in to study all the time.  But he seemed to think that going back to college in his late 40s/early 50s meant he got another crack at being in his early 20s.  He would constantly try to be buddies with all my employees, printing out and showing them every single stupid email forward he thought was funny, retelling all the jokes he heard when he was at school, he was horrible and annoying, and I actually had to train some of my employees how to get away from him (because people in the service sector often don't feel like they can smile, nod, and WALK AWAY from a customer who is wasting their time).  He never quite crossed the line enough that I could ask him to leave, but eventually started studying somewhere else.
Of course, his replacement has showed up lately, but she focuses more on trying to be buddies with the college students who are there to study and mostly leaves my employees alone, so until someone complains about her, I don't care so much.

[Bernard]

In other news, working and going to school full time is balls.

Utter, sweaty balls.

[Good Intentions]

In other news, working and going to school full time is balls.

Utter, sweaty balls.

Uh-huh.

[fishjim]

Thought y'all would get a kick out of this profile of Berkeley's own Gurdjief figure, Mark Hawthorne, a.k.a. Hate Man. It ran in our free weekly, the East Bay Express. Best story on him I've seen.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/hate-man/Content?oid=2491949&storyPage=1

Berkeley was the first campus I visited when looking at colleges, and all I remember from the tour was seeing Hate Man on top of the newspaper racks at the top of Telegraph Avenue, smoking Virginia Slims, fitting his slip, and shouting "Fuck you!" to a preacher dude whose main gripe, theologically, was that God was no longer addressed in the proper Aramaic ("Yeshua"). I was sold.

Got to write about Hawthorne myself for the campus newspaper in '91 when he was the first in line to try out the Student Union's new virtual reality machines. The only line I remember came when Hate Man pulled down the virtual reality helmet viewer and raised his raygun:

"Pterodactyl!" he squawked.

[clare]

That was a pretty interesting article jim. Thanks for posting it.

[elpollodiablo]

Starting to wonder that my insistence on finishing every bit of assigned reading no matter how irrelevant or perfunctorily appended is perhaps not worth the sense of superiority and haughty self-satisfaction it allows.

[hannah]

School doesn't start for me for another month—woo, quarter-system—but I'm trying to get stuff done, anyhow. By which I mean, I'm trying to finish a paper that was technically due in June. My mom arrives in Chicago on Wednesday for a five-day visit. What are the chances I can get this thing done before she gets here?

[elpollodiablo]

You can do it, hh!

I've had a pretty good first day. Both of my sections of first year composition went well, one very, the other reasonably. Have a seminar in Renaissance lit starting at 4. Getting the potential leprosy on my hand checked out at 3. Drinks at 7, assuming no leprosy.

[hannah]

What else are you taking, epd?

Fingers crossed it ain't leprosy.

[Chet]

I start back at School in little over three weeks. Most of you will know that things didn't exactly go to plan last year, so I'll be repeating first year. Obviously I'm a little apprehensive, but I feel like I'm much healthier mentally now, and I have a great support network within the uni, and a bunch of good friends. Also, I feel like I'm much more self aware now after what I experienced, so hopefully if things start going wrong i'll be able to seek out help sooner. I know that last year my line of thinking involved "eh, it's just the change of environment and the excitement that's getting to me and this will pass". Either way, I'm looking foward to it, cautiously.

[elpollodiablo]

Enjoy yourself to the greatest extent possible this time, Chet!

[Chet]

Will do, thanks! I'm not in halls this year either, which will help mentally and concentration wise, I think.

[Chet]

Also apparently my school is the 38th best in THE WORLD

http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html

[Bernard]

UC Berkeley better than Oxford? What are these rankings based on?