Thank you to Scicurious for hosting a carnival on this subject.
As a woman in engineering, I expected to feel impostor syndrome quite strongly, but so far, I just haven't. I can find myself in a room as the only woman, and I barely notice. Am I some magical super-confident oddity? Not really. But even if I don't think I'm the best at ___, I still feel like I deserve to be where I'm at most days.
As I've been reading some of the brilliant posts around the internet, it seems that authors largely find in one of two categories: "best students" who no longer are, or people making a large leap from their background.
I've talked before about my SciGrandmother, and my other family members in STEM fields both in and out of academia. Clearly, I'm not making a large leap away from my background. Even at GiantU, I have a family support network, in the form of an aunt who is a professor in a biological field. She helped me find a mentor in my own department to help me deal with some of the nonsense that is my advisor. Having someone who is not a formal chain-of-command mentor has been incredibly helpful. When my own advisor was editing at the rate of molasses, he was willing to read my manuscript and give me feedback about organization and writing style, even if he didn't know all of my science.
As far as the "best student" thing goes, I've never been the best student at everything, thanks to my sister. It's been a life-long competition, with me winning some subjects and her winning others. We're fairly close in age, and very even in ability. I've had years to get used to having someone who was better than me. I'm better at math, she's better at writing. I'm better at music, she's better at drawing. And eventually, I've gotten to the point where that's ok. The best days are when one of us can say to the other "It's so helpful having a sister who's better at ___ than I am".
Lastly, I'm often just too damn busy think "I need to do x, y, z, alpha..." to think I'm not good enough. If I can't do everything, it's probably because there's so much of it. Every so often, I lapse into thinking I'm incompetent because I haven't finished everything, and then I vent to a lab mate, and they remind me I'm working on 3+ projects.
So what advice can I offer others? Find and cultivate a support network of various stages and fields. Find a peer you can vent with, find a mentor who's not your advisor (admittedly, this can be very tricky), make friends in other departments and other groups. Find someone who will tell you that what you do is awesome (that isn't a family member). Have trouble reaching out to people? Join Twitter, read blogs, form a virtual support network. Seriously, the blogosphere is full of supportive people from all sorts of career stages, even if it's dominated by biologists.
Showing posts with label grad school life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grad school life. Show all posts
Friday, April 13, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Questions To Ask and Avoid on Grad School Visits
It's that time of year again, when prospective graduate students visit the programs they've applied to/ been accepted by. My experiences have always been with visits where you're accepted first and there are no rotations, so some of what I'm about to say may not apply to interview visits or departments with rotation programs. With one of the visit weekends at GiantU done, I've started putting together a list of questions in several categories.
Questions to ask grad students:
What do you think of the city?
You may have to read between the lines a bit, but it should be fairly clear whether or not we like living there. This also covers things like public transit, apartment locations, etc. Just let them talk for a bit and look interested. You'll find out a lot.
How often do you meet with your advisor?
This helps you gauge the management style fairly well, and graduate students are going to give you the real number, whereas the professor will give you the frequency they intend to meet.
How often do people in your group publish?
Again, this is a question to ask students instead of the professor for much the same reason as the meeting frequency.
How long did it take the most recent students in your group to graduate?
This is an important question to ask both students and professors. The students will give you a better view of the recent trend, where the professor is going to include every students they've ever had in their math.
What are the food options near campus like?
You may be in a town famous for amazing food, but if it's nowhere near campus, your lunch options may be limited.
What was your coursework like?
Different schools take drastically different approaches to their curriculum, and students will give you a better description than the course catalog.
Questions to ask professors:
Do students typically pick their own topic in your group, or are there specific projects to chose from? If the later, do you have specific projects available?
This can still be a hazy question, because at any given time, there are several proposals out for review, so the answer may change before you would matriculate. However, you will get a much more specific idea of what you could be doing, should you decide to join a group.
How long does it take a typical student to graduate in your lab?
Yes, this seems like a very reasonable question. However, in my experience, the answer you get is how long the professor thinks it should take. I suggest asking to compare to the answer to the grad student version, though. If there is a large discrepancy, be wary.
How many students are in your group?
Whether you know that you like a lot of attention and feedback, or you like being part of a larger group, it's worth knowing. Departmental websites are often woefully out of date in this category, so it's worth asking the professor.
When do you expect students to start working on research?
Self-explanatory. It's up to you if you think sooner is better or if you want to really focus on the course work.
What kind of jobs have recent graduates gone on to?
This can give an idea of the professor's track record in getting students into the kinds of positions you are ultimately interested in.
Questions NOT to ask grad students(and expect a useful answer):
What do you think of working for your professor/ the department?
We're trying to get you to come to our school. We're under orders to be enthusiastic and positive from the person who can actually make our lives hard, our graduate coordinator.
Do you like your research?
Just because I'm madly in love with studying amorphous states of matter doesn't mean you'll find it remotely interesting. If I'm tired of fatigue, you may still be interested in it. Of course, if the grad student in question is tired, drunk, or otherwise failing at impulse control, you can get very revealing answers, like "I only put up with my advisor because I love my research" (I swear this hasn't happened... yet).
Questions NOT to ask professors (and expect a useful answer):
What kind of research does your group do?
In groups that do many different things, this tells you nothing about what positions might be open, especially if they're starting new research areas. In more established and focused groups, this tells the professor you haven't done your homework before talking to them.
What kind of support programs are available for students?
The professors are usually not very well up to speed on these unless a student has talked to them about it. This is a question for the graduate coordinator/administrators.
What do you think of the city?
The way professors interface with a city is not the same as you will in graduate school. They will have better parking, live in different areas and probably not go to the same bars.
How many hours a week do you expect students to work?
They will either give a wishy-washy "it's about the amount of work" answer, or adjust their number depending on whether they want to impress you or avoid scaring you off.
What questions would you add to these categories?
Questions to ask grad students:
What do you think of the city?
You may have to read between the lines a bit, but it should be fairly clear whether or not we like living there. This also covers things like public transit, apartment locations, etc. Just let them talk for a bit and look interested. You'll find out a lot.
How often do you meet with your advisor?
This helps you gauge the management style fairly well, and graduate students are going to give you the real number, whereas the professor will give you the frequency they intend to meet.
How often do people in your group publish?
Again, this is a question to ask students instead of the professor for much the same reason as the meeting frequency.
How long did it take the most recent students in your group to graduate?
This is an important question to ask both students and professors. The students will give you a better view of the recent trend, where the professor is going to include every students they've ever had in their math.
What are the food options near campus like?
You may be in a town famous for amazing food, but if it's nowhere near campus, your lunch options may be limited.
What was your coursework like?
Different schools take drastically different approaches to their curriculum, and students will give you a better description than the course catalog.
Questions to ask professors:
Do students typically pick their own topic in your group, or are there specific projects to chose from? If the later, do you have specific projects available?
This can still be a hazy question, because at any given time, there are several proposals out for review, so the answer may change before you would matriculate. However, you will get a much more specific idea of what you could be doing, should you decide to join a group.
How long does it take a typical student to graduate in your lab?
Yes, this seems like a very reasonable question. However, in my experience, the answer you get is how long the professor thinks it should take. I suggest asking to compare to the answer to the grad student version, though. If there is a large discrepancy, be wary.
How many students are in your group?
Whether you know that you like a lot of attention and feedback, or you like being part of a larger group, it's worth knowing. Departmental websites are often woefully out of date in this category, so it's worth asking the professor.
When do you expect students to start working on research?
Self-explanatory. It's up to you if you think sooner is better or if you want to really focus on the course work.
What kind of jobs have recent graduates gone on to?
This can give an idea of the professor's track record in getting students into the kinds of positions you are ultimately interested in.
Questions NOT to ask grad students(and expect a useful answer):
What do you think of working for your professor/ the department?
We're trying to get you to come to our school. We're under orders to be enthusiastic and positive from the person who can actually make our lives hard, our graduate coordinator.
Do you like your research?
Just because I'm madly in love with studying amorphous states of matter doesn't mean you'll find it remotely interesting. If I'm tired of fatigue, you may still be interested in it. Of course, if the grad student in question is tired, drunk, or otherwise failing at impulse control, you can get very revealing answers, like "I only put up with my advisor because I love my research" (I swear this hasn't happened... yet).
Questions NOT to ask professors (and expect a useful answer):
What kind of research does your group do?
In groups that do many different things, this tells you nothing about what positions might be open, especially if they're starting new research areas. In more established and focused groups, this tells the professor you haven't done your homework before talking to them.
What kind of support programs are available for students?
The professors are usually not very well up to speed on these unless a student has talked to them about it. This is a question for the graduate coordinator/administrators.
What do you think of the city?
The way professors interface with a city is not the same as you will in graduate school. They will have better parking, live in different areas and probably not go to the same bars.
How many hours a week do you expect students to work?
They will either give a wishy-washy "it's about the amount of work" answer, or adjust their number depending on whether they want to impress you or avoid scaring you off.
What questions would you add to these categories?
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
(Eleven) months of blogging
Joining in on the end-of-the-year meme, despite not having blogged for a full year yet...
January: Lurking, some commenting.
February: After spending months reading, lurking, and periodically commenting on a number of blogs, I'm finally caving to the urge to create my own.
March: You use a Gantt chart to help plan your wedding.
April: The next month isn't looking promising for advisorial feedback: his committee duties apparently require vast amount of reading, two (2) students are defending within the next month, the project funding roughly 1/3 of the group has an annual review, and he submitted a semi-speculative abstract months ago to a conference in May, and the student doing most of that work got stuck out of the country due to visa issues. (holy run-on sentence, Batman!)
May: At GiantU, there is a common complaint from undergraduate engineering majors that none of their classes cover some of the more practical things employers expect them to know, like Matlab coding.
June: As mentioned in my wedding post, I mentioned Mr.ME and I are having a steampunk wedding.
July: I should have the wedding picture post up soon, but there's some picture editing to be done first.
August: Project A data frenzy is done, which means Project B data frenzy is now in full swing.
September: The engineering school here at GiantU runs a training session for new TAs, and I have to say that I was surprised by how well done it was.
October: So this is a topic that was mentioned on EngineerBlogs back in February, but in preparing for my first ever lecture, I've been very thankful for my rather extensive bookshelf.
November: It has not been the most productive week of my life (other than knitting, which I learned this weekend).
December: This semester has been my first real teaching experience, though by no means my first grading experience.
So what have I learned? As soon as I get busy, my blogging drops to almost nothing, unless I'm super-stressed. I've learned that I'm not crazy, my advisor is, and that I really do love teaching, even when I find individual students frustrating. Now, to keep it going another 11 months...
January: Lurking, some commenting.
February: After spending months reading, lurking, and periodically commenting on a number of blogs, I'm finally caving to the urge to create my own.
March: You use a Gantt chart to help plan your wedding.
April: The next month isn't looking promising for advisorial feedback: his committee duties apparently require vast amount of reading, two (2) students are defending within the next month, the project funding roughly 1/3 of the group has an annual review, and he submitted a semi-speculative abstract months ago to a conference in May, and the student doing most of that work got stuck out of the country due to visa issues. (holy run-on sentence, Batman!)
May: At GiantU, there is a common complaint from undergraduate engineering majors that none of their classes cover some of the more practical things employers expect them to know, like Matlab coding.
June: As mentioned in my wedding post, I mentioned Mr.ME and I are having a steampunk wedding.
July: I should have the wedding picture post up soon, but there's some picture editing to be done first.
August: Project A data frenzy is done, which means Project B data frenzy is now in full swing.
September: The engineering school here at GiantU runs a training session for new TAs, and I have to say that I was surprised by how well done it was.
October: So this is a topic that was mentioned on EngineerBlogs back in February, but in preparing for my first ever lecture, I've been very thankful for my rather extensive bookshelf.
November: It has not been the most productive week of my life (other than knitting, which I learned this weekend).
December: This semester has been my first real teaching experience, though by no means my first grading experience.
So what have I learned? As soon as I get busy, my blogging drops to almost nothing, unless I'm super-stressed. I've learned that I'm not crazy, my advisor is, and that I really do love teaching, even when I find individual students frustrating. Now, to keep it going another 11 months...
Thursday, September 1, 2011
TA Training
The engineering school here at GiantU runs a training session for new TAs, and I have to say that I was surprised by how well done it was. While as a lab TA, there was a lot I'm not going to have to think about, it was still interesting and dynamic, and I may have actually learned something. Things I think they did really well:
1)Session changeups: we weren't just sitting in a room being talked at the entire time
2)Peer feedback: we weren't just getting critiqued by some "teaching expert", we were giving each other feedback
3) Variable session sizes: You interacted with a wider group of people, and were able to do activities like mini-lectures and still have time for good feedback discussions
4) Coffee supplies: grad students aren't usually morning people, so ample coffee supplies were appreciated
The less good:
1) For the love of bladders, BATHROOM BREAKS!
2) Since this is the engineering session, please stop using humanities examples: we aren't going to ask students about their favorite quotation from a thermodynamics book
3) Break up Discussion and Lab sessions
4) The handout mountain: many of the session instructions were given in the powerpoint, in the powerpoint print out, and as a separate sheet
I'm still nervous about teaching a lab, particularly because I have the first section of the week, where we get to sort out all the bugs, but I'm super excited to spend time in a *lab* instead of on a computer.
Also, preliminary oral exam next week... aaaaah!!!
1)Session changeups: we weren't just sitting in a room being talked at the entire time
2)Peer feedback: we weren't just getting critiqued by some "teaching expert", we were giving each other feedback
3) Variable session sizes: You interacted with a wider group of people, and were able to do activities like mini-lectures and still have time for good feedback discussions
4) Coffee supplies: grad students aren't usually morning people, so ample coffee supplies were appreciated
The less good:
1) For the love of bladders, BATHROOM BREAKS!
2) Since this is the engineering session, please stop using humanities examples: we aren't going to ask students about their favorite quotation from a thermodynamics book
3) Break up Discussion and Lab sessions
4) The handout mountain: many of the session instructions were given in the powerpoint, in the powerpoint print out, and as a separate sheet
I'm still nervous about teaching a lab, particularly because I have the first section of the week, where we get to sort out all the bugs, but I'm super excited to spend time in a *lab* instead of on a computer.
Also, preliminary oral exam next week... aaaaah!!!
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
100 posts down...
Huzzah! I've made it to my 100th post! Only took me 6 months (exactly!). I'm still finding my "blogging voice", but I'm amazed I've made it this far.
There have been discussion of serious(ish) science. We've talked about wedding planning, alternative uses for cosmetic remover, stress, stress, STEMmoms and grandmothers, and occasionally, the perpetual internet favorite, kittens.
What's next?
I have no idea, I'm still making it up as I go.
There have been discussion of serious(ish) science. We've talked about wedding planning, alternative uses for cosmetic remover, stress, stress, STEMmoms and grandmothers, and occasionally, the perpetual internet favorite, kittens.
What's next?
I have no idea, I'm still making it up as I go.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
From Academia, Looking Out
Unlike a very large number of graduate student, I'm not in a relationship with a fellow graduate student or with someone in a completely unrelated field. I am, in fact, engaged to a fellow engineer who is working in industry. Unlike many of my straight-into-graduate school peers, I have a pretty solid impression of the daily life of an entry level engineer. It's very interesting to compare the disparities between our routines and responsibilities, and compare what we actually are doing to what we were told as undergraduates.
For clarity, Mr.ME is a component release engineer for a large manufacturing corporation. He's very much on the practical side of things. I, on the other hand, do computation, making me very unpractical.
Mr. ME has at least one meeting daily. I have 1-2 meetings weekly. However, his meetings often involve decision-making. My meetings often involve my advisor going of on odd tangents (recent example: the history of VW Beetle, the properties of polar bear hair, and bicycling trips in central Illinois).
Mr. ME is responsible for quality control decisions that can shut down entire plants. He has a specific list of widgets he is directly responsible for, and a boss who gives him specific things to work on. Most days, my responsibilities are very unclear. My real responsibility is to myself, to make progress that I am happy with, in the absence of clear advisories directives. This is one of this biggest areas in which we find discrepancies from what "everyone" says things will be like. Going into industry, you're told to expect very little real responsibility and lots of drudge work and spread sheets. Going into graduate school, I was told that I would be working long hours on research, and on whatever my advisor told me to do.
Graduate students are assumed to be poorly paid, with horrible benefits and worse hours. While the hours have held true, Mr. ME's first job here paid less than I made, required him to go into work at 5:30AM every other Saturday, and had no benefits. That being said, his new job is much better on both fronts.
Looking out at industry, I sometimes long for the coherent since of direction, and real deadlines and responsibilities. On bad days, I remember about being paid time-and-a-half for overtime hours... On the other hand, I'm learning vast amounts, and I have much more flexibility in my hours and work. It's often up to me to find things to do, which can be problematic when key equipment is broken (like the login server...). I can be more confident in my decision to do graduate school, because I have a clearer view of the most probable alternative. There's still days when I question it all, but most of the time, I'm glad I'm here.
For clarity, Mr.ME is a component release engineer for a large manufacturing corporation. He's very much on the practical side of things. I, on the other hand, do computation, making me very unpractical.
Mr. ME has at least one meeting daily. I have 1-2 meetings weekly. However, his meetings often involve decision-making. My meetings often involve my advisor going of on odd tangents (recent example: the history of VW Beetle, the properties of polar bear hair, and bicycling trips in central Illinois).
Mr. ME is responsible for quality control decisions that can shut down entire plants. He has a specific list of widgets he is directly responsible for, and a boss who gives him specific things to work on. Most days, my responsibilities are very unclear. My real responsibility is to myself, to make progress that I am happy with, in the absence of clear advisories directives. This is one of this biggest areas in which we find discrepancies from what "everyone" says things will be like. Going into industry, you're told to expect very little real responsibility and lots of drudge work and spread sheets. Going into graduate school, I was told that I would be working long hours on research, and on whatever my advisor told me to do.
Graduate students are assumed to be poorly paid, with horrible benefits and worse hours. While the hours have held true, Mr. ME's first job here paid less than I made, required him to go into work at 5:30AM every other Saturday, and had no benefits. That being said, his new job is much better on both fronts.
Looking out at industry, I sometimes long for the coherent since of direction, and real deadlines and responsibilities. On bad days, I remember about being paid time-and-a-half for overtime hours... On the other hand, I'm learning vast amounts, and I have much more flexibility in my hours and work. It's often up to me to find things to do, which can be problematic when key equipment is broken (like the login server...). I can be more confident in my decision to do graduate school, because I have a clearer view of the most probable alternative. There's still days when I question it all, but most of the time, I'm glad I'm here.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Working Hours
As the semester has ended, and I no longer have an 8am class, I find my arrival time in the morning drifting later, even though I'm still waking up at the same time. Part of this is wedding preparations, since I spend some of my time in the morning taking care of details. The other part is related to advice I was given by my corporate internship supervisor: "If you can't control what time you leave in the evening, you can at least control what time you show up in the morning".
My internship was in the non-destructive evaluation group, which meant more often than not, around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, someone would show up and drop a problem on his desk. At this particular office, the typical working hours were 7:30 to 4, so this meant people would stop by on their way out the door, often with some sort of request for "can you have this done by ___?". Since no one ever seemed to have problems first thing in the morning, my supervisor had decided that rather than constantly working significant amounts of overtime, he would simply shift his schedule and show up late.
My current advisor is *not* a morning person. Consequently, I usually don't see him until 2 at earliest, and more often, not until 5... at which point he'll have a list of things he wants done by the "end of the day". So in an effort to have more control over how many hours I'm in the office, I will be experimenting with taking that advice.
Do your boss/advisor's hours affect when you work?
My internship was in the non-destructive evaluation group, which meant more often than not, around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, someone would show up and drop a problem on his desk. At this particular office, the typical working hours were 7:30 to 4, so this meant people would stop by on their way out the door, often with some sort of request for "can you have this done by ___?". Since no one ever seemed to have problems first thing in the morning, my supervisor had decided that rather than constantly working significant amounts of overtime, he would simply shift his schedule and show up late.
My current advisor is *not* a morning person. Consequently, I usually don't see him until 2 at earliest, and more often, not until 5... at which point he'll have a list of things he wants done by the "end of the day". So in an effort to have more control over how many hours I'm in the office, I will be experimenting with taking that advice.
Do your boss/advisor's hours affect when you work?
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