November 2008 Archives

As shown by the many links and sources on the syllabus for this topic there are lots of places one can find humor specifically about or for graduate students. One thing that I noticed is that much of the humor is making fun or graduate students or parts of graduate student life. I particularly enjoyed reading the top ten lists on the Graduate Student Humor Page ( http://www-personal.umich.edu/~danhorn/gradhumor.html). The article on correlation and causation (http://www.obereed.net/hh/correlation.html) was also entertaining, particularly because one of my classes this semester has discussed how correlation does not equal causation so I could directly equate the article to what I am doing in my classes. Another site I liked looking at for humor about graduate students was PhD Comics (http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/aboutcomics.html) or Piled Higher and Deeper. These comics were particularly fun because I had seen some of them before, but had never actually been to the webpage and did not realize how many comics there actually were.

 

For my self when I am in the mood for something humorous I usually do not look for something that is directly applicable to graduate students. Instead I will often reread some of my favorite fantasy books that also have comic parts or just reread the funny parts of some of my favorite books. For instance, when I want to read a book that has some comedy I will often reread Patricia C. Wrede's The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Reading books is probably the way I find humor the most often although I occasionally read comics in newspapers and now I will probably start going and looking at PhD comics more often as well.

This blog posting is about how to flourish in graduate school. Here I comment on some of the suggestions from the readings for the course and explain how a few of their tips work or do not work for me.

Two suggestions that I found interesting from How to be a Good Graduate Student  (http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html) were "Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas is very useful" and "One of the keys to balancing your life is to develop a schedule that's more or less consistent." These are two things that I try to do. I am starting to keep of notebook with all of my research activities so I can go back and check what I have done in the past and what I ideas I might have thought of. This is particularly useful when I have to talk with other people about my research because it means I have a reference that I can look at to help me remember exactly what I have been doing.

As for the second suggestion of developing a schedule that is also something I try to do. I know from experience that if I want to get much work done I need to start soon after I get up. If I do not start first thing in the morning I am likely to procrastinate if the tasks I am trying to accomplish are things that do not need to be done immediately. In order to deal with this I try to make myself get up and start work by around 8:00 every weekday so that I will get more work done than if I wait and work later in the day. In addition, I frequently try to go to the IST building and do work there because I am less likely to get distracted if I am not in my own home. Even on weekends I will frequently go into my office for at least a little while so that I will make sure and get some work done.

From Alice Domurat Dreger's graduate school survival (http://www.alicedreger.com/grad_school_survival.html) Two connected tips that I found were "Enjoy yourself in grad school: sleep late when you can, take naps, eat good food and enjoy great conversations with smart people..." and "...but don't laze around." The two are obviously connected. I can understand the don't laze around part of the tips and the enjoy yourself but some of the other parts do not work for me. Other people may have different ways of working and thus they may be more useful for them but for me I know sleeping late and taking naps are not good ideas. I can sleep late occasionally but generally I get more work done if I get up early and start working. Likewise naps cause me to get less work done because I have more trouble sleeping and thus am not able to get up as early and start working the next morning. So those are two specific tips that I like but that I can only do when I am certain that I do not have much to do at the time because otherwise they will impair my ability to get work done and will encourage me to laze about which is contrary to the second part of the tip.

This blog posting is about clubs and organizations that I might join. One club that I am thinking about joining is the White Course Book Club. They are a club that meets in White Course once a month, usually the last Wednesday of the month, to discuss two books a fiction and a non-fiction book. I have been meaning to join the club for several months but unfortunately every time they have had a meeting I have had something else I was supposed to be doing at the same. I was especially sorry about not being able to make the meeting this last month as the fiction book they read for October was Persuasion by Jane Austen. This is a book that I have read and like a lot so I would have enjoyed discussing it with other people. I hope that this month I will have time to read at least one of the books (either the fiction or the non-fiction book) and that I will be able to attend the meeting at the end of November. Joining this club would help me meet other people who live near me and would also encourage me to read more. I have always loved to read and was part of a book club in high school as well as briefly at a bookstore near the college I went to as an undergraduate. Both of these clubs introduced me to new books that I enjoyed but would most likely not have read otherwise. Joining the book club at White Course will likewise introduce me to new books and authors that I will enjoy reading and will allow me to share my love of reading.

Another club or organization I am considering joining is the fencing club at Penn State. I was part of a fencing club as an undergraduate and enjoyed that a lot. So, I am thinking I might want to continue with that. This would also give me a way of getting more exercise. I hope to attend one of the meetings of the fencing club soon, maybe next week, so that I can decide if I want to join. One thing I need to check is how competitive it is. I am primarily interested in fencing for fun and for exercise and am not really interested in competing. So, that is another club I am considering joining.

Both the clubs mentioned above would give me other thing to concentrate on outside of my academic life and would play different roles in my life as a graduate students, one would encourage me to continue reading for fun and the other give me a way to get more exercise.