Facebook
The lesson for today:
Get on Facebook!Why? Well, first you have the fact that it helps you communicate with people be letting you find them, and letting them find you. Groups also help you organize people, and events allow you to get them together for something or another.
In closing, Facebook is nearly essential to getting a life outside of classes, and helps a lot with cooperative work within them.
(They really ought to pay me for this one.)
GPAs, Graduation Audits, and Transcripts, Oh My!
It is of utmost importance that you keep yourself current on your grades.This may come in the form of keeping a tally spreadsheet of your grades during the semester, or just checking up on your transcripts and grad audit at the end of the semester.
Come to think of it, if you transfer, make sure that you deliver the transcript by hand in a sealed envelope. Most colleges can't be trusted to send your transcript in a timely fashion if you're "just" transferring credits.
A good link for calculating GPAs:
GPA InstructionsThis is based on the 4 point system. Other GPA calculation methods for the other systems (3 point, 4.3 point, etc.) are out there.
A Sneak Peek at Sunday
Jobs
First of all, sorry if the last few posts have been a bit short; I'm
doing research for a big post coming up on Sunday. On what? Stay tuned
to find out.
Now, without any further ado, a bit of advice.
If at all possible, have a job while you're an undergrad.
And no, I'm not talking about when you're home from school, although
that helps, too. No, have a job during the semester. Most decent
college towns have retail stores and other such places that allow
students to make a little money while they go about their studies. This
is a good things for a few reasons:
1. You'll have money.
2. You'll have something else on your resumé.
3. Many places like to see that kind of character shown by working
while taking classes.
4. You'll be popular. (Why? See 1 and 3.)
Many institutions offer work-study programs, co-ops, and on-campus
jobs, where you may be able to either get credits for working, or at
least get someplace quiet to get paid for doing homework. Just don't
expect to be paid much above minimum wage.
On Meetings
Another simple lesson on meetings:
Go to as many meetings, talks, and seminars as you possibly can.Not only do meetings and the like allow for you to see what else is currently being worked on in your field, but they allow you to see what's going on outside your field as well. Another good thing is that meetings allow you to meet others working in your field, with whom you may wind up consulting, or maybe even collaborating. Overall, meetings and the like are the best way not only to see what your colleauges are doing, but also to collaborate with them on new projects that will make you all very excited.
Papers
A brief little bit of advice here:
Whenever you get an idea, write it up.Yeah, sure you're protecting a theoretically valuable piece of intellectual property that one day might become a great invention. Heck, you might even be solving the problem of finding a Grand Unified Theory. That's not the point. The point is, if you have an idea, it's ripe fodder for writing, and therefore, for research, and for sharing with the rest of the scientific community.
Papers are the food of academia, and without published papers, no one would know what was going on. Papers also look excellent on your resume/CV, and are relatively easy to write.
Now before you start thinking that you can't do this, consider this: the average journal paper is 2-5 pages long and revolves mainly around the description of an experiment or theory. Don't you talk at least that much about, say, Physics in a single day? More, right? Well, then you can write a paper.
However, you won't always have the time to write a full paper about every single thing that you come up with, so here's the next best thing: write an abstract. Do as much of the scratchwork for any math that you need to do on some paper, and store that away somewhere safe, them write up a title, as descriptive as possible (i.e. Magnetostrictive Properties of METGLAS Series Amorphous Alloy Films), and put your name and affiliation under it (i.e. Peter Marchetto, Department of Physics, Ramapo College of New Jersey). Now the abstract. In one paragraph, write up as much of the concept as you need to remember what it is at any point in the future.
There you have it. Like a tray of ice cubes in the freezer waiting for a party, you now have an idea in the holding tank, waiting for that next call for papers that will ask you to submit your abstract... Or, more to the point, you have a reminder for the next time you get around to looking for a project.
Life
A life. It seems exclusive to being a good student, but not necessarily.
Life: have one.That's the lesson for today.
You can learn a lot from good movies.
Real Genius is probably the most realistic interpretation of college life in physics into a movie I've ever seen. The characters socialize, do wacky things in their spare time, and take advantage of opportunities to be spontaneous and celebrate. In short, they are whole people.
In the same way, students must be whole people, not merely book-learned scholars who never see the light of day.
Now, how to do this with the work load that professors give you is a problem. If you want to succeed in courses, you have to be diligent from day one. Add to this the fact that every professor ever existent "knows" that their course is the only one that you really have to pay attention to and do the work for, and you have a problem.
Something has to give.
In this case, it's you. You must develop a plan whereby you can create the spare time that you can have.
Some things that work:
- slacking in the beginning of the semester, when you can still make up the work
- taking basket weaving (easy) courses to buffer yourself
- a good bit of self-discipline to study really hard, but only when you really need to
Some things that don't work:
- all-nighters which just eventually make you sick
- drinking too much (either to relieve stress and/or at parties)
- ignoring a hard course for an easier one
- slacking later in the semester, when it's impossible to make up large bits of work
Overall, it is possible to juggle and balance your coursework and your life, but it takes constant evaluation of what you're willing to do. That being said, if an opportunity avails itself to do something wonderful (like a midnight hack on the statue in the middle of campus) don't miss out. Just remember that you'll have to pay for your fun.
The Food Chain
Say you're in college. You don't necessarily know, as a freshman, or even as an undergrad at all, what the real food chain that you're at the bottom of is. Let me give you some idea of what you've gotten yourself into.
You see, the collegiate, or university, food chain is actually quite large, and, contrary to popular belief, you should really know all of it.
Let's start at the bottom. Here you have undergrads. Freshmen are usually considered the lowest of the low due to their lack of seniority, but they have other things going for them. More on that later. Next up you have high school seniors who are interning or who are pre-frosh, there to check out the school. (This repeats itself higher up, but I'll get to that.) From there, you have grad students, of two kinds: acute and chronic. The acute ones usually only have the disease for 2-3 years, maximum, and are called Masters students (probably because they're still masters of their own fates), while the chronic cases can stay on sometimes in excess of 10 years. These are the Ph. D. students.
A side note here on undergraduate and graduate research. Research will increase your rank in this hierarchy. However, someone doing research is probably just as overworked as about ten of you, so the following rules apply:
- Do not pester.
- Approach only with something they'd like (like good experimental data, or a new shiny graphing calculator).
- Do NOT, on pain of DEATH, inquire how their most recent talk, thesis, paper, or other presentation or article is going. This adds to the feeling of depression that follows most research in its beginning stages by showing that there is, as always, ever so much more to do than what you've already done.
For more on the plight of the grad student, go to
PHD comics. Next, post-docs. These are people who are continuing their research after having earned their Ph. D. Poor saps... think of them as the recovering form of the chronic grad student.
Now come the professors. They come in a number of flavors, as I'm certain you've noticed from those hard-earned name tags adorning their various office doors and web pages. First of all, you have the teaching assistant, who's normally just a grad student masquerading as a professor. Some of them do a darned good job of it, too, but they have little to no authority outside the classroom. Next come the assistant professors. They're hard working because they have to be in order to get tenure. Once they obtain this, they generally move on to associate professor. Full professors come after this, followed by [insert honorary title here] professors, research professors, and [insert name of major donor here] professors, who generally have powers in that order.
An aside here on two other kinds of professors: the little known adjuncts and emeriti. Adjunct professors are un-tenured, and are either visiting professors (another type about equivalent to associate professor) or are people who are taking time off from another job to teach (read this as "glorified assistant professor or TA"). A professor emeritus, on the other hand, is the best type that you can become friends with, as they are usually very kind to students, seeking to maintain a link to youth despite retirement, and do not demand much from you. Above all else, they usually have a great deal of informal influence and power, and a dread awesome capability to navigate the administrative and bureaucratic labyrinth that is your school. Make friends with one today!
For more on the species of professors, visit
Wikipedia: Professor. Next up are those most put-upon of all academic parties, the department heads. These are normally full or honored professors who are given the administrative equivalent of a very very large hot tuber for however long they can keep it between their shoulder blades. Be nice to them, and they will be nice to you. A professor who is a department head (or chair) is probably not sleeping or eating properly, and is probably missing the best parts of their job (read that teaching or research, dependent on the professor in question). Another name for this particular species is "convener".
Now we come to the dean of a school or college. If you're in a college, then you're probably in a "school" or "program". You may even be in more than one, such as an honors program and the school of liberal arts and sciences. If you be, instead, in a university, chances are you are a member instead of a particular college, or more, i.e. the John Maser Smith Engineering College and the Jane Positron Jones College of Sciences. Either way, you have a dean, and this dean is who the department heads report to. In turn, there is a council of deans from the different programs, schools, or colleges, who all talk to each other about mid-level academic/administrative affairs.
Now here comes the hard part. From here on up, our organization chart develops different branches. The Provost takes care of academics from the top down, and the Registrar makes certain (under supervision of the Provost) that courses and grades run smoothly. Institutional Advancement usually has a deceptively named head, such as a "vice-president" who can be looked to for funds to do things that they can use to promote the school (particularly useful when you want to interact with the community outside your institution). The Bursar takes care of funds (and in Terry Pratchett's books, makes certain that the head of the institution is at least somewhat clueless as to what's going on... real life parallels should be discussed in your comments).
Finally, in the next-to-last tier of the now purely administrative parts, we have the President and his bosses. The President makes clear the course of the institution and more or less acts as the figurehead for the administration. His or her bosses, however, control the real power: the Board of Trustees. In some more progressive institutions, the Board may have a member at large among the student population; a student Trustee. Note the Capitalization. Trustees are not to be trifled with, as by mere whim alone they can turn on or off the funding of any department or project that the institution elects to undertake. If you can't avoid talking to them (and thereby taking direct responsibility for what they do to the people above and below you on the food chain), take an aggressive approach and either dazzle them with brilliance or baffle them with... Well, dazzle them.
The lesson for today:
We call them institutions because the inmates are running the asylum.
