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[Edith]

Oh hey you guys guess what happened. So I applied to go back to uni for post-grad studies. Apparently due to system errors they didn't send me my offer to let me know I got in but I called them yesterday just to make absolutely triple fucking sure that I didn't get in and I fucking did. Classes start on Monday and I have to quit my job immediately and have no money ever again all while we are applying for new places to live. This is simultaneously the best and worst thing that could happen right now. I can't even get into the uni website to choose my classes because I won't get my offer until AFTER semester starts so I just have to show up to shit next week and explain repeatedly why I'm not on the student lists and shit.

Whoa I know I am really late chiming in on this but WAY TO GO JIMMY! Congrats!

[Barmymoo]

Yeah you're not allowed to get divorced before you're awarded your MA.

[Tom]

Why is that thing? 

[tania]

oh hey this is cool, i thought tomorrow was the day i was going to finally present my research project to my classmates like in a classroom environment but it turns out i'm actually presenting it conference style and every single criminology student and faculty member is being invited to watch and comment on my research, fuck yeah

clarification: this is sarcasm and i am fucking terrified, goodbye any sleep i planned on getting tonight

[KvP]

I don't think anybody actually shows up to such things. Unless they're providing free food.

[tania]

i really fucking hope there's no food

[KvP]

If you know anybody who hates you / secretly wants to see your naked body, count on those people showing up too.

[KvP]

Incidentally, remember to wear clothes!

[tania]

hopefully i'll just die instead

[Method of Madness]

i really fucking hope there's no food

If there's food, more people will show up, but if the food is good, they'll associate your presentation with the pleasant feeling of a full belly, and you'll get massive applause even if you tank.

(Not to say you'll tank, of course)

[Jimmy the Squid]

Guys I'm writing a psychology report for my Assessment and Intervention class, can you remind me whether I should be using "clients" or "client's" when I want it to be a possessive? I tried to get onto meebo but that is not happening on the uni computers.

[tania]

if you're referring to multiple clients, it's clients' with the apostrophe at the end. if it's singular, then client's.

[Method of Madness]

Possessives only lack apostrophes when they are pronouns (and pronouns never have them).  There may be exceptions to this, but I can't think of any.

[Joseph]

I'm supposed to be submitting the paper that contains the results of my research from this semester on Friday, but I haven't done any of the analyses or even a halfway decent literature review. I've requested an extension due to Circumstances, and though my supervisor and the research course coordinator were both cool with it, they need to talk to each other to make it happen and though I've even drafted a note for my supervisor to send making the extension request I haven't heard anything back and it's really worrying because I need need need an extra two weeks to do this. And this is assuming that I can actually manage to focus enough to be halfway productive with those couple weeks, because I've basically survived the last two only by ignoring my schoolwork almost entirely (well, this is an exaggeration; I've spent tons of time trying to do schoolwork, but I just end up staring at things for hours on end without much in the way of comprehension happening) and spending far too much money on books and food and far too much time hanging out with friends instead.

Whatever though, I achieved my one real remaining goal as a student. I have all the books out of the school library right now that they let you have out at once: 80!

[calenlass]

Possessives only lack apostrophes when they are pronouns (and pronouns never have them).  There may be exceptions to this, but I can't think of any.

You must be thinking of the elusive "me's".

[KvP]

I'm a poli sci major, and the wealth of online scholastic databases our library has access to allows me to undertake academic research from anywhere with an internet connection. I only really go to the actual library if I need a place to really focus. I should be going more often, but, eh.

[Barmymoo]

I'm amazed that anyone can possibly need 80 books out of a library. I'm amazed any library can have enough books to allow everyone to take out 80 books. I'm amazed a student would have space to store 80 books. 

[LTK]

80 books? Isn't that like one bookshelf? I think I can look into the university library from outside the building and see more than 80 books.

But 80 books is a lot to carry home with you. I was already struggling with the dozen research articles I needed for my midterm paper, nevermind actual books...

Speaking of that midterm paper, it seems I still haven't gotten any sort of grade on it. Hmm. I may need to bug my tutor about that.

[Johnny C]

I'm supposed to be submitting the paper that contains the results of my research from this semester on Friday, but I haven't done any of the analyses or even a halfway decent literature review. I've requested an extension due to Circumstances, and though my supervisor and the research course coordinator were both cool with it, they need to talk to each other to make it happen and though I've even drafted a note for my supervisor to send making the extension request I haven't heard anything back and it's really worrying because I need need need an extra two weeks to do this. And this is assuming that I can actually manage to focus enough to be halfway productive with those couple weeks, because I've basically survived the last two only by ignoring my schoolwork almost entirely (well, this is an exaggeration; I've spent tons of time trying to do schoolwork, but I just end up staring at things for hours on end without much in the way of comprehension happening) and spending far too much money on books and food and far too much time hanging out with friends instead.

Whatever though, I achieved my one real remaining goal as a student. I have all the books out of the school library right now that they let you have out at once: 80!

joseph – increasingly i find myself burned out by tuesday in a given week. i literally wake up on any given day and just don't want to do anything anymore. being productive is too exhausting. so i know how you feel. you've got this though. hopefully you get that two weeks.

[Joseph]

With regards to the books:

I didn't take them out all at once; the McGill library system allows you to renew each book an unlimited number of times so long as the book isn't requested. The books are in various places around my apartment, occupying a couple shelves and intertwined in a few different stacks. Not a single one of the books is for a class. The majority are books of poetry, or books on poetry, so I haven't tended to read them through cover to cover (though many of them I have); many others are essays where I was primarily interested in only a couple of the essays in the original book (I could post the list of books if someone wanted. I already did so on Facebook). I also just tend to get books out of the library in spurts -- having read something I'll do research on the author, the genre, the style or whatever, and search for books which it seems I might be interested in based on that.

May, my apartment is home to well over a thousand books, I would imagine. The 80 books from the library certainly isn't a problem. Also, the library has 2,590,743 print books right now, not counting journals.

Anyhow, I found out this afternoon that I got the extension I needed, and I think I should be able to make things work out. Hopefully. Just need to push through these next three weeks and I'll be done with my BSci. Plenty of time to come to terms with Problems and stuff then.

JC, let's talk some time.

[tania]

my presentation went well! except when i went three minutes overtime and toward the end asked my professor "am i overtime?" to which he responded "way overtime" and i yelled "SHIT!" really loud and my sudden panic sent my papers flying and by that point there were actually a lot of faculty members who had stopped by to watch and i think i really disappointed all of them with my cussing. i'm sorry, old criminologists, i'm sorry i cussed. but maybe i taught you something today. i hope i did. i said a lot of words in those 15 minutes and most of them were pretty fancy, like "resource lens" and "competency-based framework" and "community reintegration".

now i have a 30 page paper to write by (next) friday and i would like to start now but before then i have to pull yet another all-nighter tonight to make an exam review question sheet for my students which i guess i technically don't have to do but criminal law is fucking hard and most of them literally begged me to do this after i confirmed what a nightmare the final would be so i guess i really dug my own grave there but you know, you got to do what you got to do and then i can't even start this monster paper because i have to go to my supervisor's house for dinner because she invited me and i can't say no to anything she asks me to do because she is my supervisor and my degree is like 100% contingent on how much she likes me and she lives on an island and i have to take a boat to the island and i also have to bring her a pie and meet her kids and i haven't slept in like three or four or five days and what is my fucking life

[Lines]

That is what graduate school is like.

[tania]

You must be the most studenty student ever, Tania. I know I'm nowhere near as dedicated to anything.

i thought those were my qualities too when i first enrolled in this program but the more i examine the recurring themes in my most recent posts, the more i'm pretty sure i'm really just an incredible fucking moron who made a terrible, terrible life decision

[tania]

oh and also an asshole

[tania]

in my partial defense i have no money and am like actually starving 90% of the time i'm awake

[tania]

it's also a little bit because i really need to keep getting TA appointments so i can afford my tuition and rent, and a big part of whether or not i get reappointed is how my students evaluate me 

[squawk]

tania i just need you to know that i am both very proud of you and fearful for your life, but mostly just proud and impressed, and also that i am not going to grad school

[KvP]

You must be the most studenty student ever, Tania. I know I'm nowhere near as dedicated to anything.

i thought those were my qualities too when i first enrolled in this program but the more i examine the recurring themes in my most recent posts, the more i'm pretty sure i'm really just an incredible fucking moron who made a terrible, terrible life decision

I think it's telling that one of the more popular threads in SA's education forum is "Everyone else feels like an impostor too: The Grad School Bitching Thread"

You should stop by!

[Jimmy the Squid]

My supervisor doesn't make eye contact with me when I see them outside of our scheduled meetings.
Augh I hate you supervisor!

[Method of Madness]

Possessives only lack apostrophes when they are pronouns (and pronouns never have them).  There may be exceptions to this, but I can't think of any.

You must be thinking of the elusive "me's".

I'm fairly certain you meant...

[Jimmy the Squid]

Shit. I think I'm having an epiphany on what my hypothesis should be for my thesis...

Yeah definitely.

Thank you overly dramatic mordern classical music for making my cognitive processes more dynamic.

[Tom]

Yr not-sharing is killing me, Jimmy.

[Jimmy the Squid]

Using a multivariate model of correlation it is hypothesised that there is a strong positive relationship between the utilisation of mental skills (goal-setting, positive self-talk, concentration/focus, relaxation and imagery) and student engagement (lecture attendence, homework completion and academic performance) in higher education. It is further hypothesised that mental skills such as goal-setting, positive self-talk and concentration will have a significantly stronger positive correlation with student engagement than relaxation and imagery. Finally, it is hypothesised that a multivariate regression analysis will show that a high score on whatever the hell scale I am going to have to design to measure mental skills use will be a strong predictor of scores on the damn fucking jerk arse scale I'll have to think up for measuring student engagement.

[LTK]

Regarding positive self-talk, did you hear about that one study that experimentally measured performance on certain academic tasks? Basically they had one group of students tell themselves "I can do this." and the other group ask "Can I do this?" and turns out the latter group did better. Might also be useful.

[Jimmy the Squid]

If my research area had not been chosen for me by my supervisor (my course is fucked up) then I would have really liked to do something with priming and other kinds of manipulation but as it stands I've been given a very specific topic of "the relation between mental skills training and academic engagement in higher education" so there's not much room there.

[tania]

dude get some exploratory factor analysis all up in that variable construction

[Johnny C]

KILL ME

[calenlass]

hey me pick me i can be a test subject, jimmy, pick me


i have got no academic mental skill things at all, and yet here i am at uni

[Jimmy the Squid]

I can't, Tania! I don't understand anything you just said! My comprehension of statistical analyses is basically centred around correlation and regression. I basically can't wrap my head around anything else.

Besides I'm pretty sure the other people in my research group are just going to veto my idea anyway and do whatever the hell they agree on because they're a pack of cunts who have been not replying to any of my emails and when they do their tone is so fucking condescending I mean how dare I ask how they are going on a thing, being in a group project doesn't mean we should be working together clearly we are all in competition or some bullshit. Fuck I hate those wankers.

[calenlass]

and I haven't got my bachelor's yet at 22

Dude, I am 23 and have at least two more years minimum before I finish my degree, and that is including taking classes during summer semesters. Most of my friends are older and haven't finished either. Ain't no rule that says you have to be finished in 4 years or less, and most unis make it so that it's almost impossible to manage less than 5 years, anyway, so they can take your money.


Jimmy, you know what I would do? I would keep emailing them. Like, once every one or two days, asking for status updates, letting them know that you took care of this little thing and you got two paragraphs written for the report that they might want to look over at the next meeting, and oh by the way we should probably meet every week to work on this, guys! and hey I found this really interesting thing researching the other day that I thought I'd share...

Seriously, it would annoy them so much and they can't do anything about it because like they should really be throwing themselves into the project just as much! You will make them feel bad. Do ittttttt

[tania]

yeah you can jimmy! exploratory factor analysis is actually really super easy because the software pretty much does all the work for you. the basic concept is that you set up a bunch of questions that assess different behaviors or competencies or whatever and then the factor analysis does the work of identifying the latent variables for you. i could even like, okay i guess there's no way i can say this without sounding kind of patronizing (if it does i apologize and feel free to tell me to fuck off) but i took a grad level statistics course last year and did pretty well and i could like give you a run down on how it works because i really think it will not only reduce the amount of work you have to do for this thing but could actually even make it really exciting and fun and the overall results a lot more meaningful because it eliminates the bias that comes from doing confirmatory analyses with predefined variables. remind me in a couple of weeks though because i am like really insanely overwhelmed with papers and marking right now

[tania]

also yeah i dd my undergrad in four years but like, look at me, dude, look at my life and my posts, i'm a fucking mess. achieving relative academic success as an introverted social misfit asshole with a diseased mind fit only for research is really not much to be proud of

[Jimmy the Squid]

Any help you are willing to provide would be hugely appreciated (can I send homemade brownies by airmail? Is that a thing I am allowed to do?), Tania. Sometimes I'm feeling like everyone around me is some sort of statistical/mathematical genuis and I'm hitting a gazelle in the head with a rock and screaming at the sky when there's a storm.

[tania]

yeah i honestly wouldn't mind helping you out at all, i used to think i was terrible at statistics and pretty much was really terrible at anything even remotely math-related up until last year, but i honestly believe that about 99.9% of understanding anything is just having people who are willing to take the time to explain it to you in a way that makes sense and i was lucky enough to have a really excellent professor last year who really did explain things clearly and easily cos i ended up really getting statistics in a way i never thought possible before and now i actually really like it a lot and think it is super cool and interesting. plus as you get to the more complicated stuff, the software actually does most of the work for you so you really only need to understand the fundamental basics of how the analyses work and then like, how to interpret results, which once you get the hang of is actually about 1000x easier than the calculus bullshit they make you learn in high school. if you want i could email you an assignment i did on this last year just to give you a rough idea of what i mean by factor analysis and how it can help you with your research and then i'd be totally willing to help you out with whatever else you need but like, my only request is that it's gotta wait until after the 15th or 16th cos i am kind of dying a slow death right now, like i can actually feel my body dying

[Jimmy the Squid]

My thesis isn't due until October, totally wait until you are less deathy.

[tania]

a lot of the people in my program are older students too. about 50% or so are my age and entered the program after they finished their undergrad in 4 or 5 years but there's also a substantial other 50% who are not just in their late 20s but beyond even their 30s and 40s who at some point made the decision to go back to school and nobody regards them as out of place at all. a lot of fields are also placing an increasing emphasis on accepting applicants who actually have some kind of relevant practical experience in addition to simply good grades from their undergrad, so depending on your field it can even be an advantage to your application to take those years off to work or volunteer instead of just going straight back to school without having actually lived a non-school life of any kind. personally the older students in most of my classes tend to be my favourite contributors to discussions because they offer a lot of unique insight and expertise in a lot of areas and, frankly, just come off as a lot smarter than the younger students who often think they're hot shit despite not really knowing anything about the real world. making the effort to further your education is always something to be admired, no matter what your age.

[Tom]

As annoying as over-eager mature adults are, I'm actually happy for them.

[calenlass]

Jimmy

[tania]

following up on TA appointments and student evaluations, i came home this evening after another terrible day of work to find this email from the professor teaching the course i am TAing -

Hello, Tania:

    I thought you might like to know that you received excellent evaluations from your students (I had a chance to look at them very briefly).

     Thank you very much for your dedication and hard work!

     All the best,
     Simon

 

[KvP]

They all just wanted to see you naked, that's the only reason