Work/Life Balance

[chatnoire]

I work 40+ hours a week, I’m taking 6 credits (one is a seminar, one is a studio) - I already get up at 5:30 in the morning, and I cut off all my hair so it takes less time to get ready. I leave the house at 7. That means I have 45 minutes to spend on work in the morning. I get home at 9 on M, T, W, and by that time, I’m too exhausted to sit

Comments

[ufo8mykat]

This is the first post in this community with which I have really identified. I work until I am sick, keep working, and don't stop until I have a breakdown.

The best advice I ever got was, "Do B+ work and see how it turns out."

If you can't ace everything, rebalance so that you can do B work, but still get it all done. There's a sting of mediocrity, but don't fall prey to it; you'll be better off overall.

[bunnyhug]

If you are going to push yourself that hard, what's the point of doing it all to get Bs?

[ufo8mykat]

You don't have to be the best, just your best. You don't have to be the best at everything to get something out of your hard work. And sometimes, when you allow yourself a little give and take, you can surprise yourself with how much better you are doing. Often, you will end up with As anyway.

[delenda_est]

I would agree with this, because I think a lot of grad students are big overachievers. I used to feel tons and tons of pressure to read everything very thoroughly, because if it's assigned, I have to do it, right? Cutting yourself some slack and letting yourself skim some stuff or cut corners is really the only way to maintain sanity.

[katherinemorrow]

I completely agree with you.

[prof_k]

At the end of the day when you hit the market, no one realy looks at your GPA. As long as your GPA keeps you eligible (and this is B or B+, depending) then that is what matters.

[prof_k]

I had a friend who one attended U of Chicago for graduate school. There, every semester, the graduate students were ranked and funding was handed out acordingly. He said that in the 2 years he was there, there were no department social events, no casual conversations in the grad student lounge about each others' research, no sharing of papers with each other. People always looked at each other like the enemy, someone out to steal their ideas and their funding. He left with an MA and went elsewhere but seemsed really scared by the experience. To me, the best part of graduate school was the friends I made and the conversations and the sharing of ideas. We all had our funding as long as we kept a 3.0 or higher. We weren't competing with each other. We didn't get ranked. All 25 of us shared a big office and we almost all went out to happy hour once a week. This atmosphere is far more conducive to colleagiality which is one of the most important aspects of a faculty position. It makes me wonder why people are so surprised that some

[vlion]

I talked to a guy for a job after I got my BS, and he informed me that a 3.1 GPA was just not good enough, and that was functionally the sole metric his company uses for interviews. His company writes minor architectural software.

Needless to say, I was a little bitter afterward that I spent the time in school to get a rounded eduation instead of being gung-ho anal about my computer science classes.

[prof_k]

It is differnt when you are going into the academic job market. Most jobs don't ask for a copy of your transcript even let alone what your GPA is. And schools that do ask for a transcript often only do so after you have already interviewed simply to make certain you actually hold a doctorate.

[vlion]

Thank you for the information.

The ironic thing was, if he had looked through my resume and cover letter in any more depth than my GPA, he would have seen a litany of projects, papers and successes. But, well, what-do-you-know.

[prof_k]

For jobs out in the "real world" often times they look for little things to separate candidates and GPA is, I hear, a factor. I academia, your letterhead and that of your references counts for far more than any GPA. We don't list it on our CVs or anywhere in the application. It would just be...weird.

[max_ambiguity]

Funny, my department asks for transcripts in step one. But what we are looking for, particularly with young candidates, is what kinds of classes they have taken, not the GPA. We want to see if the candidates have the background in film that we require, or whether they just took a handful of classes for a certificate program.

[poorpiers]

Most jobs don't ask for a copy of your transcript

That must depend on field--when I was applying for jobs, every single school that interviewed me asked for a transcript beforehand.

[bunnyhug]

I suppose it depends on what end of the day. To get a good postdoc grades are important. And a good postdoc makes it easier to get a good position.

[prof_k]

The only thing one needs to be wary of with this strategy is that while many programs only require a 3.0 for eligibility, they require a 3.5 GPA for candidacy.

But I agree. It isn't the end of the world if you don't get As all the time. A person who excelled at coursework may be a bad dissertator. What matters is what you produce out of you coursework (publications, conference papers, dissertation) in the end. You can be a "B" student and still be brilliant and write a brilliant dissertation.