Summer is...
Summer is for spending all day outdoors, having picnics, playing at the park until the sun goes down, going to Dairy Queen, and passing out when you hit the pillow.
Weekends are for catching up on sleep.
I'm glad both of those applied to my day today.
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My friend in biomed engineering went on a tour to University of Minnesota. Today at lunch, we talked a lot about it. She had been under the same impression I was: going someplace else really wouldn't be that different. That was, until she went on this tour. She noticed many of the same things that I noticed last month: the facilities are great, there is a lot of cool research going on, there are lot of people excited about research, grad students can make a living on their stipends, etc.
We're unsure of what causes the difference, however. One comment my friend made stuck, though: "It's like they've given up," meaning the faculty in our department. It's obvious that there are some professors who don't respect the grad students and/or won't do anything to make the program attractive...and yet they complain because of the lack of grad students or that the students they have are not the quality that they want.
We're trying to get some grad student "social group" going so that people get out of their labs and interact more. Without some faculty support (beyond handing us cash to buy pizza, for which I am thankful), I'm skeptical that this will really do much to improve things. It just proves that misery loves company.
Weekends are for catching up on sleep.
I'm glad both of those applied to my day today.
-----
My friend in biomed engineering went on a tour to University of Minnesota. Today at lunch, we talked a lot about it. She had been under the same impression I was: going someplace else really wouldn't be that different. That was, until she went on this tour. She noticed many of the same things that I noticed last month: the facilities are great, there is a lot of cool research going on, there are lot of people excited about research, grad students can make a living on their stipends, etc.
We're unsure of what causes the difference, however. One comment my friend made stuck, though: "It's like they've given up," meaning the faculty in our department. It's obvious that there are some professors who don't respect the grad students and/or won't do anything to make the program attractive...and yet they complain because of the lack of grad students or that the students they have are not the quality that they want.
We're trying to get some grad student "social group" going so that people get out of their labs and interact more. Without some faculty support (beyond handing us cash to buy pizza, for which I am thankful), I'm skeptical that this will really do much to improve things. It just proves that misery loves company.