Comments | bubblingbeebles: stanford

bubblingbeebles

stanford

Mar 14, 2012 21:26

I didn't expect the academic culture at stanford to be so obviously different than it is at CMU, but I was surprised. the open house presenters basically couldn't stop talking about how great it was to be just down the street from all the tech companies, and it showed in the types of research problems the faculty were interested in. not that there ( Read more... )

travel, introspection, academics, work, life

Comments 11

gregh1983 March 15 2012, 04:00:19 UTC

a lot of times when talking to people who are better researchers than I am, I have to keep reminding myself that it's not a competition to produce the best research.

I sometimes feel similarly, that everyone else has tons and tons of interesting ideas and I'm just plodding along in my own little toy box. Part of it may be that I'm pretty bad at reaching out and talking to other people to get those idea-swaps going. What feels better, though, is when people (on rare occasions) seek me out for that sort of thing; it's sort of like external validation :-) Has that happened to your satisfaction in your work?

left with 90% preference for CMU with 95% confidence

Ha ha, nice! Visits are great for pruning options you're not sure about.

bubblingbeebles March 15 2012, 15:27:16 UTC

Has that happened to your satisfaction in your work?

yeah, a couple times. the best one was when garth sent me an email being like "I'm thinking of funding more research in your area. Can you tell me what sort of work you see it leading to? Would it be X thing we talked about during our last meeting, or Y, or something else?"

it wasn't quite a "you are the expert in your particular type of research", but definitely "you are on track to be, if you choose to head that way."

Ha ha, nice! Visits are great for pruning options you're not sure about.

yep. the trip was wonderfully stress-free because of this.

California Weather and the bay area in general meshach March 15 2012, 07:03:38 UTC

(This is Jess Mink btw)

Yeah, it's weird out here. The climate still kind of bothers me, but it's gotten way better as I've found some wild places and gotten to know the local plants better. For me at least a big issue was how dead everything feels - the central valley is scary to me and the "golden hills" feel wrong. Turns out both are pretty recent additions to the California landscape - the central valley was mostly wet lands and the hills used to have perennial grasses, so while they'd turn brown in the summer they'd come back much much faster.

Dunno if that's what was bothering you at all, but as I've figured those things out I've gotten more okay with the landscape. Not saying you should come out here though if it feels wrong - and it clearly does for you.

Good job narrowing stuff down. I hope you really enjoy where ever you end up. :)

blk March 15 2012, 12:59:10 UTC

..."guess which city?" with three weather forecasts, one 70 and sunny, one 40 and rainy, one 30 and snowy...

Easy! That's Pittsburgh! It was 30 and snowy a month ago, 40 and rainy two weeks ago, and it's 70 and sunny this week! :)

bubblingbeebles March 15 2012, 15:24:10 UTC

haha :P

simrob March 15 2012, 17:10:07 UTC

*applause*

invlwhen March 15 2012, 14:13:22 UTC

This echoes my experience when I visited Stanford. Everyone was very much into the startup thing.

I too am a big fan of the vertical slice, heh.

(The comment has been removed)

bubblingbeebles March 20 2012, 22:54:07 UTC

whereas something like Pittsburgh it is significantly less obvious what there is to do so it needs more selling and marketing to convince people who don't already know that Pittsburgh has its charm.

could be. (see also my reply to ephermata below.) I guess I was also a little miffed by the way they said "we are right next door to industry! OBVIOUSLY that is great!" (seems like they'd have the same thing to say about bay area life too, though i don't remember as explicitly)... as though I didn't need them to present the bare facts about bay area's social culture and let me evaluate and decide for myself.

I wasn't actually watching all that closely to how cmu sold life in pittsburgh, either, so I shouldn't really compare the open houses in that way.

Given Stanford's background and placement, it shouldn't be that surprising. I guess this really shows why visit weekends are important: to get a good sense of the 'personality' of each program.Yep. And I've heard from people who also visited stanford that they got the same vibe, and from ( ... )