Campus life

Hello all, I am back after a somewhat longer absence from this blog. Work (and – occasionally – life) caught up with me. I think you all know how that is.

In this post I would like to tell you a little bit about an opportunity to take on even more work – and why this is actually a worthwhile pursuit.

I have been a member of the Graduate Student Senate since 2008, and, after serving on several committees, I am currently membership officer. It is my task to get new graduate students involved in GSS – and you could be one of those new graduate students!

A staple-covered electricity pole says a lot about the spirit of a college town. Events posters were stapled and torn--many and many. All these rusty staples have memories of hard work and fun stories.

The girl walked in the lab. She had something in her mind, obviously. Her eyes browsed through several colleagues minding only their experiments. Finally her eyes stayed on a person. No one noticed the girl walked in--except him.

"Hey...I think we need to talk," she said.

"Yes?" He answered, looking into her eyes, wondering what her next word would be.

"You know, I have given it a lot of thoughts for the past week..."

"Um..." He listened, with full attention.

"Did you get straight A's when you were in graduate school?" I asked a prof.

This is a question drifting in my head since I received my first B on the transcript. I have been telling myself: As long as my faculty also had B's when they were in grad school, there lies hope and I should stop worrying and move on.

At least it was my wishful thinking.

"We don't care about your grades," the prof said, like he had rehearsed the answer to my question many times.

To all my fellow returning graduate students, welcome back!

Come to think of it, that's probably an inappropriate thing to say to most of you.  After all, if you're like me, you've been here pretty much all summer... and all year before that... and all summer before that... and, well, you get the idea.  The site of your graduate school inevitably becomes "home" after a while.

I recently participated in several orientation events. One of the highlights is to have current students share their thoughts on the "what I wish I had known" topic. Here I list the top three pieces of advice I believe I would have found the most valuable. I encourage every reader of the post to contribute their own advice and to share their own experiences.