If Your Thinking About Considering Maybe Going to Grad School

I clicked on a linked ad in gmail, How I got Into the Stanford Psychology, I didn’t look through the whole site, I’m not sure why the site is paying Google for ads, but I thought this piece of advice was interesting:

In order to gain research experience, I Emailed a few professors in nearby universities (I was living in Manhattan at the time), explaining my situation and asking if I could work/volunteer at their labs. One of them agreed quite readily. I volunteered there, working with one of his post-docs, for over 6 months (8-15 hours every week). That professor ended up writing me a recommendation.

Having considered grad school in several subjects since getting my undergrad degree, this seems like a great idea if you want to do something drastically different than what you have experience in. I’m not sure my reader will find this useful, but maybe someone will stumble on the blog who does.

Mr Moore Would Take the Money

I read this and my first thought was Mr. Moore, high school biology. Given some more thought I realized he wasn’t a bad teacher as much as a bad person. He told my class he only taught because he wanted summer’s off, he was notorious for only remembering the names of pretty girls and for taking every opportunity to flex. On the plus side, he fried up our squid after we disected them and made some nice calamari.

The worst teachers I had were definitely in college. I remember getting a D on a paper in which I was asked to write my opinion of Shakespeare. I wrote a well structured paper about how I didn’t care for Shakespeare because I couldn’t relate to the characters. I was told that I was wrong, Bill’s characters our easy to relate to. The paper was bathed in red, every mark telling me that my opinion was wrong. You might think I’m just being bitter, but I’m not really mad about it, I learned to only regurgitate the prof’s opinion’s and breazed my way to an A. I do have to give her credit for introducing me to Kurt Vonnegut.

There was the sociology of deviant behavior professor who only taught from her own book and needed a TA to change the overheads for her (one day he was gone, class couldn’t start until a suitable replacement was found). To her, apparently sociology of deviant behavior meant sociology of prostitution. Man did she love whores.

Chuck Israel taught me about how all music besides jazz and showtunes (?) is complete shit. He was also too lazy to write new test questions. Bad teaching + close minded might get him the prize. As I understand it, he is an exceptional jazz basist.

I guess if I’m going to talk shit about the bad teachers I should give some love to all the good ones, something for another day.

Know a Good Place for Thai?

Those of you following the WFS story, you know I’m bouncing the working life for grad school in the fall, mostly so I can act superior to people who only have an undergraduate degree. I’ve also been talking a big game about doing some traveling before classes start in the fall. I’m not sure if that part has made it into the blog, but it’s the truth.

And I mention this because the weather has been nice the last few days, not nice like nice weather were you live, nice like San Diego nice. The excess of vitamin D this caused got me thinking. I have to pay rent in my dumpy apartment in July, and if I did leave the country, I’d be out some cold cash for the month. Amidst all this perfect weather, I started thinking it would be a little silly to pay rent for a dumpy apartment a half block from the beach in July and not take advantage of what that offers.

On the other hand, I’d really like to see what real Thai pad thai tastes like. Having to make tough decisions like this make me smile like a nut case. If anyone reads this, advice is welcome.

A Personal Announcement

As you should know, working is for suckers. In an attempt at a more sucker free life, I’m going to go to grad school next fall. Statistics at San Diego State. I’m sure lots of questions are running through your mind. I’ll try and answer.

1. Why statistics? I hope to perform statistical analysis proving that working is for suckers. This will greatly improve the life of non-suckers worldwide.
2. Why am I reading this blog? Most likely you clicked some sort of random blog or next blog link on another wordpress site. Thanks for stopping by.
3. Why didn’t Brett tell me this personally? If I was right on 2, then I don’t know you. If I do know you, I’m testing to see which of my friends read my blog (I’m guessing two). You win! Expect a nice non-denominational holiday present next December*.
4. San Diego State? I wanted to stay in San Diego, limiting my choices to SDSU and UCSD. UCSD required letters of recommendation, and that just seemed like too much work. I’m pathetic.

Only four questions? Really? Well, if you think of more (or you want your nice non-denominational holiday present), leave a comment.

*Nice is a relative term, I’ll be a poor college student again next December.