14 posts tagged “grad school”

For better or worse, I now have a Master's of Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Also, please take note of the new theme: that little chick at the top is kind of like me, emerging after two rough semesters and looking forward to sunnier days.

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Yesterday I shelled out $70 for some graduation robes and cap, only the latter of which I get to keep. If I don't immediately give up on school, I'll use them at the ceremony in May that marks my graduation from UC Berkeley with a master's degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Ironically, my existence in grad school has only served to confirm in my mind that I am not a master in anything...

I'm SO excited to be a part of my professor's transportation experiment tomorrow that involves using GPS phones as traffic sensors! In this case it's the Nokia N95, a phone that everyone participating in the experiment has a chance to win, whether s/he is a driver or a staff member of some sort. It's a pretty big experiment that involves 100 drivers over the course of a whole day, and I'm going to be a phone operator. I totally thought I was going to be a volunteer, until last week when I found out I was getting paid even more than the drivers! What's crazy is that my compensation is like peanuts compared to the overall cost of the experiment, which I don't think I'm at liberty to disclose. The whole affair runs from early morning until night, so I need to go to bed soon. Why? I slept two hours last night. Why? This time, believe it or not, it's NOT because of poor time management, which is a bit mind-boggling. I just have THAT much work to do. I'm sure other grad students can relate. At Berkeley I've learned that you should deal with never being able to get 100% of everything done, but maybe that's a general rule you can apply to life after the age of 20, or maybe just life as a graduate student at a competitive university. Have a great weekend everyone!

I used to look forward to the first day of school. In grad school, I've found myself wishing that I had another week of break. This is my schedule:

Weekly Obligations

Remember how crazy last semester got? That was when I was just taking 12 credits. This semester, I have 12 credits of graduate-level courses and a 12-hr./week GSI appointment. I have been listening to songs like this to keep me sane:

Once in Royal David’s City

Sufjan Stevens

I have also been drinking more tea instead of coffee; a portion of my evenings consists of me sipping cups of this and this.

I also hope to keep my stress level low by exercising regularly. Accordingly, over winter break I bought these sweet kicks:

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I've never had real running shoes before, but after running in them I've discovered that they offer great stability and my back and shins don't ache as they did with my old shoes. NB 826, you have introduced me to a novel concept: running doesn't have to be painful. How glorious.

That's it for now. Oh wait. I'm also trying to keep track of where my money goes. If you don't mind giving your credit card and bank information to a third party, the folks at www.mint.com do quite a good job of categorizing and summarizing your expenses in graphical form. So you can actually quantify how much you spend on food, health, travel, etc. without meticulously saving all your receipts and entering spreadsheet hell. Thanks to Chris for the tip.

Here's to hoping I have a better semester than the last. Also, if you want to watch me graduate in May, contact me. The ceremony is May 24th at 9 am. I didn't participate in the graduation ceremonies when I finished my undergrad at The University of Iowa, but I have since decided it's something I should do, out of respect for myself and my family and friends. But this time, it's unfortunate that I'm in California and everyone I know who could possibly want to come is in Iowa!

I just read this today, from Penelope Trunk's blog: What's the right timing for graduate school?

Timing for other professional degrees: Slow
The cost of going to graduate school when you have no clear plan for afterward is even higher outside of business school. If you get a job in, say, public policy, and then decide you don’t want to go into that field, that degree makes you look unfocused, at best. You might think that more degrees are just more qualifications, but in fact, when you spend years getting a degree in a field where there are no jobs that interest you, you put a red flag up to employers that either you don’t know what you want or you don’t want them.

If possible, you would do best to leave frivolous graduate degrees off your resume so you can look a bit more focused.

Take time to work in the field you’re considering, to make sure that’s what you want to do. Have patience with yourself to learn a bit about who you are. It’s nearly impossible to make a decision as a student about what you’d want to do when you’re not a student. That’s the value of taking time to work in between college and grad school.

"That's the value of taking time to work in between college and grad school."

Oh boy. That's definitely something I didn't do. I went straight from college at The University of Iowa to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. One yearlong massive out-of-state tuition bill coming your way.

Keep in mind that Penelope Trunk got fired from Yahoo. Despite this, the excerpt above made me wonder. I'll never know what would good things would have happened to me had I not gone to grad school, so I can only talk about the advantages of having gone to Berkeley.

1. I've been pushed harder than I ever have before, and I survived. For better or worse, I know that I can handle it.

2. I will be a graduate student instructor (GSI) for an undergraduate course in the spring semester that teaches students MATLAB. I do not know how to program much in MATLAB. Therefore, I will be forced to learn it. Not being formally taught MATLAB is one of my qualms with the undergraduate engineering program at Iowa; as an undergraduate, the programming language taught in the core curriculum (a course required of all engineers, regardless of whether you are an ME, a CE, an EE, etc.) was C/C++. Also, I learned more programming techniques from my laboratory job than I did in class.

3. I've expanded my network from friends and coworkers at The University of Iowa and the Midwest to the University of California at Berkeley. Networks are good. But on the other hand, I would have just been developing different relationships with different people in a different location had I not gone to grad school, so there's not a clear opportunity cost here.

4. Being on the West Coast has allowed me to visit and experience so many places, including but not limited to Santa Cruz, Mountain View, San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, and of course, Berkeley. I've had a great time.

5. Why am I in grad school? I've been learning. As an advantage, I've learned a lot. However, I could have learned a lot at a job as well.

I've had so much happen to me in the last semester that I am only beginning to absorb and reflect on it all, while I am still on break. But because I am set to graduate in the spring, it's also about time to look for a job. Recently I have been entertaining the idea of working in LA and will soon have an interview set up in mid-January with the company when I return to Berkeley from break. However, I honestly have no clue what I want to do, where I would like to work, or what would be best for my personal life and for my career. I'm merely choosing something. If you know me, I have a history of having no clue. When I don't know, I make arbitrary or uninformed decisions, some of which end up resulting in good things. Yet some people would consider me to be accomplished. I don't think that I will be accomplished until I am truly happy with my life, and that is a fine pursuit that may well take a lifetime. Hopefully it doesn't, but at least I'll die happy, right?

In the next three weeks I have to:

- finish two projects (which include papers and presentations)
- start and finish one project (along with a paper and presentation as well)
- make a poster
- study for and do well on a midterm
- finish 2 of 7 parts on a homework assignment
- start and finish two homework assignments

...scwooed?

I've basically cut out everything in my life save for eating, sleeping, showering, and answering emails, and I am still doing homework, working on projects, going to class, or studying from morning to night. It's stressful, but I'm in a program with good professors (with the exception of one) and really friendly, really supportive students so it's been alright. I may not post for awhile, but you can pretty much assume what I'm up to and be correct: working.

In no particular order, here are the grad schools to which I have been accepted.  I have no clue where I should decide to go.  A little help?

A) Berkeley:
- the program: MS in CEE, Civil Systems Program
- aid: $9,063 ($5,161 for being a graduate student instructor and a $3,902 stipend) for the spring semester
- tuition rate: $23,828.50
- location: I've never been here (Berkeley, CA)
- timeline: I have to decide by ???  I should probably check on this.

B) Carnegie Mellon:
- the program: MS in Architecture--Sustainable Design
- aid: $8,900 ($4450 per semester)
- tuition rate: $30,900
- location: I've never been here (Pittsburgh, PA)
- timeline: I have to decide by May 7th, 2007.

C) CO-Boulder:
- the program: MS in CEAE, Building Systems Program
- aid: pending
- tuition rate: $23,040
- location: I've never been here, either! (Boulder, CO)
- timeline: I have to decide by June 15, 2007.

x) Iowa:
- Out of the question, given my other acceptances...

x) Stanford:
- I haven't heard from you yet.  You're pretty much out of the question too.

Rejected from admission to the University of Minnesota's Architecture--MS in Sustainable Design program.

At least it'll make my final decision easier, because I already have three schools from which to choose.  Here's the status of my applications:

Yes, we want you:

University of CO at Boulder: Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering--Building Systems Program
The University of Iowa: Civil and Environmental Engineering Program
UC Berkeley: Civil and Environmental Engineering--Civil Systems Program

You weren't good enough:

University of Minnesota: Architecture--Sustainable Design

We haven't made up our minds yet:

Stanford
Carnegie Mellon

Before I run off to class, so far I've been accepted at (in the order of acceptance):

The University of Iowa!
University of Colorado at Boulder!
U.C. Berkeley!

Stay tuned for a post about yummy waffles.