July 28 (I know that's not today's date)

I finally got four scientist to agree on a two-hour meeting for my prelim defense. It's scheduled for July 28. According to department guidelines I need to send them the written proposal by July 14. Which is effectively July 12 since I'm driving to Colorado with J-man and his kids July 13-14.

I have just under a month and a half to write the long-overdue research proposal for my PhD (I was supposed to do it last year, but my dad's illness came first). It seems like a long time and too soon all at once. I'm supposed to use an atmospheric model that I still don't have running reliably. Before I send my proposal to the committee I need to do some test runs to gauge how much computer time I'll need, which may in part determine which experiments I conduct. Can't if the model's not running right.

Regardless, I am excited to get this out of the way. It's the second big hurdle towards a PhD (first was the qualifying exam). Once I pass the prelim, all I have left is research and final defense. I don't even have to take any more classes (though I probably will because I'm me and there are lots of interesting classes at colleges).

What are the rites of passage on the way to a PhD in your department?

Next Step: Prelim, but first a week off

So I just finished my master's degree--deposited the thesis on Friday. I'm taking a week off from work as part of my reward/celebration. Despite this break from actual work, some part of the back of my mind is working on the next step.

Since I've already passed the qualifying exam, my next big hurdle is the preliminary exam. The qualifying exam was a written test that took ten hours over a day and a half. It tested me on everything I've ever learned in atmospheric sciences. For the preliminary exam, I'll have to write and defend a proposal of my planned PhD research (and I have to choose a PhD committee). After that, I research, write my dissertation, and defend the dissertation.

Looking at the next step, I am a bit intimidated. According to the online description of the prelim, I need to write the proposal and prepare the defense without help from anyone. I've never done this before. I have a few versions of a fellowship proposal that won me three years of funding from which to start, but this proposal needs to be much more detailed and longer than the ones for fellowships.

I think seeing an example or two will help. If I can't get advice specifically about my proposal, I can at least use other people's proposals and presentations as examples so I know the structure and quality it needs.

In any case, I may not be starting on that right away in a hugely meaningful way. I still need to polish the research and writing from my thesis to make a paper or two. I also need to introduce myself to some tools I'll be using in my PhD research. I hope to wrap this up well before the end of the fall semester and get a good start on my prelim proposal before the end of the year so I can present it by the end of next summer.

My brain is recovering...

I have not, in fact, disappeared off the face of the Earth. I just finished my seminar and a literature review for an NSF-style proposal that is the semester project for my class.

The seminar is an oddly justifiable and valuable means of torture. I spent three weeks working 12-15 hours most days leading up to the seminar. The house went to hell, my sleep went to hell, and I may have told the kitties to go to hell at some point.

I've never been very comfortable speaking to large groups, nor very good at it. Somehow, this seminar was amazingly successful. I got good ratings from the group at large and a couple of people even commented that it would shame most conference talks and many invited seminars. Maybe I can do this scientist thing after all.

After all the stress of preparing the seminar, studying for the qual, and immediately having to write a literature review for my class (due today), I am again questioning my intended career path. A large research university seems to fit my skills and interests best as far as the balance between teaching and research, but I'm not sure I want the pressure to perform and publish that comes with that job.

I still want to teach and do research, so I don't think I want to work at a teaching university. (I understand that professors at teaching universities still do research, but I think I'd rather it be a more explicit and significant part of my job.) I don't want to be a researcher because that tends to remove teaching. Maybe a researcher who does a lot of outreach? Or maybe I can still do this professor thing after all, too.

How does grad school compare to being a professor as far as stress and time consumption? And where's that advisor of mine?

I'm trying to be patient...this is not the first time it hasn't worked very well

The boyfriend says I'm not a very patient person and in many cases he's right. This fellowship application is a prime example.

I emailed my advisor all the written portions last Thursday for him to comment on. I got comments on the first half of a two-page proposal Friday around lunch time. I emailed him an edited version that addressed all but one comment so I could get some more input on the second half and see if I'd interpreted his comments correctly.

I have yet to receive another email on the proposal. There are also two other written parts to this fellowship, neither of which he has read. I realize that he has family obligations, especially having been out of the country for two weeks and now his wife being out of town, but I really want to get this thing out of the way so I can return to research. And it's due Thursday, which doesn't leave much time for procrastinating if I do more than one round of edits on it.

Did I mention that this is my first proposal, so much of my first draft is guessing what a proposal is supposed to look like? It's going to take more than one edit to get it reasonably good and within the page limit.

It'd be nice if I could blame someone, but it's been an accidentally badly scheduled semester all around. The advisor wasn't supposed to teach, but another faculty member bailed on his class after the semester schedule was made. My advisor got to take up the slack. That means that next semester he'll be teaching one class instead of two with very little travel--just in time for both of his advisees to be studying for the qual.

Speaking of his other advisee, I feel bad for her, too, because she's trying to put together her seminar, a required part of a master's degree, so she can graduate in December. Her research has not been going as planned and she's been very stressed. It's more evidence for the bad timing of everything this semester.

I've also received preliminary news that my spring semester will be rearranged in such a way that I won't get much break over winter break, but more on that once the details are confirmed.

Time management

Soon is a relative term...really.

Time management has become more important than ever in my life over the past month. I like to have a lot of possible projects to work on. At the moment, I have a couple of equal importance and several others that become more important the longer I leave them go. That leads to my head spinning a bit if I think about them all at once.

The most important has been my poster that is due to the printer Wednesday (the meeting is 29 Sept-1 Oct). It is my first poster. The design looks good and the figures are reasonable, but I'm struggling a bit to figure out what I want to say about them and how to say it.

I'm registered for one class and informally auditing another (both for the qual and for my own information). They both involve variable amounts of reading, so that is hard to schedule. I'm never quite sure when we'll proceed to the next unit or chapter. I also have homework for registered-for class. That is not too bad--I just need to remember to do it. The first homework for the audit class was completely out of line for a homework assignment. It was a mini research project. I didn't do it.

I've nearly stuck to the study schedule for the qual. I only missed a partial chapter that was due yesterday, but I made it up today. I can't fall behind on this because I have a whole field to study by the end of January. It will only pile up and make me more stressed and less likely to pass the qual. For the coming week, I have five more chapters. I'll miss the next group study session, so I'm accountable only to myself for these. In the final week of intro material studying, I have four chapters. After October 4th, we are moving on to the department's core classes. Needless to say, my studying textbook is coming to the meeting with me.

On top of all these macro-tasks, I have a variety of micro-tasks that I would like to accomplish: audition four possible thesis-writing programs (InDesign, OpenOffice, Word, and LaTeX), practice my cello, write an update to family and friends I haven't talked to much over the past year, and plan and cook food to eat. In the short term, I also hoped to go shopping for black shoes with heels of some sort to go with my suits for the conference so my pants don't drag on the ground. Of course I ran out of time this weekend. I hope to find more time for these after the poster is done. Perhaps I can squeeze shoe shopping between turning in the poster Wednesday afternoon and flying to the meeting Saturday morning. If not, I'll have to wear my old boots. They're passable, but not terribly professional. All these tasks become more critical as i leave them go, but at the moment they are relatively ignorable.

With all these threads tugging me in different directions, last night was my first night away from work in over a week. Otherwise, I get up, go to work, work through lunch, come home, work all night, go to bed, repeat. Occasionally I'll intersperse some household chores, like laundry so I can wear clean clothes. I've been pushed, pulled, and stretched. With several people sick at work and the boyfriend getting over a minor cold, I'm surprised I haven't caught anything yet (not that I'm complaining, universe).

How is this (lack of) balance working? Well, I'm still alive, aren't I? I wonder if this is as good as it gets without a rigid schedule. I hate following a rigid schedule. I prefer to work on whatever I feel I can focus on best rather than what is on my calendar. The problem: it is easier to get overwhelmed with all the stuff in front of me when I allow myself a choice of immediate task. When it is possible, I also need to work more leisure time into my schedule. I don't think that'll happen in any significant form this semester.

I suppose my current time management methods work reasonably well. There is a point at which it doesn't matter how well I manage my time--there is too much to do for the time I have. I think I'm beyond that point for the moment, but it will recede after the poster is done. Yes, I'm banking a lot of hope for a slightly less busy schedule on finishing the poster. Stay tuned to see if my hopes are dashed...

qual on!

I posted on August 12 about taking the qual early my reasoning at that point. Well, the saga has come to a close: my advisor agrees that I can take the qual early. That means I'll start studying now and really hit it after my poster presentation at the end of September. Until the poster is sent to the printer, I need to get as much research done as I can.

It wasn't a straight path to my advisor's verdict. He was on a field project on the other side of the globe for two and a half weeks, then on jury duty for most of this past week. We'd barely communicated for the past four weeks. I sent him an email with my reasoning attached on Thursday in case we weren't able to meet Friday. He replied that we could meet Friday after our morning class. He also said he was torn on the qual issue. He understood all my reasoning, but was concerned about a grant renewal deadline coming next summer. The email gave me the impression that he was unlikely to agree with me easily.

I was funded by this grant last fall and this summer, with a teaching assistantship and three more classes in between. Due to personal circumstances, I did not get significant research done until the beginning of July. This may make him a bit nervous, but I think he understands all the problems that have kept me from progressing more quickly. Since Independence Day, however, I have made significant progress. I showed my advisor all the stuff I've gotten done, and with a couple more weeks' worth of work, he thinks I'll have a great poster for the workshop at the end of September. I hope he believes that this is a more normal work ethic for me even though he has a short sample.

I understand his concern that the rest of this semester will be relatively low-progress with respect to research due to studying for the qual, but I think that Spring semester and next Summer will be plenty of time to get enough research done to renew the grant. (I tend to make quicker progress than I or others expect.) He apparently agrees. At the end of our meeting, I asked if he had deliberated any more on the qual issue, and he told me he'll support my decision to take it early. I didn't even need to argue the point. After all the effort I'd put into making sure I had a convincing argument... :)

This revelation around lunchtime had one unfortunate side-effect: I was so excited about my advisor's qual decision and positive view of my research that I had a hard time for the rest of the afternoon concentrating on anything that took much thinking. I ended up transferring class notes to the powerpoint print-out, scanning PDFs of the department qual exams since 2000*, and working on other menial tasks. I am still excited about all of it, but I think I've relaxed enough that I can concentrate on programming and reading again.

A couple of my officemates are also planning to take the qual. One section of the test involves answering questions from the elective classes you've taken in the department. The test only includes questions from classes taken by someone who is taking the test, though anyone taking the test can answer any of the questions, no matter if they have taken the class or not. My officemates are not registered for a certain class that I am, but they are sitting in on it anyhow with the assumption that I will ensure the qual will include a question from that class. They've gotten anxious to not waste time attending a class that will not help them on the qual during the first week of classes, so my advisor's decision yesterday pacified all three of us. We are concocting plans for study groups.

*Until now, they've been keeping a single paper copy of every qual--that's it. I decided that was a really bad idea when the copy machine tried to eat a page of one of them recently.

qual early?

The default procedure in my department is to take the qualifying exam after finishing a master's thesis in the January of one's third year. For someone with an undergrad degree in a different field that may make sense. They need time to get used to the new terminology and concepts. It may even make sense for someone who doesn't take a full load of classes through all of his/her first year because s/he hasn't taken enough electives for the choose-four-questions-to-answer-of-more-than-four-options section. However, my undergrad degree is in the same field I am in now, and I took a full load of classes both semesters last year.

In short, I want to take the qual this coming January rather than wait until 2010.

I am working on a convincing argument for my advisor, which will include all my reasons for taking it early, rebuttals or admissions of the reasons to wait, and a plan of how to study for it.

The pros of taking it early include:

1. the foundation classes from this department will be fresher in my mind
2. The electives from this department will be fresher in my mind.
3. I'm only attending one meeting this fall, so I won't need a lot of prep time for posters.
4. If I fail the first time, my second try will only be one semester after I hope to finish the master's thesis. If I take the traditional route, I may be working on PhD research for a year without knowing if I can even complete a PhD. Talk about motivation issues...
5. #4 also provides a benefit to my advisor: he will know sooner if he needs to fund me for PhD work. It's less time and money wasted for everyone.
6. I can study with the only other person in my research group because she's taking the qual in 2009.
7. It'll be over before I have to write the bulk of my thesis or prepare for my seminar.
8. The stress of anticipation kills me more than the stress of doing things.

Pros of waiting include:

1. Studying won't slow down my master's research because most or all of it will be done, so I might finish that a bit quicker. (How much will this really affect my progress? Also, see #4 above. If I'll be here for a PhD anyhow, what does it matter if I take an extra semester but already have the qual done?)
2. I'd be able to take another couple of electives to widen my pool of optional questions on the qual. (I took classes in undergrad that are analogous to several of the classes here, so I'd have a good chance at answering questions from classes I haven't taken here.)
3. I'll be taking it with more people from my year? (I don't think this makes a difference, but advisor might. I want to be prepared for any rebuttal he has.)

What do you think? Are there any flaws in my reasoning or anything I should add to either side?

Any tips for studying--how much time it takes, how to go about it, etc.? I know that may vary by department, but there has to be some commonality.

One possible major snag is that the curriculum here has been in flux due to a new undergrad program. I don't know how this will affect the qual.

I think this is a pretty convincing argument. I'm probably being over-prepared for the advisor's unlikely denial of my request, but that's the way I am. Better that than get blind-sided by things all the time.