If you're reviewing a paper, before letting forth a spew of verbal diarrhea about all the things that you find confusing or weird about the paper, maybe you should try looking back at the paper to see if what you're confused about is actually explained. Thanks. People will have a lot more respect for your comments.
Of course, I'd also have a lot more respect for the positive reviews if they bothered to make comments instead of just scores.
My NCA paper landed in kind of a random panel that I'm sure will be perfectly lovely, but I think I'm going to let my advisor cover it, since he has other stuff going on for that conference and I'm keen on only one visit to San Diego this fall (if I'm going to bother going west, I have other places I want to and ought to go).
I've been working on both my thesis defense presentation and my class this week. The presentation is supposed to be 40 minutes, which is as long as I had for my job talk, but now I have so many other things to talk about also. I'm not really sure how it's all going to fit. In terms of class stuff, I've been perusing prior years and other syllabi from up the road and realizing that I have a pretty clear notion of the range of things that should be taught in an intro to SBS class. Of course there are more things that I can really fit, so I have to weed out some stuff. But it's nice to feel authoritative enough to have an independent opinion and to be able to critique and change how it's been done before instead of just having to copy it because I don't know what else to do.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Conferencing
I'm back from Montreal. ICA was really great, and it's nice to go to a conference where theory is valued. Not that I ended up going to as many sessions as I wanted... there is always something shiny to do, like sleep or venture to Chinatown for lunch. It's also hard when you're presenting every day to get to much more than your own stuff, but that's why papers are posted online!
The first presentation, a grad student panel on the crazy world of international research, was really fun even if it wasn't well-attended. Mostly the Hopkins folk really like it and want us to do the panel at school, which I think would be great (I think stuff like that would always be great for department seminar, but no one has ever listened to me when I say that outside speakers are fab, but we also have cool people here).
The second session, with ye ol' Honduras theater paper that still isn't in a journal, also went well. I got a few questions, which was cool. It was first thing in the morning, though, so also not super heavily attended.
Top paper panel? Lots of people, because it's right before the health comm business meeting and reception. I was having a bad personal day, and the crowd was huge, so I felt like I nervously rushed through the talk, but it seemed to gather the second most number of questions after (mostly stuff that I'll be answering at NCA with my dissertation work). It wasn't my best talk, though.
In other news, please don't ride Amtrak's Adirondack to Montreal. It may be cheap, but unless you're traveling alone it's probably still the same price/cheaper to drive. It took us 12 hours each way to and from New York Penn Station. Horrible. On the way up we were stuck behind a group of 20 high school girls who never shut up. On the way back the bathroom smelled. The guy in the cafe car was awesome, though, and I did get a lot of magazines read.
As for future conferences, I got emails last night from APHA that one of my abstracts (main dissertation results) got a roundtable and the other (stigma measurement stuff) got a poster. I was sort of miffed at the lack of oral presentations, but then I got an email today that the roundtable abstract won best abstract on an international HIV/AIDS topic, so that's cool. I have to see where the NCA paper lands before deciding whether I'm going to both conferences. I dunno what's up with San Diego this year, but these conferences are a month apart there.
So, I'm back at the office today, feeling kind of refreshed. Rather, I think I felt stressed about presenting before I left, so I feel comparably better today. I also got more sleep in the past week (although not last night, since boy is still in NJ). My house is disgusting, though. I need to start looking for a new place and packing. I also need to get on damn Blackboard already (well, I'm on, just not attached to my course) so I can plan my class. I also need to get my thesis defense presentation together. Fun.
The first presentation, a grad student panel on the crazy world of international research, was really fun even if it wasn't well-attended. Mostly the Hopkins folk really like it and want us to do the panel at school, which I think would be great (I think stuff like that would always be great for department seminar, but no one has ever listened to me when I say that outside speakers are fab, but we also have cool people here).
The second session, with ye ol' Honduras theater paper that still isn't in a journal, also went well. I got a few questions, which was cool. It was first thing in the morning, though, so also not super heavily attended.
Top paper panel? Lots of people, because it's right before the health comm business meeting and reception. I was having a bad personal day, and the crowd was huge, so I felt like I nervously rushed through the talk, but it seemed to gather the second most number of questions after (mostly stuff that I'll be answering at NCA with my dissertation work). It wasn't my best talk, though.
In other news, please don't ride Amtrak's Adirondack to Montreal. It may be cheap, but unless you're traveling alone it's probably still the same price/cheaper to drive. It took us 12 hours each way to and from New York Penn Station. Horrible. On the way up we were stuck behind a group of 20 high school girls who never shut up. On the way back the bathroom smelled. The guy in the cafe car was awesome, though, and I did get a lot of magazines read.
As for future conferences, I got emails last night from APHA that one of my abstracts (main dissertation results) got a roundtable and the other (stigma measurement stuff) got a poster. I was sort of miffed at the lack of oral presentations, but then I got an email today that the roundtable abstract won best abstract on an international HIV/AIDS topic, so that's cool. I have to see where the NCA paper lands before deciding whether I'm going to both conferences. I dunno what's up with San Diego this year, but these conferences are a month apart there.
So, I'm back at the office today, feeling kind of refreshed. Rather, I think I felt stressed about presenting before I left, so I feel comparably better today. I also got more sleep in the past week (although not last night, since boy is still in NJ). My house is disgusting, though. I need to start looking for a new place and packing. I also need to get on damn Blackboard already (well, I'm on, just not attached to my course) so I can plan my class. I also need to get my thesis defense presentation together. Fun.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Winner!
I won the department poster competition (in the doctoral category) today! I got a nice Hopkins photo frame and some notecards with the pretty hospital facade on them.
Still no word from NCA -- my advisor said not to worry since they had all kinds of problems sending out acceptance emails, but I still haven't heard and I thought they were going to work those out by today.
UPDATE: I just checked the website again, and they must still be having problems because they just posted a big ol' pdf of all the accepted papers. And mine is in!!!
Still no word from NCA -- my advisor said not to worry since they had all kinds of problems sending out acceptance emails, but I still haven't heard and I thought they were going to work those out by today.
UPDATE: I just checked the website again, and they must still be having problems because they just posted a big ol' pdf of all the accepted papers. And mine is in!!!
Friday, May 16, 2008
Friday!
I'm not being very productive at the moment... I finished my IRB stuff (which I've done before over the years, but every school makes you do it again), and then I've been poking at ICA logisitics, answering emails, etc. I'm feeling bummed because I think my dissertation-based paper didn't get accepted to NCA -- I heard about a panel I'd forgotten I was sort of on (my advisor is the presenter) last night but haven't received any word on my own paper. Depressing. I thought it was much better than either paper I'm presenting at ICA -- the measures are better, it's a friggin experimental design for gods' sake! Maybe I'm just sourpussing too soon and I'll hear this weekend.
I'm also grumpy because neither my advisor nor my boyfriend are emailing me back today. It's cold and boring in here, and I need email to get through! I stayed up past my bedtime last night at TV Night, so I'm real tired.
The commute remains bad. Yesterday I tried alternate routes, which were new and fun, but no faster. Good options to break up boredom. Today I got here and the parking garage was full, so I had to go park by the Navy Lodge. I can't wait to move.
I'm also grumpy because neither my advisor nor my boyfriend are emailing me back today. It's cold and boring in here, and I need email to get through! I stayed up past my bedtime last night at TV Night, so I'm real tired.
The commute remains bad. Yesterday I tried alternate routes, which were new and fun, but no faster. Good options to break up boredom. Today I got here and the parking garage was full, so I had to go park by the Navy Lodge. I can't wait to move.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Also
The commute is horrible. It takes at least an hour if things aren't awful, but usually more than that. I wish I could move sooner.
Limbo
Monday and Tuesday were pretty much what I expected: getting an ID badge, parking, touring the grounds, getting small amounts of work done, etc. Today all the weirdness hits home. I'm currently a contractor until I get my PhD and I can take the official federal job, so that's causing all sorts of delay in the sense that everything including the format of my email is based on this idea that I'm a 6 week contract employee instead of a real faculty member. Also, there are just other sorts of half states I'm dealing with. The computer that was in this office turned out to have a problem, so I'm using this older computer temporarily, which means I can't set it up how I like and I'm trying not to even save much to it -- it doesn't even have the latest version of IE or anything, so it really feels temporary. And finally, my office, while vastly cleaner than when I saw it during my interview, still has a ton of other people's leftover crap in it. I don't know when it's going away. I've moved the stuff I don't want over as much as possible so I have lots of empty shelves waiting for books and things, so that makes me feel better.
Finally, I seem to be at this weird social juncture in which orientation appears to be over but I'm not really feeling like I have all I need to move forward with things like my class (it would help if my Blackboard woudl get activated). Not that I don't have three conference presentations to prepare for next week, but still.
Finally, I seem to be at this weird social juncture in which orientation appears to be over but I'm not really feeling like I have all I need to move forward with things like my class (it would help if my Blackboard woudl get activated). Not that I don't have three conference presentations to prepare for next week, but still.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Ugh, editing
So, I got my dissertation back from my advisor on Monday, and I was pleased to see that there weren't really any major overhauls I needed to do. But that means that instead I just have a bunch of piddly shit to slog through. Of course there are a few areas where I actually had to dig up a few articles, which is such a pain because it's a ton of time for like one paragraph. I hoped to get this out Friday, but I still have a giant list of things to do.
Not to mention redoing a ton of graphs because my advisor and I have complete opposite ways of reading and interpreting graphs (there's this one graph in a paper we have coming out that I always have to redraw because it's completely backwards to me).
I start work tomorrow, which should mostly be a day of logistics, like I-9 forms and email setups and stuff. I'm pretty excited. I'm not that excited about commuting for about 6 weeks, but I'll probably try to swing it so I can come in later and leave later after the first few days.
Not to mention redoing a ton of graphs because my advisor and I have complete opposite ways of reading and interpreting graphs (there's this one graph in a paper we have coming out that I always have to redraw because it's completely backwards to me).
I start work tomorrow, which should mostly be a day of logistics, like I-9 forms and email setups and stuff. I'm pretty excited. I'm not that excited about commuting for about 6 weeks, but I'll probably try to swing it so I can come in later and leave later after the first few days.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Silence
Either 1) my advisor thinks my draft is really terrible and is avoiding telling me by waiting until I bother him or 2) it's just taking him a while to edit. I'm not going to ask him and ruin my vacation if it's the former.
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