guys i need some lol college advice

thx for the extended reply, mark. i think a major problem is that as true as this: a.)that there are loads of other options that aren't immediately visible but offer the same intellectual engagement with a lot less of the hassle might be, those "other options" are very much not visible, and i dont really know how to go about looking for them. im more than open to other options (in fact, id really like to something i love as much as this without the impossible job market & 7 years of school), its just hard to figure out that they are.

but this isnt a thread about my creeping feeling of dread, its about my honors project.

I'm glad I'm doing a PhD, but I really wish someone had told me/I had figured out just how shitty and unsatisfying it would be a lot of the time.

in case anyone's wondering i still havent finished my 6-page paper on women in mathematics.

hahha nice. yea max i do wish i had more advice on your honors project. sorry to go off on the big tangent!

no worries mark, its all the same question anyway basically

hi dere I am in this boat!

AFAIK doing these kinds of paper are really good because they are a great great great example of "research ability" which grad schools really look for. But I am doing one too and yeah it sucks a dick. Not doing PhD route tho, just grad school.

In terms of laziness/procrastination/anxiety, I just kind of constantly push myself to do things, make lots of schedules and planners, blah blah. I have to break everything down or I can't function. To narrow my topic and get an idea how to structure a paper like this, I went down to my college main office and asked to see the papers from previous years. They had a whole room of like all of them ever, and you could flip through and find stuff from yr major and look at how they wrote it and everything. Maybe yours does too! My advisor also advised me to break it down into smaller papers, which is a BIG HELP in terms of not feeling totally overwhelmed and terrified.

sorry I know my posts read like gibberish but I am revising a grad school essay and doing reading for my insane IR classes at the same time.

i think i also need someone to say "MAX stop posting to ILX you need to be working on your honors project"

to say that whenever i post, i mean

"where is the job where i can read things i find really interesting and talk about them with fantastically smart people and maybe even write about them but i can do it all at my own pace with no pressure and no one ever judges my work?"

You should pitch this to the Gawker Media Empire (TM). I hear they're always looking for a new blog-hook.

the Fleshbot crossover would be killer

This thread kind of makes me glad I never ended up applying to grad school back when I was seriously considering it. Especially horseshoe's comment about professors as role models and the romanticization of the academic lifestyle. I still wish my job was as social and engaging as teaching would be, but I can't say it's not intellectually stimulating.

max, I have periodically had to swear off ILX to meet grad school deadlines. it helps me to be all absolutist about it and not look at it at all for like, a month. but I have been driven crazy by ph.d. school; such an extremist approach might not be necessary for you.

(I am absolutist about it mostly for psychological reasons, not because I'm getting so much work done.)

(also maybe since most of my grad skool peers will be female my being male might work for me?)

as long as you are down with feminist agendas!

can i ask a lol grad school question here?

professor sez: write response paper on readings and last week's class every week (which i think is incredibly undergrad thing to do anyway but whatever). she said they were to be 'diary-like.' however, she gives criticizes/grades them based on her personal opinions/agendas and does not seem open to alternate ideas. how do i shot good grades without compromising my own ideas by towing her party line?

wow, that does sound undergrad-ish. if that's the impression you get--that she's grading with an agenda--I would just write the kind of response she wants to read.

ugh i was afraid of that. i just feel like since i only have 4 semesters of grad school i really don't want to have any 'throw-away' classes. i want them all to matter and spend the semester expanding my thoughts rather than analyzing the readings to predict what she would say about them.

that sounds like some bullshit, tehresa. who grades diary-like responses?

i just feel like since i only have 4 semesters of grad school i really don't want to have any 'throw-away' classes.

Yeah, the thing is though, you may not want to have throw away classes, but lol you may have shitty, throw away teachers.

thats not even undergrad shit, thats high school shit

hm that is weird, t. but i think by 'diary-like' at a grad school level she may mean more like 'critical response' but with a bit more personal gut reaction involved. i guess i'd just say that to do well, stay open, address what you know her agenda is but don't necessarily agree with it if you don't agree with it. i don't know, in the end, it's her class...

yes horseshoe... response generaly = subjective and therefore not able to be graded under standard objective criteria, rite?!?!

i am debating bringing this up with my advisor. she may have some tips, but then again, i don't want to seem like a whiny 'wah grad skool is hard' biotch.

how long does your project have to be, max? under 50 pages?

okay, t, y'know i'm a bit jaded about school in all its forms these days, as much as i love education and knowledge and information and all that, but when they say 'response' and 'subjective' and 'your opinion' you have to forget what you thought they meant b/c what they mean now is more along the lines of critiquing with abilty to back up your ideas with references and reasons why

heh, 35 pages... honestly this is a lot less "how can i possibly write this" and a lot more "how can i possibly write this to my absurdly high standards of perfection"

one of my professors pointed out this morning that im taking on way too much and my topic is way too big and im way to interested in writing something totally new and original instead of just putting my head down and learning how to research & write a long paper

otherwise you will be shot down
she might still be a crappy prof, of course, but if you make a solid argument she has no reason to give you a bad mark
xpost

max i wrote 35 pages in 7 days at the end of my first semester of grad school plus wrote a 15 page paper and a 25 pager during that same month. you can totally do it! tried and true: one page at a time, one sentence at a time, one quote at a time, etc etc

^ i'm not bragging there or anything at all - research went into those papers that was done over several weeks before too but the compiling of it and the writing process wasn't so bad or long once i got going.

also it feels AWESOME when you're done

i just edited my entire thesis 80+ pages and sent it to prof yesterday. so i'm riding a high. plus i got a job today.

yeah but the thing is i honestly dont want to be in that position... ive written a 20 page paper in a night on two separate occaisions and both times they turned out thoroughly mediocre; this time i really want to do as well as i know that i can.

hey congrats on the job! and the thesis!

i think what i really need here is tony robbins

p.s. if you don't do the work and procrastinate things kinda go to shit. oh believe me, i know. even if you love the work yet can't manage to get yourself to do it for whatever reason, you have to force yourself to do it, like, just pick a quote and write about it for 10 minutes, stuff like that. better for work quality and sanity.

xpost
tony robbins does have some good things to say

also, maybe don't think of it as a 35 page project/thesis. think of it as like, 3 10-page essays or 2 15-page essays and an intro and conclusion

omg congratulations rrrobyn!

max, that perfectionist shit will kill you!

it almost killed me. i think perfectionism is mostly about fear. i've been doing a journalism/talk radio show for the past few months and it's really opened my eyes to how being perfect really doesn't matter - people will love you more for it, in fact.

thanks for congrats, guys :) i'm not all the way there and i'm super busy with life but i'll be defending before december hits anyway yaaay

ya perfectionism = anxiety = procrastination, so what i usually do is hold off till the last minute, turn in mediocre stuff, and tell myself, "if you REALLY TRIED you could have a 4.0" or whatever. its a defense mechanism and a shitty one at that.

max, you know how you said you wished your future, old self could send letters to you-in-lol-college? consider me your future, old self.

woah congrats, rrrobyn! that is so awesome!!!

max, i totally get you. i have a smallish paper to do this semester (10-15) but if i had my way i'd run away to this awesome collection in england and do research for months and months or years and then write a book. my thinking is that because i feel this way about the topic, i can easily churn out the small paper and then have motivation for a possibly larger project down the road. maybe you can think of it that way? then you won't have to think of this process as a terminal thing... it's just the beginning, and then you don't feel as bad about not being able to hole up for 6 months to work.

don't get lost in research though! it is so easy to do. to continue researching, feeling you're getting work done b/c you're reading but then never getting down to the writing part. gotta write.

(thanks t :) i am so stoked on the structure of having a full-time job again. oh, it'll wear off eventually, i know, but i need structure now. i'm even excited about creating spreadsheets and databases so that i am an efficient coordinator type. whoa.)

yeah i guess the thing is i just need to stop aiming so high and find a focus... im so desperate to impress/please my advisor & other profs that im trying to write a book or something, instead of whatever would be appropriate for a 35-page paper

my advisor on my first completed draft:

There's no such chance. You got an A. But I know you can do a h*** of a lot better than this, no?

:(

i hate disappointing people.

:( sorry dude

disappointing people is a pretty big part of coming into adulthood

ok i need new advice!! i am currently taking four classes. of them, i only need one to graduate, one is interesting and challenging, and two are shaping up to be sort of deadly boring. should i drop two and become a part-time student? ive talked to the relevant people, and it shouldnt be a problem in terms of graduating on time or continuing to do things i like at the school.

i think i would obviously need to take something up--make sure i was spending the time productively. but as per my lol college request for advice from above, i have a least two big things on my plate already that need time and attention. plus i am taking a creative writing class this year and it would be nice to take it seriously and have the time to put some effort into it. moreover, id save a lot of (my own) money.

is there any reason NOT to just do this? am i going to regret not taking as many classes as possible down the road? will it look bad on an academic resume? also, i feel like a chump for even saying this, but dropping these two classes (both of which are likely As) will probably mean the difference between graduating cum laude and magna cum laude (and between a 3.7 and a 3.8). does that even matter (i guess specifically for grad school, and should i bother caring?

yea, ditch the boring classes, but are you able to find some other fun, elective, and not-too-difficult-to-mess-up-your-GPA classes? i wish i took more interesting classes for the hell of it.

but investing a lot in your creative writing class seems like a good alternative.

its two weeks into school and most profs wont sign me in--plus theres an exorbitant fee for adding classes after the deadline

Ditch the classes. You will be happier in the short term and probably in the long term.

hoos, that sucks so bad dude :( surely someone will be sympathetic to your case...

because of my own fuckup in planning my degree, i was 2 points short at the end of my last semester (360pts for a degree) but there was no fucking way i was doing another semester so i wrote to the associate dean of my faculty and told him all the reasons i should get an exemption and he granted it within a couple of hours. but my situation was pretty minor. hopefully something similar will happen for you!

Can you tell this sentence to someone with any measure of power?

I'm calling my Dean in the morning.

thx for the sympathies, guys.

also

CONGRATS MAX U GO HAVE A FUKKIN TASTYCAKE DAWG DEAD SERIOUS