Warning Rant Ahead:
There’s this one day of my week that is totally shot. I’ve tried and tried to be able to do something in the lab on this day of the week, but it’s impossible. Or at least impossible without not showing up to some required thing. We have journal club over lunch, then I have office hours, and then there’s seminar. It used to be that the latter wasn’t required. So, I’d attend the (required) journal club and then hold office hours (which, while a pain, are useful in the monetary department). Then, I’d skip the seminar so I could salvage something out of this day. But now it is required. So, for five hours I’m stuck outside of the lab.
This wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to pay for it the rest of the day and the day before and after. I get in early, leave late, do work at home and I still have more things to do than time in the following day.
Good I’m glad that I got that out.
Glad you feel better – hey! wait a minute, I’m not your friend anymore. why am i commenting? 😉
Ugh, I hear you. I am absolutely miserable with the start of the academic year and the countless shit that I am required to attend. I tallied up all the meetings/seminars/journal clubs and I have 14 hours/week of crap to go to, and I finished all my course requirements 2 years ago. WTF! I was working 120+ hour weeks without this crap, so I can’t fathom my hours with it.
Grumble, grumble.
Thank god we don’t even have the option to TA over here (full tuition and stipend with no TAing requirements — the one good thing about my program) because I think my head would explode.
not to rain on your parade, but since you get into work so early how is it that you can’t be productive in the lab before lunch. That was what I liked about the early shift. I felt by lunch time that I had gotten so much work done and was a happy person in the afternoons.
But then again, maybe I’m missing the point of your post-which is likely that you would rather spend the 2+ hours from seminar and journal club in the lab. Or maybe your experiments are such that you need large chunks of time to do them or the procedures are time sensitive that what you start before lunch needs to promptly be checked on after lunch?
Ugh, I hate required seminars. I’ve managed to dramatically cut down on the number of required non-research hours I have each week, but our weekly seminar is non-negotiable (and more often than not, a waste of time).
I’ll also admit… when I have a meeting over lunch, it is practically inevitable that I get nothing down beforehand. Sigh.
I know seminars are a big pain in the ass, especially when you have crucial experiments, but they are also a very very good networking opportunity. A chance to meet other grad students, PI, find out the ins and outs of whats going on, getting leads to post-docs or other jobs. Learn from m mistakes. Had I gone to more seminars, I would have more options right now.
But isn’t it kind of good that everything is on the same day? So you don’t get three days messed up because of stuff going on outside the lab?
Guess it depends on your experiments.
Deb: Well, obviously, you can’t help yourself… I’m just that interesting.
EtBr: I haven’t any coursework left either. Somehow these things still just happen.
Jennie: I do get lots of stuff done before lunch. The problem is that I have a lot of things that take all day to do (like 6-8 hours), so I can get the majority done prior, but then after lunch… Luckily, I can split the protocols in two. So, I can finish them at 5.
Nicky: Many a-time ours is as well. Faculty presentations are a bit of a waste, too. Especially if they take very little time to prepare.
Scientist Mother: Good point! I think you’ve officially found the silver-lining! I’m going to repeat that as my mantra as some idiot in the front drones on and on and on…
Hypoglycemia Girl: I suppose that’s true, but I’ve got meetings the day before and after, too. Just not as long. I’m not sure what I’d pick.
I feel your pain… I used to have at least one day a week like this in my last job. And of course each meeting would bring up more work for me to do, which I never got a chance to start, because I had to go to another meeting, at which I would be assigned more work… Ugh.
Required seminars? Good lord, is it grad school or high school. Wait, don’t answer that! 😉