A Day In The Life of A Grad Student

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Since I'm procrastinating, I thought I'd start a fun thread for people to post what they are up to today. I'm hoping it will show the wide range 'o fun we have on a daily basis! (Research, Sleep, Class, Patient, Eat, Class, Patient, Research, etc). I finished up most of my 'big' stuff, so my focus is mostly internship....not much fun, but a necessary evil.

1. Gathering/Organizing my LOR
2. Editing more essays
3. Review a bunch of journal articles on AN
4. Catch up with my supervisor
5. Laundry!

What are YOU doing today?

-t
 
Fun thread!

1. Proctoring an exam (T.A. work)
2. Attending class (multiple regression!)
3. Constructing stimuli for a new experiment
4. Finishing up powerpoint slides for a presentation for class tomorrow
5. Hopefully, hitting up the gym (depending on how long the presentation takes)
 
Oh, my turn!

Finishing stats homework
Stats class
Lunch break
Issues in clinical psych class
Studying for stats quiz
Reading for systems

It's a pretty stats-intensive week in general... our first quiz!
 
730 - Wake up and shower..remember you have clients to see so yeah you shave.

900 to 1900 - See clients, complete screenings/assessments, calm parents down, talk to the insurance company several times

1905 - Eat breakfast lunch and dinner, while reading Journal articles or James Patterson book (most likely James Patterson)

2200 - Bed time...LOL.

Jeff
 
Great idea! Really useful for people who are applying this year! 🙂

Me (First year counseling student in a research-focused program):

6:30: wake up (weather forecast yesterday night was ambiguous about rain; might have needed to bus it)
7:45: leave for university on scooter (get one; they rock)
8:30: Stats (Some regression topics)
10:45: Gym (chest & bicep day, 30 min. cardio)
12:45: meeting with adviser to go over CFA for a paper
1:55: Theories and systems class (presented overview of Evocative Empathy therapy)
5:30: (now) home, checking email and playing on SND
Tonight: go over CFA results to trim the scale I'm reanalyzing. Get back IRB from adviser and get it ready to hand in tomorrow. Get back grant proposal from adviser and do final revision. Do research readings. Call home. Do class readings. Eat dinner and make food for lunch tomorrow. Watch The Sarah Silverman Program and get to bed around 11.

Ah, wild college life!🙂
 
JockNerd said:
Great idea! Really useful for people who are applying this year! 🙂

Me (First year counseling student in a research-focused program):

6:30: wake up (weather forecast yesterday night was ambiguous about rain; might have needed to bus it)
7:45: leave for university on scooter (get one; they rock)
8:30: Stats (Some regression topics)
10:45: Gym (chest & bicep day, 30 min. cardio)
12:45: meeting with adviser to go over CFA for a paper
1:55: Theories and systems class (presented overview of Evocative Empathy therapy)
5:30: (now) home, checking email and playing on SND
Tonight: go over CFA results to trim the scale I'm reanalyzing. Get back IRB from adviser and get it ready to hand in tomorrow. Get back grant proposal from adviser and do final revision. Do research readings. Call home. Do class readings. Eat dinner and make food for lunch tomorrow. Watch The Sarah Silverman Program and get to bed around 11.

Ah, wild college life!🙂
Click to expand...

Ha! wow, I can't believe that might be me next year. 😉
 
Sarah Silverman can by hysterical and other times just gross, but her quick mind makes her that much more attractive....too bad she is married. 🙁

As for my schedule....I'm adding on:

6. Pizza! Someone had some, and I am totally craving some brick oven pizza
7. Flip through my pathophysiology book...I have a TON of reading I need to do, and no real time to do it.
8. More editting. I'm thinking I may just stay up late and finish up my stuff....so if anyone is around at 2-3am, you may see me pop in here look for a distraction from my work. :laugh:

-t
 
Run (Never start a day without it)
Go to practicum (1 1/2 hour drive)
Leave practicum to go deliver my Dissertation Proposal to the registrar's office (I successfully defended yesterday!!!)
While on campus, have advisor (Chair) sign another form letting the IRB know that my previous "non-dissertation" approved research project has now become my dissertation.
Come back to practicum
Staff Meeting (We consider this "group supervision" for reporting purposes.)
Remind my supervisor that the LOR I need from him has now reached a "higher level of urgency"
Return phone calls I missed while I was on campus
Go home (1 1/2 hour drive)
Make dinner for my beautiful wife 🙂
Start making the revisions my committee wants me to make. Although I am all too happy to do this, because they were excellent suggestions and it will be a much more scholarly paper when done.
 
73BARMYPgsp said:
Remind my supervisor that the LOR I need from him has now reached a "higher level of urgency"
Click to expand...

:laugh:

I sent an e-mail yesterday with the same message, and I got a quick response back of, "Oh yeah....did that, check with XYZ". I didn't know if I was more shocked or happy. She was a great supervisor, but super busy...so I wasn't sure if she had even looked at it yet.

Now to get my other supervisor.....who I know will write me an awesome letter, but has been booked back to back for weeks. She's had my stuff for over a month, but she has always come through, so I need trust!

One thing I really dislike about grad school is that so much is out of my control. At least in business I could fire someone if they screwed up, I can't exactly fire a supervisor. 😀

-t
 
Just got home and it's 8pm. I'll warn you, I'm feeling wordy. Verbose one might say!

8:00am - wake-up call from Mom (I can move 8 hours away but I still need her to wake me up, haha)
9:30am - stats class, where we all glare at the prof and bitch to each other about how bad he is.
12:30pm - finally done with stats, time to grab some lunch, check email, check my mailbox, go pee, and get my butt to the Psych Services Centre to review my tape of the client I saw three days ago. Take notes for the next two hours.
2:30pm - have a chat with my favourite cohort member about how tired we are, and think about the reading I should be doing.
3:00pm - meeting with my assessment supervisor to go over my tape and see what I can write in the report and do better next time.
3:45pm - leave the Psych Services Centre feeling like crap and wanting to cry.
4:00pm - Case Seminar, this week's topic was about dementia.
5:15pm - Contemplate running for the door just as my advisor mentions that we have a lab meeting.
7:00pm - Finally get out of lab meeting. Cry about the fact that my advisor doesn't think I'll get the grant I just applied for. Go grocery shopping for dinner.
8:00pm - Come home and start the assignments that are due tomorrow.
10:00pm - Shower, make dinner and my lunch for tomorrow, get my stuff together for my classes and new client (the first male client, woo!).
11:00pm - Call my ex for my tri-weekly vent session that he's come to accept will be happening as long as I'm in grad school.
2:00am - Sleep

Not a work-intensive day but if I wrote out my schedule from 3 days ago when I was writing a grant proposal, you'd see why I'm burned out. haha.
 
*pokes around.....*

I guess no one is around. I TOLD you I'd be back around 2-3am looking to procrastinate. The good news is that I rewrote almost my entire essay, and added on some good stuff to another one. This is a SLOOOOOOOOW process, and yet I only have 2 more weeks before stuff starts hitting deadline....blah.

-t
 
It has been so long since I posted on this site that I could not remember my password.

What is wrong with all of you? None of your days included watching or following the baseball playoffs? Are you all a bunch of sore losers after your teams (such as the Yankees - HA!) were eliminated?

Yesterday began and ended with the Cleveland Indians march to world baseball domination: having crushed the NY Yankees, they are now one win away from demolishing the Boston Red Sox! Can anything stop thing juggernaut? Colorado! They will be the next victims. The National league is a joke.

Don't worry there was some psychology in my day yesterday: a person with Schizoaffective Disorder, a person with Bipolar Disorder (poor chap, too many years of Lithium ruined his kidneys), a person with Paranoid Schizophrenia, and a person with Cognitive Deficits.

In between all of this I climbed into my apartment through the roof with a ladder since I locked myself out and went on a date.
 
GiantSteps said:
It has been so long since I posted on this site that I could not remember my password.

Yesterday began and ended with the Cleveland Indians march to world baseball domination: having crushed the NY Yankees, they are now one win away from demolishing the Boston Red Sox! Can anything stop thing juggernaut? Colorado! They will be the next victims. The National league is a joke.

In between all of this I climbed into my apartment through the roof with a ladder since I locked myself out and went on a date.
Click to expand...

since you forgot your password and locked yourself out of your own house...i will forgive the lack of foresight into the ALCS. red sox comeback all the way!

hehe

this series is horrible for my attention...i should be carefully writing statements of purpose...

...s. silverman makes me laugh too (but i liked the first season better)
 
Today's agenda:

6am: Wake-up and exercise (50 min of cardio)
8:30ish: Reviewing for the test I had at 1 'o clock
11:30am: Meeting with my professor whom I'm a GA for to get my next assignment for the week
12ish to 1pm: Reviewing for the exam I had at 1 o'clock
1pm: Exam
1:33pm: Finished exam, checked email, surfed the internet, reviewed for next exam that I had at 4:10pm
4:10pm: Exam II
5:30pm: Took the bus home and did some pleasure-reading on the bus
6ish: Dinner
6:30pm: Research & writing for my qualifying paper (which is kind of like a master's thesis)
7:35pm: Straightening up place, prepping for tomorrow
8pm: America's Next Top Model 🙂/SDN
 
Salsybabe said:
Today's agenda:
8pm: America's Next Top Model 🙂/SDN
Click to expand...


I'm so mad that I'm missing it AGAIN tonight! I just can't get off campus before 8 on Wednesdays... grr....

I need Tivo
 
Wednesdays are my sleep-in days. Woo!

9:00 Wake up, eat a small breakfast, work out, get ready to head to campus
11:30-1:00 Reading and some assessment work
1:00-4:00 Social Psychology & Individual Diversity class
4:00-5:30 Get some dinner (Chipotle, mmm), read over articles for a group presentation about discrimination amongs the deaf and audism
5:30-9:00 Work on assessment scoring and interpretation for hours with a small group of people from my class

Just got home a bit ago. Gonna finish up some reading for my professional development seminar, put some finishing touches on my assessment stuff, and then either call it an early night or pass out to a movie. Then I get to wake up at 6am tomorrow to prepare for being on campus from 8:00am to at least 6:00pm. Hooray!
 
akanesuha87 said:
ALCS. red sox comeback all the way!

hehe

this series is horrible for my attention...i should be carefully writing statements of purpose...
Click to expand...

I agree, I HAVE to watch all the games. But I'm a major Tribe fan. Go Indians 😀
 
Hi everyone!

I hope this is the right place to ask this question, but I was sort of wondering what the reading load is for an average grad class.

Right now I'm taking a senior seminar type class from a well-respected schizophrenia researcher, and she's assigned us a 1000-page reading packet for the semester that is composed of entirely journal articles.

I've loving the class, but the reading is pretty dense - and there's a lot of it. What's it like in grad school (way worse, I expect...)?
 
Well....if you think that is fun.....grad school will be really really fun. 😀 I think most/all programs will give you more work than you can realistically do (especially read), but everyone just accepts this and does the best that they can. This process will teach you how to digest large amounts of information and take away what is important.

-t
 
At the beginning of the semester I was assigned 1000 pages a week (no joke) but my Assessment prof is a bit of a sadist (well okay, a lot of one). Now it's hovering around 500 a week for all my classes which is manageable. I've actually yet to skip a reading 'cause my profs make us write summaries of every chapter/article so I haven't figured out how to be a normal grad student and do half of my work yet. It's a lot of reading, that's for sure.
 
RayneeDeigh said:
At the beginning of the semester I was assigned 1000 pages a week (no joke) but my Assessment prof is a bit of a sadist (well okay, a lot of one). Now it's hovering around 500 a week for all my classes which is manageable. I've actually yet to skip a reading 'cause my profs make us write summaries of every chapter/article so I haven't figured out how to be a normal grad student and do half of my work yet. It's a lot of reading, that's for sure.
Click to expand...

Establish good habits now, because you'll need to tweak them later. :laugh: I wish I could do all of my reading, some pretty fascinating stuff! I have about a dozen books backlogged I want to read, the same for journal articles, working papers, a bunch of PPT presentations on nitty gritty neuro and pharma stuff, etc.

As for my day today:

8:00am.....internship errands! LOR, envelopes, books here, copies there, etc.
9:00am.....Pathophysiology! I love the subject matter, but talk about poor timing, since I don't have a lot of time to read anything.
.
.
12:00pm....All about the 2 paddy turkey burger (no bun) w/grilled veggies. I LOVE this lunch, which is a staple during my long classes like today.
1:00pm More Patho!
.
.
.
5:00pm...Dinner. I'm thinking a nice chef salad.
6:00pm...Essays!
10:00pm...Patho review/studying
12:00am...Sleep. Glorious glorious sleep!

-t
 
I could get hooked on this thread for some reason--It's like reality TV for grad students, er, except it's not.

Today's schedule is thankfully fairly slow (and simple!):

05:00AM - Go to bed (stayed up all night)
07:30AM - Wake up, get prepped for the day
08:00AM - Drive to university
09:00AM - Arrive at Lab, run participants for study, kill time while supervising undergrads (which is why I'm on SDN, although reading something would probably be much more productive), misc busy work
12:00PM - Drive to main campus, break time, read for classes (Biopsych, Psychopathology), might take a 15-20 minute nap but probably not due to a lack of time
02:00PM - Biopsychology
03:30PM - Drive back to Lab, short break to check email, etc.
04:00PM - Lab again to run even more participants (if they actually show)
07:30PM - Drive back home
08:30PM - Home again! Grab food
09:00PM - Review videos of recent WISC-IV assessment, and score
- sometime much later in the night, possibly prep for tomorrow morning's & afternoon's meetings

* GOAL for the day: To be in bed prior to 5:00AM, aiming for 3AM!!! 😴
 
Yesterday....
10am- supervision
12pm- grabbed some lunch, did random lab tasks, read over reviews for recently returned paper, procrastinated by chatting with labmates.
2pm- lab meeting
3pm- client rescheduled, so did lit search to plan new paper to write soon.
4:30pm- drove home
5:00pm- went to gym (30 min cardio + lowers, abs)
7pm- made pizza for dinner
8pm- watched ANTM
9pm- got sleepy unusually early, read a while and went to bed

Today...
8:30am- case conference in the hospital where I have my practicum (very interesting)
10:15am- went home, procrastinated for a while and made lunch
1:00pm- wrote this post
1:15pm- will stop procrastinating, enter into mode of stellar productivity 🙄
 
You people are insane. I'm in bed by midnight at the latest on school nights, and it's often by 10.30.
 
JockNerd said:
You people are insane. I'm in bed by midnight at the latest on school nights, and it's often by 10.30.
Click to expand...

I'd be asleep right now if:

1. I wasn't so hungry...it took forever to get my groceries
2. The USF v. Rutgers game wasn't on.

I'm giving myself the night off from work, so if I can get to bed by 10:00-10:15pm, it will be awesome.

-t
 
Yesterday's schedule (Thursday):

6am: Wake-up and exercise (50 minutes of cardio)
8:30am: Took out trash, cleaned up some, washed yesterday's dishes, ironed clothes
9am: Reading for class/classwork
11:30ish: checked email, surfed the net, pleasure-read, set Grey's Anatomy & Ugly Betty to record
1pm: Research for Qualifying paper (1 hour)
3:30ish: Photocopying an article for my Qualifying paper at a campus library
4:10pm-6:50pm: Assessment Lab
7-9:40pm: Psychological Measurement and Intellectual Assessment
10ish: Arrive home/eat dinner/prep for tomorrow/relaxed and surfed the net
12m: Bed
 
This would be more interesting if I actually had class today...

7:30- wake up, get ready for Practicum interview
9:20- arrive fully 40 minutes early to interview with nowhere to go but inside... credit given to unreliable public transportation
9:30-11- interview for Practicum I Trainee position at a substance abuse recovery facility... and get offered a spot! Woohoo! Finding a practicum has NOT been fun for me.
11-12- hour bus ride home
12- eat lunch, call everyone I know about my practicum offer... and what to do about the other agency that I have an interview with next week...
2-3- much needed/deserved nap.
3- public transit again
4- meeting with supervisor of free clinic to learn about services available to homeless individuals for Intercultural Awareness Class
5-6 get home, stress over which practicum site i like more... gmail, facebook, and SDN to waste time 🙂

The rest of the day...
6- dinner, tv, make pro and con list about both practicum agencies and stress over my decision even though agency 2 has yet to make me an offer. And yes, I will actually do this. 🙂
7- write paper, finish stats lab, decide what I need to get done over the weekend.

What a fun day. Somehow I felt very productive even though I didn't do much. I <3 this thread. It's like constant moral support, seeing how busy everyone else is too!
 
well all I can say is that I am so busy I never have time to get on SDN anymore! I missed out on all the fun, but I'm going to post anyway. Even if nobody cares anymore, it still makes me feel good to write it all down and see on where all my time goes. So if I'd had time to post on 10/16 when T4C started this...

7:00-up and at 'em. Coffee and the news with the pup in my lap
8:30 off to school for assessment, the thing that sucks up all my time
9:45-12:30 assessment
12:45-3:45 GA work
3:45-4:00 cram "lunch" down my throat
4:15-6:45 test/measurement class
7:30 home to a dinner cooked (?) by hubby...probably grilled chicken salad
8:30-1:00 homework (score protocols, reading mostly)

Last week I finally tracked all my hours and it's easily 65+ on average. It's amazing that I'm still breathing.
 
Here is my schedule for today
6:45am--get up, breakfast, check email, SDN, etc., glance at the NY Times front page realizing I don't have time to read it.
8:00am--brisk walk to the train station
8:15am--take train to school while getting some reading done
9:30am--make copies, print off homework assignments, generally prep materials I will need for the day.
10:30am--research advisor meeting
12pm--deliver lecture/discussion to the undergrad class I TA
1:30pm--stats class and lab
4:30pm--head to the bar with the students in my year because it's Friday and we can afford to relax a little bit
5:50--head home on train
6:30--work for too little money at my part-time job
8:30--finally home to do laundry, dishes, and/or start on the weekend's ample homework
 
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