Carnival Of Graduate Student Life

First Carnival Entry: Why Get An MBA?

2006-10-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

Generative Transformation has an elaborate and well composed discussion on why to get an MBA degree. It is interesting that there is a thought that goes beyond just the money part of the degree, namely, self-awareness.

Here is the link to the article: Why Get An MBA?

Homework In Graduate School

2006-10-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

This is a repost from an earlier entry on my Money, Matter,and More Musings blog; just doing it because this place is more fitting for it.

It's that time of year again. There is a ton of homework, just 24 hours in a day and the coffee never seems strong enough.

Homework is slowly taking me to the dark side. I feel it calling. I have resisted it for too long now. To counter my resistance, it has unleashed it's proven weapon: Deadline! and now it is also threatening unfriendly consequences to my grades. So I am going to take heed and work on it for now. That means less attention to important activities like to blogging, checking my sitemeter statistics....and yeah Yodlee.

Some homeworks are a real waste of resources; especially badly composed ones. It masks the real learning and simply burdens the system (students, instructors and graders all included) with a whole lot of meaningless jargon. There have been instances when a homework has taken less than an hour and taught things I will treasure for life, and there have been others when I have worked on a homework for a whole week and did not learn anything.

So all you teachers, professors and instructors out there, spend some time on giving good constructive homeworks. Don't waste everybody's time and energy with bad ones.

Carnival Looking For Graduate Student Bloggers

2006-10-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

Anyone out there interested ?

In the Spirit of Graduate Studies

2006-10-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

Let me start the carnival by this inaugural nonsense post.

Me and two of my team-mates were working late on a project recently. After sufficient frustration with compiling a 50 page document, we started talking on how this life sucks (yeah ...the usual stuff). Here is a brief excerpt of the conversation:

G : Man...this PhD was not a good idea. I am killing myself here while most of my undergraduate classmates are settled and talking about secure retirement. I Think at 27 I am getting too old for this research stuff...I should be looking to get married now.

P: Dude, I am 23 and I already feel too old to be studying; feels like I am loosing on a ton of money.....(yeah does sound like an new graduate student)

J: You guys have no idea what "old" is like. I am 40 and I recently started my Phd. And now, both me and my kid, we do our respective homeworks together.

Woah...40 years old !? Amen to the spirit of graduate studies !!!

The astute among us will immediately establish the nationalities of G, P and J from the above conversation :)

Welcome To The Carnival Of Graduate Student Life

2006-10-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

Are you a graduate student? Want to share some interesting episodes related to your graduate studies? Something about your professors? Workload beyond tolerances? Low pay? Bad homeworks? :)

Give a vent to your steam here.

We will run this carnival on an experimental basis and see how it goes from here.

Submit your articles through Blog Carnival using this link.