Thursday, June 05, 2008

Done with qualifiers ... but competition moves ahead

Done! I’m sure I’m done with qualifying exams because I did well. But just as I was thinking of maybe taking it easy for the next couple of weeks so I could spend more time with the family, I saw that dreaded paper by someone else doing the very thing I’m working on. Arhggggg!!!! So I’m back in the lab early tomorrow analyzing the paper to see exactly what they did and charge ahead to get results. Such is the life in a nanoscience research lab (as in other fields, of course).

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

One done .. one to go

The first day of qualifying exams went well. Just a few minutes ago (and much too late to do anything about it) I realized I made a mistake in one of the problems. But I'm pretty sure I did the rest correctly.
I feel pretty good after this and am actually somewhat impatient to see Thursday come and go and get done with this so I can get back to lab and doing something else.
I've also been trying to figure out a way to organize the literature that I read. I'm thinking of using a combination of Fox It to annotate PDF files, Gmail to store them, and Zotero to keep references and other notes. I am thinking of doing it this way because I have to work in different computers. If this works I'll post more about it.

Monday, June 02, 2008

All done studying

Now that I've reviewed how to size a distillation column (something I am sure I will never do) I'm officially done studying for qualifying exams. I have to say I enjoyed the experience as you get to see the whole of your discipline stripped of extra stuff and reduced to the bare basics. It kind of gives you perspective again on what you know and what you can get into deeper if you want to.

Tomorrow is the first day of testing. We'll see how it goes. I actually feel prepared and not that anxious. I'm not sure this is a good thing though.

In any case, I'll review a few more problems and then rest.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Qualifying Exams

I am going through my second round of Grad School. First round was in a Big Research University (BRU), now I'm in Small Research University (SRU) but with a Big Potential Advisor (BPA). My advisor is really the only reason I decided to go through grad school all over again, although I have to say that what I was doing was not really fulfilling and I missed being in a lab, reading papers, discussing science. It's just my thing, I guess.

Anyway, next week I will be presenting my qualifying exams (as they are called here) and am studying like hell what I learned in two or three years in two weeks. Which makes me wonder whether this is the best way to evaluate whether you are worthy of continuing your PhD studies.
Over at BRU the preliminary exam was oral. You basically had to find out what classes the members of your committee taught and study those. Over here at SRU, there are eight exams for the "basic" disciplines that "every good chemical engineer" should know well.

At first I thought it was crazy to present eight exams. But in fact, now that I'm almost done studying for them, it doesn't seem that crazy. It's doable and I think reasonable. Still, it is certainly not a good measure as to whether you will be succesful in your PhD studies I don't think. For example, in my particular case, my research only tangentially touches on some of the subjects that I'm studying for in this test. This is because the type of research that is being done in chemical engineering departments has changed in a big way. No longer are distillation columns and enormous equipment the focus of our discipline. Now we talk biomicronanothingees science. So should the exam be changed? I'm not sure. I still think every ChemE student should know his fluid mechanics and mass transfer operations, but the reality is that knowing that will not correlate with the research done in order to obtain the PhD for a lot of us.

It's something I think about sometimes. But what the hell ... I have eight tests next week.