Category Archives: Surviving Grad School

Helpful info on Do It Yourself grad studies, because you gotta do so much of it by yourself… But you’re not alone…!

Theory of work

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A couple of days ago, I experienced a moment of epiphany.

I had been getting sick of constantly having my todo list grow bigger and bigger at a faster rate than I can manage them.
“Give me one thing at a time!” I wanted to yell at the world. I mean, I can multitask if I have to, but only for a short period of time, not for a super long continuous period of time. So, lately, I found myself complaining everyday, non-stop.

When a journal paper I had been working on came back with a second round of reviewer’s comments, tragically requesting me to further make revisions to the paper, I felt my sigh dig a hole in the ground.

So I started complaining. On top of all the thesis related work I have to do, these people want me to work on this paper (again!) despite the fact that I have worked on the paper for countless number of months. C’mon, give me a break.

As I felt myself rapidly growing impatient with the world I realized that, despite all the complaining, I sill have to get them all done – all by myself, might I add.

At that very moment, I reached the state of Zen. I could not resist the temptation to reach for the longest piece of paper I could find on my desk, and made myself the following work of art.

This masterpiece, which now sits above my office computer, gave me the courage to tackle the journal paper.

Surprisingly enough, my masterpiece was right (for the moment). I shortened my average complaining time before starting to tackle my todo lists, and I was able to get it done sooner than before. The total time spent in complaining before starting to revise the paper was about … half an hourish I think. Many many times better than before. And it took me a day and a half to revise the paper, which could’ve been three days or more if I spent more time complaining and kicking and screaming about it.

Then, I felt the superficial momentum of work kick in and thought, ‘I should just continue tackling my todo list and finish writing parts of my thesis work while I am at it‘. I felt as though I could finish writing my thesis non-stop from the very beginning until the end.

Henceforth went my long weekend, until…

… until I got sick on Monday and couldn’t do anything but to nap and hang out at home doing nothing. Go figure. Too much work usually comes with a fair balance of consequences.
So there it is. It’s probably true that I can finish my stuff earlier than later if I quit complaining and ‘just do it’. But the reality of it is, my body lets me do only so much work. Bah…!

Then again, I know there’s no way out of this. If I want to finish my thesis asap, I need to keep my engine revving as much as possible, even if it has to halt once in a while. 🙁

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Housekeeping? Labkeeping?

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When you walk into someone’s house, there’s one thing that you automatically notice. And that is whether the house is cleaner, messier, or just about the same level of cleanliness as your place.

And at messy places, you know that the place is either occupied by a group of people who pretend to genuinely cherish messiness, or a group of people who just don’t get along with each other because of their differences in housekeeping rules.

I mean, no one wants to be always on duty to clean other people’s mess and no one wants to always do other people’s dishes. But everyone wants to have not-so-overflowing garbage bags to throw your garbage into whenever you are in need of disposing not-so-desirable items, and everyone wants a clean set of dishes and utensils for those sensitive times when you are hungry enough to kill someone for a bowl of instant noodles served in a bowl (not a plate, and not the same bowl with your roommate’s last night’s instant noodles in it).

At these sensitive times, I often find that people reach a level of anger that either explodes, or gets bottled up and transformed into a series of revenge against roommates (i.e., a whole bunch of dirty dishes left in the sink for the roommate to use, and your clean dishes stacked away and hidden safely in your closet for only you to use).

It’s kind of the same for labs.

There’s always housekeeping (or, may I suggest, labkeeping) things that can get annoying.

What about the CARIS lab (the lab I call home these days)? Well… my lab is not an exception. Although my labmates don’t really reach the gotta-revenge type stage of housekeeping problems, we recently did have a sensitive issue surrounding an organic compost bin we implemented at the beginning of the summer. I guess trying out the compost program in the summer was a bad idea, since the custodians stopped emptying the organic compost bins nearby, and so, we stopped emptying the compost bin in the lab… But… that didn’t stop us from continuing to throw stuff into the compost bin… until… until the amount of courage required to open the lid of the bin exceeded all labmates’ maximum willingness to be environmentally friendly.

The compost bin that contained food waste from the lab for months over the summer.

This resulted in a family (and, might I add, its members’ extended families) of fruit flies happily moving into the lab and joining the lab’s robotics research. Now that we have so many new brains literally surrounding us, we should be able to do much more creative and innovative research… right?…

Anywho, we’ve decided at the last week’s lab meeting that we’d decommission the compost bin. And I got pulled into the job. Yuk! But as the person who brought it into the lab in the first place, I guess I am responsible for getting rid of it.

The compost bin had been sitting at a corner of our lab, right next to a robot that was decommissioned a while back (even before my time). By the mere picture of the bin, you probably don’t understand the fear I felt when I lifted it, and realized how full the bin was (and has been for the many many months).

Luckily, while I finally had the courage to empty it of its guts — the food waste that potentially has become a complex mixture of bio-hazards — I ran into one of the ICICS custodians. Oh man, the custodians at the ICICS building are so nice. They always say hi to me whenever they see me at the lab or in the hallways, and they are always so friendly.

And today, the custodian helped me empty the guts straight into a heavy duty black garbage bag even without me asking. He even took it to the custodian room and cleaned it for me at one of the wash stations where they have a magical hose that pumps out warm soapy water on demand. I was prepared to be the martyr of the day, and had prepared myself a wimpy plastic grocery bag. But before the cleaning process begun, I had not realized that I may have needed an extra bag to throw up.

I really could not thank him enough. And since he totally saved my day, I will extend his generosity to the blog’s audience by not posting pictures of what the compost bin really contained.

Now that the compost bin is clean and empty, I am ready to call ‘Not it!’ for further labkeeping duties for this month.

Cleaned and cleared of its bio-hazard containment duties...

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Creating Connections… at UBC

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Dear incoming and existing Mech Eng graduate students,

On behalf of myself and I (which doesn’t speak for much), I would like to send you an early (for the incoming students) and late (for those current students whom I haven’t met yet) yet warm welcome to UBC Engineering. It’s mid August already, and I thought I would’ve graduated by now, but I am happy to let you know that I will be around for a couple of more months to blog here, and hopefully get to know you a little bit.

Today, I would like to talk about a serious issue many students have that may be more relevant to you than you currently may think. The issue is this – how do you get to know people, to a comfortable enough level, such that you can call them up and hang out with them on a regular basis? In other words, how do you ‘get a life’ outside your lab, when the first set of people you’ll get to know and learn to rely on are the people at your lab? It may be it’s your first time in Canada/Vancouver/UBC/grad studies, and you know there are tons of things the city/campus/country has to offer that are waiting for you to explore. To put it a little more bluntly, where do you find people outside the lab???

Coming alone to UBC? Don't worry, we'll get you settled down no problem. You just need to come out a little, and be willing to get to know new people.

Your labmates, who may have been around for months/years, will probably know enough to guide you through your curious appetite to poke around different parts of your new habitat. They will probably be a good resource for you to ask questions such as “Where can I get a fob access to the lab?”, “What’s a fob?” (that was one of my questions when I first came here. lol), “Where do you usually go for groceries?”, and “Am I supposed to be in the lab 9-5 everyday?”.

But the feedback I’ve been getting from people regarding their ‘settling down at UBC’ experience as a Mech Eng grad student is that there are benefits to meeting people who are going through the same things (i.e,.  the same ‘settling down at UBC phase’), who are not necessarily your labmates, and it’s also hard to get to know people outside the lab whom you can hang out with – so that you’re not always hanging out at the lab.

I happened to be lucky to have come to UBC with a whole bunch of my classmates from undergrad that I didn’t have much problem of looking for people to hang out with. But that’s not always the case for most people.

If you are anything like me — who is totally not athletic, never has the time to cleanse myself of my lab-loving workaholic tendencies, enjoys hobbies that don’t necessary require interactions with other people (i.e., watercolour painting, playing the flute, and blogging) — then you really don’t get to meet a lot of new people. I even joked with some of the MEGAers at last week’s MEGA meeting that if I were to use Facebook’s CheckIn functions a lot more, and checked in at the places I go to everyday, then my Facebook wall would look something like this:

AJung has checked in at the Lab.

AJung has checked in at Home.

AJung as checked in at the Lab.

AJung has checked in at Starbucks (2 min. walk from the lab).

AJung has checked in at the Lab.

AJung has checked in at Home.

…

AJung has checked in at the Lab.

Funny, yet sadly true.

So where do you meet new people who will eventually become your social circle. And if you have a social circle already, how do you diversify your social circles?

MEGA is going to do its best to bring new and current students together during the orientation week, but I think people would definitely benefit from taking advantage of some of the social things during the first couple of months – while things are not so busy, you’re loaded with coursework rather than research work, and everything is new and exciting.

First, check out MEGA – Mech Eng Grad Association. You’ve come to UBC to become the world’s most sought-out researcher in your field, and you don’t have time to get involved in student associations. No worries, I get it. But as grad students, there comes a time when you’d like to talk about your supervisors without the presence of them (Mike & Elizabeth: don’t worry, I don’t say anything bad about you guys.. eh hem..!), and need someone to echo your heartache over Mech 598 seminars, get the latest news about deals on Groupon that you don’t want to miss out – i.e.,  ‘get a life’ the grad student way. MEGA runs weekly coffee socials, so that you don’t have to get involved in the administrative stuff behind the association, but you come out to chill, eat cookies, and drink coffee/tea/whatever is there for free. It’s definitely a good way to meet people within the department I think. MEGA has its own Facebook page, website, a Google Calendar, and a mailing list, so that you can stay informed of our next beach party, hike, free pizza/movie nights, and more.

Second, go do the orientation stuff. I know I know… some of the things may sound boring or ‘not your thing’ for you. But just do it. Just for the orientation week. Because otherwise, you may never get the chance to do the potentially awkward stuff with strangers, which means the strangers will remain strangers to you – and not your buds. GSS usually plans some epic events, such as the boat cruise (which I thoroughly enjoyed).

A pic from Creating Connections 2007. I am in this picture somewhere, and so are a number of my current friends who were mere strangers back then.

Third, if you are a lady engineer, like myself, consider going to the Creating Connections 2.0 event. They ran it a couple of years ago when I first came to UBC, and it was an epic event to meet people, not only grad students, but also industry people and professors who are females and share the same pains and pleasures of being a lady engineer in Canada. The best thing about it is that it’s filled with opportunities to meet other lady engineers at other departments, like ECE, Civil, etc., while getting inspired by fabulous guest speakers who gives you these straight-from-experience words of wisdom.

Lastly, share your passion with others. There are good deals throughout the city that are tailored to suit your tastes and hobbies. For example, the Access Pass at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is one thing that I think all students should have, because they allow you to go to these fabulous concerts at the Orpheum for only $10, which is uber cheap – for those of you who dig classical music like I do. And see? You wouldn’t have known about the deal if I hadn’t told you about it. So please feel free to share your passion – whether it be free leftover food at a seminar you attended, or a cheap kayaking/ski trip you came across – with other students through MEGA (you can send emails to mega@mech.ubc.ca and someone — i.e., me, at the moment — will help you forward it to the entire Mech grad students) or leave a note on Facebook and be open to fellow students joining in on sharing your passion.

Along that line of thought, Josh Groban is coming to town on Aug. 30th and there’s student discount at ticketmaster. Woot woot!

Anywho, I hope all the new students have a safe trip to Vancouver, and don’t go through too much trouble finding housing. If you have any questions/comments, feel free to post them here. I’d love to hear from you! 😀

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