Graduate Students

First year graduate student wondering how people feel about undergraduates taking multiple graduate courses. I'm not thrilled by it. I can understand one class, but taking multiple classes doesn't seem right to me. Especially, since they are paying for undergrad tuition. Thoughts?

To upload or not to upload? I've already got an account, for one reason or another. I was considering uploading my dissertation (once I've got an official score) and perhaps one or two of the papers I wrote this year that were more interesting. None have been published yet, and may or may not be, but building up a bit of a profile online might be good. I am uncertain about this, though. What are your thoughts?

People here might enjoy this:

http://porcupine-girl.tumblr.com/post/52888414188/the-top-is-an-email-from-our-department-secretary

My department tried to chide grad students for printing too much - during finals and mere days before quals. One student fought (snarked) back.

This is such a n00b question, but is volunteering for academic conferences worthwhile?(I mean as staff, rather than submitting work for it.) I can see positives (chance to network and learn some new stuff) and negatives (unpaid labour yay) - is there a specific answer to whether it's a good plan or a bad plan? The particular conference I'm thinking of is tangentially related to my interests, it's at my university (no travel costs) and it wouldn't interfere with anything important.

I am applying to grad. school in California. CSU Chico, Humboldt, and other places. I have already talked to their graduate coordinators. They told me not to send something too long, but not too short? They never really gave me a concrete number. How long was your sample? Thanks.

I am a TA but actually teach my own course. In the beginning of the semester one of the students gave me a letter from the Center of Disabilities that she needs special conditions because of her disease. Later this semester she emailed that she couldn't make to the midterm exam as she was not feeling good and asked to come at a different time. I agreed, came (just for her) to my office in my day-off, and just before the time we agreed on she emailed that she was again sick and asked for another make-up. Two days after (Sunday) she came to my office and finally started to write her exam. There was one moment during that time when I left my office and thus she was there alone. I was away for about 15 minutes. When I returned, she had her purse open (it was just next to her, on the desk) and I could see the papers with review problems and formulas sticking out from it. The purse was rather small and the papers stood vertically. So, basically if she wanted to read them, it was totally possible and moreover convenient. I know that when I left the purse was not there. I asked her to explain what is going on. She told me that she needed to find out time and this is why she opened the purse. The instructions written on the exam were: put everything away...this is a close-book exam.
What would you do? I feel that she cheated. Not only was the purse open but the useful (for the exam) papers were sticking out from it.

MA candidate, THISCLOSE to finishing my thesis, so close i could almost shout... but still with a decent amount of work to do.

After a somewhat stagnant several years in my degree (i've been ABT since 2009) i finally kicked my arse in gear this year (unemployment helps) and have finished writing my master's thesis. i sent it to my committee three weeks ago with my advisor's blessing. i thanked them very much for their time in reading this monstrosity, and asked if they could return it by October 1 so I could start on revisions and whatnot to have it into Grad Studies by their Nov 1 deadline.

Today is October 1 and i haven't heard anything from my committee. i'm not panicked (yet), but i'm trying to think ahead on how to deal with this ever-shortening period of time i have if i want to graduate this semester. i haven't been bothering them in the last three weeks... they are very busy folks (one is the chair of my department, the other is C-level staff at my former employer), and i know i am on their lists of Things To Deal With. Plus, i don't want to be a giant bother.

What is the appropriate amount of time for me to panic and politely ask for their status on reading and commenting on my manuscript? The more time elapses, the more concerned i am that they will want major revisions that i won't be able to complete in four weeks. Also, i'm grappling with the ever-present Impostor Syndrome, compounded by the fact that i've languished in ABT land for three years, and practically disappeared for around two years (depression + employment make for bad thesis partners). i've worked really hard over the last nine months to get this thing piled into shape, but still kind of feel like i should be at the bottom of everyone's priority list, and am having trouble asserting myself to be moved up.

Thanks for any advice you can toss my way. There really should be some kind of manual for How To Handle a Thesis Committee, and Impostor Syndrome.

I have upcoming article related to my graduate work. I'm currently using my university email as the author contact.  But I finished my degree since the article was first submitted and it looks like my that email will expire a couple of months after printing.  So, I need to change the email listed on the proof pages before returning them.

Would okay to list my everyday personal email address?  Or, is that likely to result in lots of unwanted spam, and I should create some new email address only used for that article?

Dear all,
I would like to invite anyone who is interested in fluorescent microscopy to my new blog:
green fluorescent blog (http://greenfluorescentblog.wordpress.com/).

I'm in the process of writing my dissertation and manuscript for peer review. I just started inserting references and noticed that -ack!- Mendeley isn't reading my references correctly. First author, journal title, etc are all messed up. It's early enough in the process that I can scrap Mendeley and use EndNote for everyone (my campus has EndNote available for free).  Should I dump Mendeley for EndNote or correct everything manually after the writing is all done?

Suggestions? Pros and cons of doing each?

Zotero's not an option because I'm using a PC for my writing.

EDIT on 5/23/12: My problem ended up being McAffee.  I deleted that and installed MSE instead. Mendeley works almost perfectly now.  And it's letting me edit references after they're imported into the document.  Things are running far smoother than when I wrote my last grant proposal using EndNote.