Revolutionary Graduate School Heroes

The other day, there were 2 separate articles in the New York Times about graduate students killing their advisors. (You may need to set up a free New York Times account using only your email address in order to read the articles.) Surprisingly (or perhaps not), I have yet to tell a graduate student about these newspaper articles and hear anything but delighted glee or sympathy for the graduate students. Sympathy for the murdered advisors/professors is never expressed. Allow me to summarize key components of these particular magistricides:

In the first article, a graduate student completes his thesis, but is not awarded a $2,500 academic prize for excellence from the university. Naturally, he killed his advisor, department head, and 3 other people, as well as paralyzing a sixth person. Tragically, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Chinese student association at the university hailed him as a hero. Recently, a semi-autobiographical film about his life was submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, wherein the advisor is painted as the bad guy. (Note to self: rent this movie.)

In the second article, 3 different graduate students convicted of magistricide are briefly discussed, as well as a homicidal professor who didn't get tenure. The first student is the stuff of legend: he murdered his academic advisor with a ball-peen hammer when he was told that he would not receive his doctorate in mathematics after nineteen years of research. My first thought on this case was: "I would've done it after 10 years, regardless of whether I would get my degree or not." He was sentenced to 7 years in prison, and expressed absolutely no remorse for what he had done when he was released. My second thought was: "The jury wasn't particularly sympathetic, were they? I would've found him 'not guilty'." Of course, his jail term of 7 years must've been a walk in the park compared to 19 years of graduate school.

Another graduate student was told by his advisor that his doctoral study was being terminated, and he would only receive a master's degree, after seven years. The student went to the professor's house and shot him. I suspect his jury was full of professors, because he is currently serving a life sentence.

The third graduate student (I have some background info on this, so I know more than the article says) was giving his thesis defense for his master's degree, and his committee raised an objection concerning a particular point of his work. They denied him the degree and sent him back to do more research. A year or so later he prepared to defend his thesis again. He walked into the room hours in advance, put a handgun in a box, and returned later on that day with his committee to begin the defense. When they raised the same objection he walked over to the box, pulled out the pistol, and murdered them. Again, he must have had a jury full of professors, because he is serving 3 life sentences.

The last person I will discuss is the most hardcore. This guy was a professor at a university trying to get tenure. He was denied tenure and killed 4 of his colleagues. Currently, while serving a life sentence, he has continued to carry out his research from his prison cell. He recently wrote on his blog:

I hope to be remembered as a person who had enough courage to fight lawlessness with deadly force and I hope to encourage others to do the same.

(Note: I have no intention of killing anybody, nor am I going to flip out. However, I find this amusing. Perhaps only graduate students will be able to relate...)

1 month, 1 page, 1 goal.

The other day (the 21st) was one month from my committee's imposed "2 months of experiments". So, one month down, one to go! It has felt like forever, yet only just the other day I was starting these experiments... I believe I currently exist in some undiscovered spacetime warp which is capable of expanding and contracting time simultaneously. That's my theory.

As of Friday night, I have written (secretly) one page of my thesis. Well, technically two pages, as the page I wrote was single-spaced, and the thesis writing guidelines clearly state that the thesis should be written double-spaced. But wow, it might take a while.

The art of thesis writing varies from lab to lab, due entirely to one's advisor's opinion on how a thesis should be structured and written. A student's first reader and committee will also have some influence over how the thesis is written, but I think that they often respect the advisor's viewpoint on such an issue.

When you write your thesis, you first submit a draft to your advisor, who marks up every other word and fills every margin with red ink. After incorporating the changes, you submit your second draft to your advisor, who marks it up with red ink. Repeat ad nauseum.

Eventually, your advisor signs off on your thesis, allowing you to give it to your first reader, who is a member of your thesis committee. The first reader's only job is to quickly read the thesis and decide whether the thesis is sufficient to warrant a defense. What is a little odd about this is that your first reader is already on your committee and has therefore given you permission to write your thesis, meaning that your body of work is sufficient to warrant a defense. So they don't really need to read your thesis, since they know what it contains; they only need to tell you that it warrants a defense.

But what really happens is that your first reader pulls out his or her red pen and goes to town substantially altering your thesis. Even though you theoretically do not need to placate your first reader by making changes, in practice it is necessary. You go back to your computer and hack away at the keys for a few days and incorporate your first reader's "suggestions".

Once your first reader hands you back your thesis and says, "This thesis is sufficient to warrant a public defense," then you are allowed to hand out copies to the rest of your committee. (Note that those exact words must be spoken; if they are misspoken the Army of the Dead will awake.)

Fast forward to your defense, which is basically giving a talk to anyone that wants to go (mostly your department), and then you sit in a room with your committee and they ask you questions and discuss your thesis. Often, some committee members demand revisions to parts of your thesis. So you end up spending a few days (or more) completing the desired revisions.

That is more or less what usually happens. However, the amount of time the whole process takes depends almost entirely on your advisor's opinion of how a thesis should be structured and written. I will outline the extremes of opinions that exist among advisors, and the what thesis writing entails for those students.

THE BLESSED
First, the lucky ones. Some advisors actually are grounded in reality and know that the only people who will ever read the student's thesis are the committee members. On a rare chance, some other poor soul might mistakenly pick up a copy of the thesis and peruse it, but that happens to maybe one in a hundred theses; all of the pertinent information is always published in a short (3-9 page) paper, which is far better reading than a thesis, and easier to acquire. (Published papers can be downloaded as pdf files; theses can only be acquired by contacting the university's library, or a company that catalogues theses, and ordering a copy for like $50. Why pay $50 when you can read the "CliffNotes" version for free?)

These advisors don't put too much stock in the thesis, and usually allow the student to fluff up their already-written publications, expanding on theoretical points that aren't discussed much in the publication, and usually requiring delineation between experiments the student did versus experiments other lab members did. Often, such theses are between 50-100 pages in length (remember they are double-spaced, and most of the text is already written), and take anywhere from a weekend to 2 weeks to write, depending on whether the student is a good writer or is in the lab performing experiments while writing.

THE CURSED
Then there is the other extreme: advisors who cannot ever understand that excess time spent writing a thesis is time wasted. Often, these advisors think that everything a student does is a reflection of them, and therefore the thesis must be impeccably written. Impeccably. Like, Pulitzer prize-winning, Nobel prize-winning, Faulkner Award-winning (well, maybe not that last one; that award is for fiction)... You get the idea.

I suspect these advisors had to go through the same tortuous process of writing a "real" thesis, and feel compelled to make others suffer the same fate. Kinda like men who have awful names, but pass them down to their sons, only altering the number at the end of their name: Huckleberry Hackensacker IV; Timothy Tinkletop, Jr.; Dick Hertz III, etc. ("I went through the Hell of having such a name, and Gosh-darn-it, you will too, son.")

These theses often are in excess of 300 pages and take 2 or more months to write.

Unfortunately, my advisor and his beliefs on theses fall into the latter category. The two students from my lab who have graduated before me have had theses of 306 pages and 360 pages in length. The 360-page-length thesis was written by a student who desired to write a short, elegant, 100-page theses. I guess that plan backfired.

So here I sit, 1-page deep into a mountain of words that I will have to string together into cohesive sentences: my goal, starting April 20th when I finish lab work here at Columbia. Forever. :)

Bueller? Bueller?

The other night Yilin saw 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'. For the first time. Ever.

She loved it (naturally; who doesn't?). I think she particularly enjoyed seeing so many stars early in their careers (Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen, etc).

"Yes, I am Abe Froman. The Sausage King."

Altered Beast

I have made a quick change to the layout of my blog for a few reasons:

1) In order to have custom images for buttons, quotation marks, the header image, etc, you need to have server space somewhere to externally link to. I was using my Columbia account space for that. However, I won't have it indefinitely, and haven't looked into getting webspace somewhere. (I used to be able to get around this by having a junk blog where I would post images of my header, for example, and then it would be on Blogger's servers. So I would use that link as the "external link" for my real blog. Sneaky, huh? Well, I just went on to my junk blog and when I tried to create a new post, I saw this:

Warning. This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. ...

Someone saw this and didn't appreciate my cleveritudinous approach.)

2) I wanted a bit of a change.

3) Blogger has a new "layout" format that allows for some easier customization to be done, so you don't have to use the sometimes-generic-looking premade templates. Of course, the html (if you choose to jump into the trenches, like I do) is a lot crazier.

So, if you have any suggestions about certain font sizes/colors being too difficult to read, let me know. If your objections are purely aesthetic, well, I could just go back to the old color scheme. ;)

Oh, and I want a confession: who thought this was about the arcade game or Sega Genesis port? ;)

You fool!

This past weekend Yilin and I went to Patisserie Claude, as per our weekly custom. As usual, he came out from the back to serve us himself, preferentially treating us with warm croissants fresh from the oven. (This is a bonus only given to certain long-term customers; we had been going every weekend for about one year before he started doing this.)

In line (not immediately) behind us were two women. One of them, when given her croissant from the front display, asked to have "a warm croissant from the back". Claude was angered, and said, "What? Do you think this is shit?", pointing to the croissant she had been given by the server/cashier who works in the front. He mumbled something else, to the effect of "It's good enough for you," but I am not completely certain.

As the two women were leaving, the one complained to the other, "He gave those people warm croissants from the back..."

Haha! You fool! You will never get warm croissants from the back now that you have stirred Claude's wrath!

The same thing happens when people try to bring dogs inside or use cell phones. He comes out and loudly berates them, telling them to get out of his establishment. What most people don't realize, because it is not common in New York City, is that Claude is not a pastry chef; he is an artisan.

Once, we saw two young women order a croissant and a quiche. One woman was introducing the other to Claude's. She asked Claude to cut the croissant and quiche in half. He said, "No" and walked away with a look of disgust. You do not ask a painter to cut his paintings in half, or a sculptor to smash a statue into fragments for individual sale. Likewise, you shouldn't ask a master chef to destroy a comestible he spent many years perfecting.

Oh well, more croissants for me and Yilin!

"This is Sparta!"

This weekend Hyunmi, Yilin, and I went and saw 300. I enjoyed it very much. However, I picked up on all the differences between the movie and comic book, as well as the slight departures from perceived historical reality, so I was left with an awkward feeling because I had trouble immersing myself in the movie rather than analyzing it. But I did really like it, and will certainly be buying the DVD when it is released. I may even go see it in the theater again, if I can find the time.

I already mentioned the plot in a previous post, so I won't rehash that here. The visual feel of the movie was very much like that in the comic book, which was cool. The music was pretty good as well. Yilin and Hyunmi both think that Gerard Butler (King Leonidas) is hot.

If you make the wise decision to see this movie, sit around for the end credits: they are done in a sort of moving comic book illustration style that isn't easy to describe but is cool to see. I'm not sure why they didn't do the opening credits like that. Perhaps it was because there weren't really opening credits and the movie went straight into combat... (Not really, but it could've.)

Daylight savings? No thanks.

This morning Yilin told me that the whole 'daylight savings time' thing was shifted forward thanks to congressional insight (not to be confused with 'oversight'). I applaud Congress' effort to save energy, and wonder if it's an election year (is it? I honestly don't know). However, Yilin told me that most computers and cell phones won't change time properly as we are used to them doing, obviously due to their programming.

So now I am going to change my clocks twice because they won't change when they are supposed to (now), but will change when they are supposed to (before)? No thanks. I see no need to have daylight savings time anyway. I certainly can't be bothered to change my clocks twice. (Yesterday I was in lab for 17 hours, longer than usual these days, but not by much. I certainly didn't know or care what time it was, either.)

What ever happened to waking up and going to bed with the sun, and having noon at midday? What's wrong with that? I am pretty sure that is what France does. How else would they have a 35 hour work week, and take a month off in the summer when days are longest (the holiday compensates for working those long summer hours, I am sure)? I don't need time zones, especially not in graduate school where everyone wakes up whenever they want and starts their workday whenever they feel like it. (A labmate of mine is seldom in before 3pm, usually showing up between 4 and 5pm. However, he works until 5 or 6am.)

What I need is my own time zone. From now on I work on Josh Standard Time. JST is based on a fallible and whimsical interpretation of the lunar calendar, adjusted for the average nighttime temperature and precipitation. The algorithms used to convert more conventional times, such as Eastern Standard Time, are far too complicated to go into here (not to mention that they are copyrighted), so you'll just have to ask me what time it is in JST to know the answer. (Note that JST uses a metric clock and no unit of time is equivalent to your notion of 'second', 'minute', or 'hour'.)

(The previous paragraph was a joke, and should not be interpreted as a sign of impending madness.)

I am starting to think more and more that I am a Luddite. I could happily do without cellphones, clocks, skyscrapers, TV, radio, cars, and anything that is powered by something other than me. This is odd because I enjoy photography (which often incorporates a fair amount of technology) and keeping a blog (which is entirely technology driven).

"He is one of those men who have overshot their true generation." -Dr. Watson, The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My net worth

The other day Yilin and I were calculating our net worths. It's really simple: you add up the value of all of your assets, and subtract the total value of all of your liabilities (debts). All it states is that if you had to sell everything you own on eBay, gather up all of your cash, and then pay off credit card bills, student loans, etc, your net worth is how much money would remain. What you get is a financial snapshot of yourself at one brief instant of time; your income has no bearing on your net worth.

As such, this value only has meaning in specific situations, because oddities can arise. For instance, Joe could earn $500k per year on Wall Street, own $30k of furniture and household stuff, but have $100k of gambling debts to the local bookie. His net worth would be -$70k. Meanwhile, Shmoe is a janitor in the Bronx, earns $20k per year, owns a pimped out 1992 Honda Civic worth $5k, and has $300 of credit card debt. His net worth is $4700; almost $75k more than Joe's. Would anyone think that Shmoe is worth more than Joe? Of course not.

My net worth is a hefty negative number due to my frugal lifestyle and deferred undergraduate debt. What I have realized from this exercise is that I am worth more alive than dead: If I were to die then my debts would pass on to... somebody. (Not yet Yilin because we aren't married; maybe my parents and brother.) However, if I were to continue living then I would earn money and pay off my debts as well as stimulate the economy. (Currently, I stimulate the economy about as much as Hillary Clinton stimulates Bill.)

Wealthy people are worth more dead, regardless of their income: Their heirs would have much to gain from their death, the government (and theoretically us citizens) would reap the benefits of the inheritance taxes collected from the estates of the wealthy, and some portion of that money would come out of savings and be spent on things like yachts and sports cars (which are necessary to grieve over recently-deceased relations of vast financial stature), stimulating the economy.

Strange, isn't it, how those of us who are literally "less than worthless" from an accountant's point of view are actually worth the most alive...

Some people just can't do their job

This post may not be fully intelligible to all of you, as it contains references to biological reagents and scientific protocols that I use in lab, but the main message should be clear. Correction: I will make the main message perfectly clear right now from the start:

SOME PEOPLE JUST CAN'T DO THEIR JOB.

I needed to order some very short very specific sequences of DNA for a procedure called PCR. (PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction and is a method of amplifying specific sequences of DNA from cells or tissue. You can produce millions of copies of one gene, or part of one gene, for use in other procedures. One reagent necessary for PCR is oligonucleotide primers, the very short very specific sequences of DNA that I needed to order. Still with me? It doesn't matter; read on.) We order our primers from a company called Invitrogen, which rocks. However, their online ordering procedure for custom primers (meaning you get to choose the exact DNA sequence) doesn't rock.

Invitrogen allows you to request a confirmation email of your order be sent to you. This is good. However, the confirmation email does not include the sequences of the primers you ordered. This isn't so good. Imagine that you went online and ordered a custom t-shirt that has a bunch of numbers on it. Let's say these numbers are your birthdate, your age, your anniversary, etc. The t-shirt company sends you an email saying, "Hey, we got your order" but does not confirm what the string of numbers to be printed on the t-shirt is. Essentially, they haven't acknowledged what it is that you exactly ordered, which could be a pain if they screwed up your t-shirt (e.g., changed your birthday by accident) and you have no proof that you ordered something different.

Invitrogen claims that they do not email sequences to you in the confirmation email because "email is an insecure form of communication, and we do not want to be responsible if your competitors hijack/intercept/decrypt your email and steal your primer sequences". (That's not a direct quote, but a paraphrase.) This is absurd for two reasons: 1) What university doesn't force secure email upon it's employees/students? and 2) I don't think any scientist in the history of science has been so desperate to obtain something so trivial as primer sequences by way of something as technically difficult (for biological researchers, that is) as intercepting and decrypting email. Heck, the US government can't crack 128-bit encrypted messages (so they claim; conspiracy theorists don your tinfoil hats and refute me), nevermind some 70-year old tenured professor who can barely email and word process his grants and papers.

My advisor has called Invitrogen more than once to complain about this, and the idiocy of their policy. He was told to request that the sequences be sent in the confirmation email by typing so in the "comments" box on the order form. It often is ineffective: they don't email you your sequences.

One day he called Invitrogen to complain yet again and they gave him their absurd reason why they don't email the sequences to you. He said, "Then why don't you have a little box that you can just check on the order form so that you can risk having the sequences intercepted?" The Invitrogen representative's response was the standard "We don't have that feature on our order form, but if you request that the sequences in the 'comments' box we will make sure they are included in the confirmation email." My advisor then asked, "What do you do to make that happen on your end? Do you just check off a little box on your computer when you review my order?" The answer: "Yes."

Frustrating, no?

So when I ordered 40+ primers the other day I wrote in the comments box: "Please check the little box to send my sequences to me in the confirmation email." It worked. My labmate ordered some primers the other day and simply wrote: "Please send the sequences in the confirmation email." No luck. Apparently you have to let them know that you know that they only have to check a box, a task that they are often incapable of performing.

Some people just can't do their job.