Meridith and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Qualifying Exam

I’ve made my way all the way to the end of my 20th year of schooling without much in the way of seemingly insurmountable challenges. Sure, the post secondary life is peppered with exams (SAT, ACT, GRE), finals, applications processes, and so on, but while all of these have caused me stress in the past, none even compare to my qualifying exams of my PhD program. This past May, after a year of courses and months of studying, I tackled three days of intense examinations which included a day of two 3-hour Stats Theory exams and nearly 48 hours of a take home applied project. I went in with months of studying, waves of support from friends and family (thanks!) , 6 pages front and back of notes to use, and even a belly full of sushi. I come out… completely and utterly defeated.

Failed like I failed to keep it together during
this episode of Dr. Who.

Going back a bit, studying leading up to these exams had pretty much become my life on top of coursework for my spring classes. The Fear and Guilt set in early and persisted throughout that time. If I was studying I was afraid of not being able to get enough exam practice and progress made in time. If I wasn’t studying, I felt guilty for spending any of the available time I had on anything else. Maintaining your mental health is important during this time, but it becomes increasingly difficult when anytime you make an effort to carve out time for yourself or your relationships that Guilt is always looming. When that first day finally arrived and we had our two theory exams, I tried to pump myself up and really believe in my abilities. I’d always pulled it together before! My brain was just. not. having it. Some of the questions threw me through a loop, some were from topics from other classes that I had not reviewed, some were fairly straightforward but my scumbag brain decided to wait to remember everything relevant until right as I was turning in my exams.

Being an Involved Grad Student

A.K.A How to being involved AND score free meals

I'm a fairly involved graduate student. Rachel is as well. The benefits are numerous, but some of the top reasons we like to be involved include contributing to our respective departments and universities, building our C.V., access to amazing workshops/events/etc, in addition to always knowing where the free food on campus is located! Below are some of our top ways for you to get involved within your own programs!

Part 3 - And Now for Something Completely Different

How We Came to be Here - A Story in Three Parts

This week STS will be sharing stories of coming to careers in STEM fields.  We hope we can offer three different perspectives on finding your career path, navigating higher education, and deciding how and when your journey needs to change.  We’d love to hear any and all of your stories about finding your calling or your struggles/victories if you’re still trying to figure it out right now.  Please share!  It’s important for all of us (especially those in high school and undergrad) to know that there is no single, best way to approach this crazy adventure.  For Part 1, which is Rachel's story, click here. For Part 2, which is Chelsea’s story, click here.

Can I do it on my own? 

I have some impressive posts to follow! I am very lucky to have two wildly inspirational best friends that are both doing such amazing things with their lives. I suppose it’s time for my story. Unlike Rachel and Chelsea, after graduating from WKU in 2009 I took an academic year off to reconsider my options for moving forward. I’d had lots of wonderful experiences during my undergraduate years thanks to my mentor, Dr. Albert Meier. At that point I had done research, internships, studying abroad, an honors thesis, but even with all of this involvement, I still was terribly intimidated by the prospect of graduate school. Albert often reassured me that I could go straight into a PhD program, but to me that seemed like rushing the process. During the time I was working on applications to different programs I was living at home and working at a Red Robin to save money. A lot of my friends had already been accepted and moved onto graduate programs while I still had a giant pile of uncertainty in my future. This was a pretty bleak time for me.

Hindsight and Foresight

My Cohort Chums getting their learn on.

I finished my first semester of my PhD program last month after a long, very long, oh-so-long semester. For context, my previous educational career was in the biological sciences, but when applying to grad school (round two) I made the decision to pursue a degree in Statistics. This semester has held a lot of firsts, frustrations, and failures, but now that the dust has settled, I can look back on it with a clear view (hindsight is 20/20!). I want to take this time to reflect so that I can hopefully emerge with a more confident approach to my future semesters.

A RefreshED Look Back at STS's First Year

Sweet Tea, Science, the idea, was proposed by Rachel in November of 2013. However, it was during our annual get together with our wildly amazing group of friends for New Years 2013/2014 that the ball really got rolling over on our Tumblr. Recently, we've brought in the New Year once more with some of our favorite, most inspirational people in the world. Among these friends is the creative whirlwind that is J.D. VanSlyke, one half of the voices behind our favorite podcast: RefreshED! He was kind enough to lead this interview so that we may share some of what we've done over the past year, and a lot of what we're thinking for the future!

HUGE thanks to JD for his completely fantastic interview questions. Be sure to tune into RefreshED this year. We are very much looking forward to the times ahead and the opportunities that may present themselves. Please let us know if you have any ideas for potential guest posts or if you'd like to collaborate with us in some way! 

2014 Reflections, Resolutions, and Round-Up

Hello, 2015! Rachel and I are living it up with our lovely friends in Boston. This year has been wonderful thus far, but we wanted to take a few moments and reflect on the great things that 2014 brought to us.  One of the most rewarding things for us, in the last year, was starting this blog.  From the launch of our Tumblr blog in January of 2014 to occupying this space in May, we feel so blessed to have this space to share our experiences as travelers, learners, and burgeoning female scientists!

Starting the new year sharing the same physical space is always a blessing for us as a creative duo.  We've been discussing our ideas/hopes/dreams for the future of Sweet Tea, Science, and you can rest assured that we are cooking up some exciting content for 2015!

Assess the Stress

This is it guys. Two more weeks and then FINALS! Wow, two sentences into a blog post and I’m already about to reach for the stress chocolate I have stashed in my desk right next to the stress tea. Admittedly, the rest of the semester is going to be non-stop GO, GO, GO, for me and a lot of y’all out there. We’ve all being kicking ass this year and nothing is stopping us now. Even that crippling fear of ending the semester in a horrific crash and burn finals extravaganza doesn’t stand a chance. Not going to happen, folks. Why? Because we are going to keep our stress in check. Rachel and I have both been through our fair share of finals weeks (not to mention Rachel’s COMPS are tomorrow! GO WISH HER LUCK) and we’ve gathered up our top tips for finishing the semester with minimal freak out moments.

1. Hang on to your favorite mantras for dear life until it’s all over. My personal favorite currently is “Stay ahead of them game, or at least don’t fall behind”, while I’m pretty sure Rachel’s is “All my tasks are accomplishable”.  I used to think mantras were a little silly, but I am a full fledged believer now. Sometimes just taking a moment to remind yourself that you are capable really helps.

Making the Most of MCMC

Sometimes in grad school you need to write about topics that you yourself have little to no clue about. Part of this learning process is figuring out how to teach yourself some of these very difficult concepts. This blog post comes from a blog post I co-wrote with my cohort chum, Justin, 
By: Justin and Meridith

Markov Chains, and particularly Markov Chains Monte Carlo, are a difficult concept to explain. In fact, Dr. Hanks has stated that they are “Easier done than said.” At the very basis of everything, Markov Chains are a system that transitions from one state to another state. It is a random memorylessness process, that is,  the next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it. I have scoured the web and believe the following to be the simplest visual introduction to Markov Chains. (Spoiler Alert: It arose from someone - Andrey Markov -  being a sassmaster.)

Tricks of the Trade: LaTeX

Ok, guys. I’ve been studying as a baby statistician (scienctician? statscientist? ecologitician?)  for a little while now and I’m here to share some of their secrets. Before I started here at Penn State I had a couple ideas about what other grad students in my department would be like. First, everyone would be computer masters of any and all statistical programs: R, SAS, others that I hadn’t even heard of yet. Second, they’d all be completely on top of everything in all of our classes because they all would’ve completed undergraduate and master’s programs also in statistics. And thirdly, it’d be really hard to relate to other students because of my background in biology and my love for the outdoors (because clearly they’d all prefer sitting inside in front of their computers, right?). Thankfully, I was way off base and not only am I not left in the educational dust, but my cohort is full of awesome students with a wide variety of strengths and abilities. And I must collect them all. Yea, my new goal is to be like some sort of awesome Anna-Paquin-as-Rogue statistician and glean all of the amazing abilities and knowledge while I can. Except I think I’ll stick to taking the time to learn and practice things...instead of the whole touchy hurty thing she does. One of my absolute favorite new acquires is the ability to write and code in LaTeX.

Is there a Doctor in the House?

I’m over a month into my PhD program and I’m still oscillating between wild, ecstatic optimism and stone cold, stop you in your tracks fear of the route ahead.  Completing a Master’s degree was two and a half years of hard work and setbacks culminating in one of the proudest, happiest moments of my life - successful defending of my thesis. I’m back on track for five more years of the grad student life, but these will be harder, faster, stronger times ahead than before. Good thing I’ve got my Daft Punk pandora station ready to go. My Masters program didn’t entail any qualifying or comprehensive exams so they seem like lofty, impassable goals now. A sentiment shared by my cohort members, but we’ve found that the more information we have the more confidence we gain. We here at STS would like to share what we know about our own roads to knowledge with you the readers so that you guys can find the confidence to face this journey too.

Joining the Ranks of Tourists and Fangirls in Yellowstone

Obligatory "NP Sign" Photo

Day 13
Yellowstone National Park
Total Miles Hiked: 3.5ish (70.7 overall)

After the rain

Nearing the completion of their Master’s theses, two young, wild women struck out on the adventure of a lifetime. Meridith and Rachel’s 2012 Besties National Park Roadtrip was a transformative journey around the Western US National Parks. 10 states. 9 National Parks and 1 National Monument. One summer of fun!

Yellowstone, the Disney of U.S. National Parks. America’s first national park welcomes over three million people each year, and Rachel and I were certain we wanted to be part of the excitement during our adventures. When we were first planning our trip (which was a very exciting and motivating time during that spring semester) we knew we wanted to take our time exploring this particular gem. Three days seemed adequate, but I’m sure we also could have spent the entire summer there hiking and learning. Even after all of the hiking we had just completed at Rocky Mountain NP, plus arriving at Bridge Bay Campground at 2 am, we couldn’t wait to explore this national treasure!

Right on time!

I hope we don’t need to remind you folks, but on our Awesome Besties National Park Roadtrip we weren’t messing around. We went on an early morning jog along the Natural Bridge Trail (this was when we were being extra amazing...I don’t think it lasted all summer), which was both invigorating and a prime opportunity to try and spot a moose!  Post-jog and granola hoovering, we struck out toward the epicenter of all that is Yellowstone: Old Faithful. And wow, the crowd here couldn’t have been more different from others we’d seen at the previous parks. People of all ages, itty little dogs on leashes, bikers, hikers, photographers, families, and us were all milling around until the next eruption time. Conveniently, eruption timers were plastered all over the viewing area. Old Faithful really did live up to it’s hype and was spectacular to view.

Share a Science Documentary Day

Science documentaries. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you love them. You’ve watched both iterations of Cosmos; you’ve joined Stephan Hawkings on an exploration of the universe; you’ve learned about the rovers, landers, orbiters, and space stations exploring our solar system; you’ve experience Sr. David full-on gushing over a hedgehog. If I were to write a blog post trying to convince you to check out some of Sweet Tea Science’s favorite science documentaries, you would scoff because you are so on top of that. And that’s awesome! Seriously, let’s take a moment to appreciate our collective thirst for knowledge!

However, let’s not get so ahead of ourselves that we forget to share this excitement, enthusiasm, and thirst with others!

Fiscal Responsibility feat. Sweet Graphs

Back in April, I took a big step towards being a Real Adult and started my own budget spreadsheet. After just the first month, I was completely shocked at how much I was actually spending (read: THAT much on dining out?!) Now that I’m heading back into the tight grip of grad schooldom, I know that I need to prepare myself for the grad school lifestyle. Which, of course, means living within my means. My first step in this preparation process was to create a budget spreadsheet for myself. I’m a big believer in ‘knowledge is power,’ and had to embrace that mantra to keep my head up while working on this project.

I started in Excel with two of the provided templates: College Cash Flow and Monthly Home Budget. Both templates provides you with a file already outfitted with calculations to auto-fill the green boxes based on data in the yellow boxes. In the College Cash Flow file, you input your starting money on hand and monthly expenses by convenient categories likely to be used by college students (e.g. books, tuition, etc). Your total income, expenditures, cash flow, and ending balance are automatically calculated for each month. The Monthly Home Budget sheet performs a similar task, but on a shorter time scale. You also have an opportunity to compare your actual income/expenses to budgeted ones. Together they are both useful, but I found that with a little extra work I could create a more interconnected, useful budgeting tool, complete with visuals.

I wanted to know more about my individual purchases in addition to total monthly charges, so I added a section to the Monthly Home Budget sheet at the bottom where I could input each individual purchase with Date, Cost, Type, and Notes. I found that having to record each transaction separately also helped me stay aware of my spending as the month progressed. I have Office 2008 for Mac on my computer, so everything I mention subsequently will be specific to that version of Excel.The major amendments to the spreadsheet templates are as follows:

Cover Letters of Interest

Once you've gone through the process of finding potential grad school advisers, the next step is to contact them. It can be quite scary. That fear that you'll craft a seemingly marvelous letter, attach your well-written CV, send it off, and then…hear back nothing. Or worse, you'll hear back, but they aren't interested in your obvious brilliance. Try not to get in your own head too much. Think of it more as the start of an epic journey towards the next step in your blossoming academic career. The professors that show the most interest in you are going to be the ones that are the best fit for your unique interests and skills. Writing about yourself is hard, but now is the time to brag on yourself a bit. Say it with me, “I am a badass science baller and all the profs want me.” Keep in mind that this letter does not need to be perfect. I just looked back at the cover letter I sent to my MS advisor (keep anything you write about yourself!) and it’s nearly 2 full pages long with way too much information. Thankfully, she wasn't bored, and I had a wonderful, productive Master’s experience.

Say it again!

Eco-Life Hacks: Homemade Greek Yogurt

OK, you probably should be a little weary of
someone who eats as many beets as I do. Fair 'nuff.

Nearly two months into my life in State College and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that I am already branded as the hippie chick. What do you expect from a biologist turned statistician?! I can't help it though; if people bring up podcasts and DIY kitchen adventures, I'm going to be all up in that conversation. If you join me for dinner you'll notice that my kitchen is fully set up while my dining table is a moving box. Priorities. If my apartment building doesn't have a compost bin but there is one outside of my multivariable calculus course, then I am going to carry my compost to campus in a airtight container and dispose of it responsibly. If you invite me to watch the US/Ghana game, I’m definitely going to bring a healthy snack of veggies and hummus. And if you mention homemade yogurt, then I will get super excited and discuss my love for plain, Greek yogurt made by yours truly. Them’s just the facts.

Ten Tips for Tackling that Thesis!

Meridith and Rachel are both in PhD programs, which means dissertation writing will be in their future.  While dissertating will come with its own sets of challenges, they have both managed to survive the process of completing a Masters thesis!  Here are the top ten tips and tricks (in no particular order) they used to keep sane, be productive, and come out the other side.  

1. If you haven't been productive in 15 minutes, then it's time to change locations.

R: First I got work aversion to my desk, then I got work aversion in the stats lab (luckily, after I was done with stats).  I finished writing by visiting (almost) every coffee shop in Long Beach for a few days in a row before I had to move on to my next location.
M: Can someone figure out how to fix the mutual exclusivity of working outside on a sunny day and being able to see your computer screen?

Collaboration Station: Google Drive

Collaboration is a vital part of the scientific process. Do you think I’m going to save the world on my own? Nope. I’m going to need at least a little bit of help. The more great minds working on a project, the faster advancements may be made. And we need advancements (I’m look at you, self-driving car peoples)! Any sort of collaboration is difficult across distances. Technology has made the process easier and email is currently the main tool for communication for researchers. While I’m really proud of the older generations of scientists for getting on track with email, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask them, and everyone, to utilize Google Drive for their collaboration needs.

Being able to access my Google Drive from anywhere keeps me productive!

The Great Grad Student Migration: One Woman's Journey

Two out of four WKU grads have no
idea how to wear their cap.

Well guys, I made it. One bedroom apartment. State College, Pennsylvania. In the five years since living with Rachel and Friends during our undergrad Wonder Years, I haven’t exactly had the best of luck with housing situations. Granted, living in the Chestnut Castle with my best friends really, really set the bar extra high.  Not to say that I’ve suffered through completely horrendous slum lord conditions with outrageous rent prices, but after spending half the time living with my parents and half hopping from place to place in New Mexico, I was absolutely ready for some stability in my own place. And it has been great so far.

I’ve been preparing for this move since getting back from last summer’s European adventures. Finding and getting into a PhD program was my main focus right up until the moment I was accepted back in March. After that, it was one big countdown until the next chapter in my life was ready to begin. And yes, my life chapters do happen to coincide with my academic life stages. I know a lot of you may have just graduated from undergrad, and it’s about time for the great grad student migration. Hopefully, since I made the move a little sooner than most, I can fill you in on what I’ve found to be most helpful during my transition. I started with a little research. First, checking out Rachel’s post from her move last summer, added a few other resources, and I deemed myself ready.

Finding a Graduate Advisor

This is a question for either of you to answer. Over the course of my last year in school I’ve had the most difficult time finding out how to go about seeking potential (M.S.) advisors for graduate school. Like, I’ve tried looking at schools I would like to go to, and looking at researchers there, but I have had little success in making conclusions when my interests are wide-spread. So, how the hell do I narrow down my interests, and what is a (possibly) better way of finding and approaching potential advisors? I am (mentally) paralyzed.

Thanks, freshlypluckedscientist, for the awesome post request! First off, it’s going to be ok! You are not the only one who has felt like this! I’m also fairly certain that we are not the only two who have felt like this! Rachel and I have both gone through this process twice (M.S. and PhD) and we understand how difficult and frustrating the entire process can be. Both times I tried to get a head start on the process and both times I felt like I was always behind schedule and running out of time! Before I even get started on any suggestions or tips, I’d like to reassure you that it’s completely ok to take a year off to figure things out and generally just chill. I took a year off after undergrad and nearly 2 years off after finishing my M.S. degree. I’m now going to be a few years older than the rest of my cohort, but I am going back fresh and excited and motivated!  Like so many big life decisions, you just have to do you.   

Top 5 Science Podcasts

Screen capture from my list of podcasts!

I’ve been out of the academic atmosphere for over a year now. Sometimes I just really miss getting my learn on. Academia pretty much ruled my entire life before I graduated with my MS degree (and it’s about to take back over!), so you would think I’d enjoy a well deserved break from, well...thinking. But no, I missed it terribly and have found becoming an avid podcast listener to be one of my more enjoyable hobbies. I love that I have a nice little list of podcasts queued up on my phone, so whenever I find myself with an extra 20 minutes or so I can just hit play. There’s no decision making, which is really nice for someone as indecisive as I am.

While I'm sure the internet has many sites for finding podcasts, iTunes is a great starting place. Their podcasts are collected, organized, and ranked, making it easy to browse categories of your interest and subscribe to those you'd like to have pushed to your device. Again, I always listen on my phone, but you can choose where to store your podcasts. I download a few episodes at a time when I’m around wi-fi so I don’t have to use up any cellular data. If you aren’t able to listen in this manner (maybe you don’t have a compatible phone/device) there are a few alternatives. Android users can use the Podkicker app. You can listen through iTunes on your PC. You could listen through a podcast website, such as Podcast Alley, from any computer. Several podcasts even have their own websites where you can listen.