Where are all the Masters students?

[lost__in__space]

Come out of the woodwork Masters students! I just started mine but who else here is a Masters student? Party up in the lab!

 

[sparkles3288]

I'm starting my MSc in aug.

 

But i'm up for parties in the lab. whooo.

[Ninjaface]

Finished mine up already. Also neuro. Also had a beer fridge but it was in our office, not the lab. After my defense (like 3 am that morning), my supervisor took me to steal my desk from the office and bring it out to his ranch to start a bonfire. Good times.

[jdai]

*peeks in*

 

What? No free food?

 

*leaves*

[The Law]

Should start mine soon I hope!! (lol @ Palin)

[lostintime]

Ha our lab always tried to find excuses to have drinking parties in the middle of the day too. As soon as someone was leaving or getting their degree or some award, off to drinking.

[janny_jan]

woop woop! my co-advisor asks us to give him a bottle of wine when we started our degree and he'll save it and drink it with us when we graduate! hahaha!

 

Also, the best tasting beer i've ever had was the free ones we got from my TA supervisor after we finished marking undergrade anatomy bellringers

 

I'm almost finished my first year of my masters at UWO and loving every moment of it. Research is not a waste of time!!

[switcheroo]

woop woop! my co-advisor asks us to give him a bottle of wine when we started our degree and he'll save it and drink it with us when we graduate! hahaha!

 

Also, the best tasting beer i've ever had was the free ones we got from my TA supervisor after we finished marking undergrade anatomy bellringers

 

I'm almost finished my first year of my masters at UWO and loving every moment of it. Research is not a waste of time!!

 

Agreed! I love research! Though I'm happy to take a break from it this summer before I start med school.

 

Why does every lab have booze? Both my undergrad and grad labs did... Not that I'm complaining, but it certainly doesn't fit the stereotypical nerdy researcher picture.

[NewfieMike]

my first day working an NSERC in 08 was a friday afternoon after a grad student had just found a significant finding in her data. There was a pretty big celebration in the lab. A few frequent trips to the communal ice machine down the hall

[janny_jan]

my first day working an NSERC in 08 was a friday afternoon after a grad student had just found a significant finding in her data. There was a pretty big celebration in the lab. A few frequent trips to the communal ice machine down the hall

 

HAHAHHA! only a grad student would want to get drunk and celebrate after finding significance....that's awesome!

 

At the grad club (grad students/prof bar) at Western, there is a goblet of knowledge you can reserve to drink out of after your defence/comps/dissertation....first drink is freeeeeee

[lost__in__space]

HAHAHHA! only a grad student would want to get drunk and celebrate after finding significance....that's awesome!

 

At the grad club (grad students/prof bar) at Western, there is a goblet of knowledge you can reserve to drink out of after your defence/comps/dissertation....first drink is freeeeeee

 

HAHAHA good to know!!! and good old Grad Club... do you venture there for lunch some days? My lab has its own spot there

[lost__in__space]

Oh PS: am I in the only neuro lab in the world without a beer fridge???

 

and does anyone read PhD comics? We tape them to our non-beer fridge lol.

[NewfieMike]

some grad students work so much that I think they'd never make it without booze to get them by, haha. Today for example, one PhD student at my lab divided his funding salary by the hours he works per year, and it worked out to be $2.11 an hour

[Ninjaface]

Oh PS: am I in the only neuro lab in the world without a beer fridge???

 

and does anyone read PhD comics? We tape them to our non-beer fridge lol.

 

Are you sure you're in neuro, and didn't accidentally sign up for something else?

 

The PhD comics sounds about right though... maybe you just haven't looked hard enough for the fridge?

 

[tooty]

 

i wish i was remotely close to being that happy as a master's student

 

i'm also in neuro

[NewfieMike]

man is everyone who posted on this thread in neuro? haha cause i am

[Ninjaface]

i wish i was remotely close to being that happy as a master's student

 

i'm also in neuro

 

He just started his...

 

I definitely wouldn't say I enjoyed my Master's. The theory behind it, yeah. The 14 hour days with no-one to appreciate you or interact with you at the end but a freezer bag full of dead rats and a few pennies an hour... not so much.

 

Not to scare you Lost. THere's good times to be had for sure, especially if you do it right and love your project. Many I met in there would never have it any other way. And I went through a divorce in the middle of mine. That probably didn't help with my disposition/perspective.

 

Edit: A recommendation - don't just choose your project based solely on the theory you are most interested in, also take into account as a secondary consideration what you will actually be doing with the many hours of your day you will be working. I started doing something I thought was really cool, but involved countless hours of floating tissue microsections through colourless liquid bath after colourless liquid bath (AKA immunohistochemistry). I ended up switching to something still neat and publishable and important, but not as mind blowing to me, because I found behavioural experiments to be more interesting to actually conduct. I could never have handled 2 straight years of immunohistochemistry, no matter how theoretically interesting the results were.

[RobynM]

I'll represent the non-neuro grad student!!

 

And I am SOOOOO happy that in 1 week and 1 day I will have my thesis defended and run far far away from basic research!! It takes a really special kind of person to be able to deal with academic research and i'm really happy that other people are able to enjoy it but I now know that it is not for me.

 

And PhD comics are awesome! It's scary how accurate they can be.

[janny_jan]

I'm not in neuro either! Kinesiology masters looking at pediatric cardiac health.

 

And yes, Ph.D comics are amazing! The author was at Western for the research fair and he was HILARIOUS!

 

 

Lost_in_space, i'm at the grad club almost every friday for TGIF beers and nachos!

[sparkles3288]

Im not in neuro--microbiology!!.

 

I want a beer fridge too...haha.

[whale.of.a.time]

PhD comics are the best. So many hilarious things to relate to

 

We had a beer bookcase...a little weird, I know! We'd take all the beer left over from our field seasons and pile them onto a bookcase for late night de-stressing since we lacked a fridge.

 

Desperate? Maybe.

 

Deliciously disgusting? Definitely.

[RobynM]

I'm so jealous of all of you and your beer fridges/bookcases! The closest we have in my department is every so often there's leftovers drinks hidden away in one of the walk-in coolers (kinda gross cuz that's where all the cell culture media is kept). But all the drinks in there are for grad student functions, not random consumption.

[lost__in__space]

He just started his...

 

I definitely wouldn't say I enjoyed my Master's. The theory behind it, yeah. The 14 hour days with no-one to appreciate you or interact with you at the end but a freezer bag full of dead rats and a few pennies an hour... not so much.

 

Not to scare you Lost. THere's good times to be had for sure, especially if you do it right and love your project. Many I met in there would never have it any other way. And I went through a divorce in the middle of mine. That probably didn't help with my disposition/perspective.

 

Edit: A recommendation - don't just choose your project based solely on the theory you are most interested in, also take into account as a secondary consideration what you will actually be doing with the many hours of your day you will be working. I started doing something I thought was really cool, but involved countless hours of floating tissue microsections through colourless liquid bath after colourless liquid bath (AKA immunohistochemistry). I ended up switching to something still neat and publishable and important, but not as mind blowing to me, because I found behavioural experiments to be more interesting to actually conduct. I could never have handled 2 straight years of immunohistochemistry, no matter how theoretically interesting the results were.

 

Noooo I'm a female!!!!!!!!!!!! but as for project, it's in a field I love with a great supervisor, and I'm continuing the research of the Master's student I'm replacing and I find it to be fascinating. I've already run through a lot of the data analysis techniques as well and so far so good! Boring sometimes but doable and I don't have to deal with animals. And my lab group kicks ass (minus the beer fridge...I have an old mini fridge kicking around my apartment maybe I will start my lab's beer fridge??). Hopefully my enthusiasm stays but then again my undergrad was TOTAL CRAP so I think anything will be better

[RobynM]

Your post is so pitiful. I just want to buy you a drink and make it all better...

 

Aww, that's so sweet! I feel extra pitiful right now cuz i've been stuck in the lab this whole long weekend all by myself!

 

But don't worry I get enough drinks to sustain me through my masters, just not conveniently located in the lab!

[Ninjaface]

Noooo I'm a female!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Oops, sorry. Your bull avatar made me assume.