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shiet i was a trojan since back then lol
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| to live and die in L.A., where everybody tryin' to fatten their pockets, so many hustle for the cash so it's hard to knock it. everybody got their own thing, currency chasing. world wide thru the hard times worryin' faces.
looking forward to being a Trojan. | | |
| recruitment was fun, but now it's officially over. keeping my fingers crossed that i'll get into a suitable program. making life decisions is very difficult... | | |
| So I just got back from recruitment weekend at UC Irvine and I'm slowly getting my mind back onto real life. The recruitment experience seriously felt like a vacation, but then again, maybe that's because I'm not really social anymore and I haven't traveled since forever. Still I'm gonna have to look back on this as a positive experience.
The weekend was well-coordinated and it really made me feel easier about the whole recruitment process, especially since this was the first of my three. Hopefully, I will have learned some things that will be helpful to my next interviews at USC and Davis this weekend.
The program itself had a lot of pros and cons to it. The most obvious pro is that the program is flexible and interdisciplinary- allowing for easy joint appointments in multiple departments (in terms of collaborations). I can basically work with anyone who has room in their lab, no matter what home department I choose to get my PhD from. Another thing to look forward to is the planned expansion of the program- on so many levels- that will really make UCI more recognized in the field (they are building a optical signal functional imaging facility within the next year or two).
The biggest turn off, for me, is that the program is really big on animal research (rodents) and almost nonexistant on human research. There are people who do human research, but they are not as closely knit to the home program as I originally thought. And during the interviews, I generally got a very defeatist view on human research from the faculty, which kind of pissed me off to be honest.
Speaking of interviews- I had two decent ones and two horrible ones. The people I wanted to interview with were not available, so instead I got assigned to four faculty who were in very different fields of interest from myself. Two of them were pretty nice, and though we had no common interests, we were able to at least converse intelligently on the general field of neuroscience.
Now onto the bad interviews- One guy, the first thing he said to me when I went into his office, was that "how come you got a C in neurobiology, and now you want to study phd in neuroscience?" I was like, come on, who does that sort of shit? He grilled me a little bit, but by end of the session, we hit it off reasonably well. He's super-bright (kind of cocky) and I gotta admit, I found some of his comments to be insightful.
The second guy- straight up jerk. He looked young, and he's probably a new facullty appointment. Anyway, he and I could not have a fluid conversation at all. We were on very different pages throughout the interview, and it didn't help that he had a Euro accent. What pissed me off, though, was that he pulled out his paper from 2 years ago, and quizzed me on the methodology! What the F---!?! He was doing a pharmacological study on mice; and I do cognitive control experiments in humans. So, when he asked me the first question "how do you distinguish anxiety and novelty effects?" I stared blankly at him for a good 3 and a half seconds, trying to remember what he just said since I was only half there to begin with. Rather than awkwardly asking him to repeat the question (and risking all of my credibility as a researcher), I gave him an equally awkward response which was complete bullshit. Needless to say, those two interviews really took the wind out of me. None of the other recruitment candidates got grilled as badly as I did, but I know they probably had similar moments of blankness.
Anyway, it's a good thing that interviews were done by the second day of recruitment- that meant we had the whole rest of the weekend to dick around in Irvine/Newport. I didn't really get along with many other recruitment candidates, but the collective group in general was pretty friendly, and there was a strong sense of camaraderie. Those who have been to other interviews (at programs more competitive than Irvine's) agree that this particular recruitment experience really ranks up there in terms of overall quality.
Interesting note: There were like 6 males and 18 females in our class. I was one of the only three who were asian, and I was the only male.
Recruitment was certainly an interesting process. Aside from those memorable moments during the interviews, I've also learned how it feels to be 1) severly underdressed for recruitment events and 2) the only asian guy in a crowded bar. Irvine, as a program and as a town, really talked a loud talk to us recruits. The question remains: can they walk the walk?
Next up: USC on 2/23; Davis on 2/26 | | |
| what a strange sequence of events. so you all well know that i'm applying to grad school. got rejected from NIH, didn't hear back (meaning- probably rejected) from Cal and UCLA. Got an invite to Irvine (last week) and USC (today). Also got an invite to Davis (today). And so the story begins.
so last night my gf and i were a little stressed out because it's almost Feb. and I haven't heard from Davis, yet. Shit, back in Dec. when I did my apps, I thought I was a shoo-in. So, yeah, you can imagine my frustration. Plus my gf really wants me to come up to Davis so we can somewhat settle down for the next 5 or so years. So last night I conjured up the balls to email my boss (director of the Imaging Research Center at the UC Davis Medical Center) asking his thoughts on why I haven't heard from Davis yet. He's not part of admissions committee, but he's pretty high up in terms of status. Fast forward to this morning: first, I get into lab and open up gmail. USC invited me to an interview- great! That kind of brightened my day, though I must admit, I haven't looked into their program in depth- their fucking website is such a pain in the ass to navigate thru. After a few minutes of glee, it's business as usual in the imaging center.
then i get a phone call, from a blocked #. Great- either it's one of those free offers that my gf clicked (those that promised free iPods and shit) calling me for my info, OR it's someone off Craigslist trying to buy some shit from me. Well, I get horrible reception in the lab (maybe has to do with those giant magnets used for our MRI scanners), but I pick it up nonetheless. And right then, it was like, dream come true. It's like you are expecting it to happen, and right then at that moment, it's happening before your eyes. I was in disbelief for a split second, then rushed out the door to get better reception. Okay, so it's the chair of the admissions committee at Davis and they want to invite me for an interview. Cool, by then I was ecstatic, but also with a weird sense of calmness as well. Can't explain it- kind of like WOW it happened but why it take so damn long?
So I step out the lab and give my gf the good news. While on the phone with her, my boss walks out and gestures that he'll catch me later- presumably to talk about my panic-driven email from the night before. So later at lunch, I give him the news, and he congratulates me.
End of day, I play some ball, pick up gf, come back to my place to watch TV. Check my email and it's a psych professor at Davis, saying that she saw the list of the people that they are inviting to interview, and that my name was not on there. At this point I was like WTF. Either you know something I don't, or vice versa. I hope it's vice versa. My gf sits on the bed laughing at me, while I try to gather my thoughts, and find the words to tell her that, to my best knowledge, I am invited to the damn interview. Few minutes later, she replies congratulating me, saying that (actually, I don't remember what she said, other than that she was not on the admissions committee).
So, I'm thinking, what the F? Lots of possibilities here. Let's go thru them. 1) My boss might have put in a word for me early this morning, thus explaining the erratic phone call from the chair of admissions, and the email invitation sparse with errors. 2) My colleage in Cal, who has been invited to Davis, decided to drop out of the running for my sake since he knows how much I wanted to go to Davis. 3) Maybe some other candidates canceled their interviews, freeing up room for me. 4) Since I sent my apps in early, maybe it got buried til now. 5) Nothing happened, they just got to me late, afterall, USC contacted me the same day.
worst of it is, I'll NEVER find out the truth!!! sigh
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