Committees

For graduate school, a committee is a group of people who oversee the work you do and provide a final judgment on the work you produce -your thesis. These people should be related to what you are studying and generally consist of your supervisor and two other people who are usually from you department. Sometimes if your department is small or your topic covers more than one discipline then you might have one person from your committee come from another department. An example of this would be a thesis on geoarchaeology, where perhaps a geologist or soil scientist would be helpful to your committee. A fourth committee member is also added, but not until you are about to defend. This fourth person is called an 'external'. It depends on your university, but this person is usually someone completely unrelated to your field, with the purpose of bringing forward questions that you and the department may not have considered. Further, this person is normally not chosen by the student but rather the supervisor, so there is little to worry or do about this person.

I have found it fairly common to have one of the committee members to be an older faculty member. Beware! These people are very wise and can offer great advice, but are also not very helpful in regards of new conceptions or technologies (think of you grandparents here). One of my committee members was such a person and did not have an e-mail address. She was rarely at the school and hence pretty hard to reach; in total, I think I had about 3 conversations with her in 3 years!

Choosing who is on your committee may not be easy or entirely in the student's hands. In my case, and many others too, the decision was made within the first week or two of graduate studies. I did not know many of the faculty members and my supervisor suggested names to me as though I should automatically approve. I recommend that new graduate students instead ask their supervisors to hold off on making this decision. There is really no need to have this decision made right away, unless it is a university regulation. I would suggest leaving it for at least one month, where you can actually meet the faculty members and see who is the most appropriate for you studies and seems to be the one who would actually help you. My experience may have been a little more negative than some, but my two committee members were completely worthless. However, they are still the people who read the final copy of your thesis and determine if it is good enough for graduation -big responsibility there.


Until next time, keep your nose to the books and your lips to the beer!
~archaeomatt

Improving Grades for Graduate Studies Admission

Applying for grad school WILL test your metal. There are those who graduate from their undergrad studies with high grades and are automatically admitted to their school of choice. There are also others, like myself, who did not have stellar grades. Unfortunately, universities today look at your grades first and everything else secondly. In my opinion, grades are not the only factor in what makes a good student and a student that would fit into a graduate program. If your grades are low you can register for further classes following your graduation; this is what I did and it obviously worked. Take only one or two classes and focus on these. Make sure to obtain A's in these one or two courses. This will have two implications for applying for grad schools: 1) Graduate studies looks at only the last # amount of courses (this number varies according to department /school), so the ones you take following graduation will look better than your earlier courses, 2) going back to school to improve your grades can look very favorable in applying to grad school because it demonstrates a willingness to improve and a dedication to what you wish to accomplish.

These additional classes can be taken anywhere. I decided to go to a different university from where I completed my undergrad. This different university was where a professor was working that I wished to be my Graduate supervisor. Through taking courses at that university I became much more familiar with him and the rest of the department. Because of the circumstances I was also allowed to take graduate courses, which allowed me to test the waters of a graduate program, show the department that I can successfully complete a graduate course at their university, and (sometimes) these courses can be counted towards your Graduate degree following your acceptance. Ask if you too can take Graduate. The cost is pretty much the same as an undergrad course, except they are much more intensive. If you decide to do this, make sure to only take one a semester. If taking two courses, make sure the second course is relatively easy. For one semester, I took a Graduate level lithic analysis course (very intensive!) and an introductory Geology course (also known as 'rocks for jocks').

Hope this helps & remember to never get discouraged!

Until next time, keep your nose to the books and your lips to the beer!
~archaeomatt

Tips for Grad Students: Grants

Hi there!

Entering Grad school or just begun your studies? Perhaps you are almost done and finishing the final leg of your journey? Well, I've finished and moved on to working as a consultant archaeologist. The debt from school is large and the regret of how I should have handled my schooling also looms just as large. In consideration of the time I spent as a graduate student I created this blog to list some tips that I wish I had known when first starting my degree.

Today's tip is to make a list of all your expenses and continually update it! During my three-week wait for my defense I thought it prudent to go over all my receipts that I would soon submit to the various grants that I was awarded. To my horror I realized I had not updated my list of receipts in TWO YEARS! Some of the receipts I had listed on the spreadsheet were gone. Receipts from other expenses that I had not listed, but remembered, were also gone. Further, some of the receipts I kept could not be submitted because they were for 'capital' expenses, which my grants would not reimburse me for.

So the tip for new graduate students, or really any post-secondary student, is to:

1. Make a list of EVERY expenditure during your school years. You never know what may or may not turn out to be covered by a grant. This includes flights, conference receipts, materials for research, tuition receipts, rent receipts.... ANYTHING!

2. Keep these receipts in place you will remember where they are. Try to label them and organized according to date. Keep like receipts together too (food receipts, flight receipts, etc).

3. Make a spreadsheet of all of these receipts. Organize this spreadsheet by what grant might cover these expenses, and separate them out by type. List the total amount, what it was for, and company (where you bought it).

4. If you are really motivated, scan the receipts. Save a copy of these scans on your hard-drive so that you will always have a copy of the receipts just in case you do lose some over the years.

This list may appear long, but in reality it would only require maybe an hour of your time every week. Considering that Lost is no longer on TV, you can replace that time with going over your weekly receipts.

Until next time, keep your nose to the books and your lips to the beer!
~archaeomatt