Friday, July 29, 2011

End-of-summer report time? Relax, you've got this!

Hey, summer students! Now that you're finished annoying your grad student mentor, it's time to start thinking about that end-of-summer poster session/talk/report that you need to come up with. Here are a few tips to get you started:
  • Delay: Take a page from Congress -- why not wait until the last minute?
  • What was my project again?: Don't bother understanding what you were working on -- who cares, it's just some random chemistry stuff. 
  • Don't read anything relevant: You've definitely got time for that 1045th Angry Birds game, but there's no point in reading the review that your lab's work is based on. And those figures/graphs in there? Why not just redo them on your own time? 
  • Bench time is wasted time: Those remaining experiments and controls that would explain everything? They can be put off. 
  • Spontaneous report writing is the best: After you've thrown your report together, don't bother to read it over or to ask someone else to read it over -- I'm sure it's juuust fine.
  • Ad libbing is awesome: In the same vein, don't bother to practice that 10 minute talk you need to give. It's ten minutes -- what could possibly go wrong? 
If you follow all these helpful tips, nothing could possibly go wrong -- really. 

3 comments:

  1. Give 'em a break. These are 18-21 year old kids who still have hopes and dreams. They have a few more years before the weight of the world crushes their spirits, why are you seeking to hasten that?

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  2. And, hey, if you're too busy rockin' out to your iPod to catch those last few column fractions, just dump it in the waste, and tell your boss it "didn't go"

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  3. My PI's expectations for pretty much all undergrads is that they "learn something and not hurt themselves" 8-D

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20