Ph Do What!?

A retrospective study in a type of study where you look back at existing records and data and try to use statistical methods to draw conclusions from that patterns in that data.  They are generally not as powerful as experimental studies designed to answer a specific question, but are still extremely useful, especially in medical science.  In this study, I will be looking back at the last week as I spent time with my family for the holidays.   I come from a reasonably well educated and in general highly intelligent family.  Although I believe I am the first person in my family to pursue a PhD, you would have to go back several levels of my family tree in every direction to find a first generation college student.  My kith and kin include small business owners, teachers, cafeteria managers, electricians, meteorologists, and my mother was trained as a microbiologist; just generally smart people.  Given some time, I can sit down and expl...

Go on, follow the link , you know you're curious.  It's not Monty Python, I promise.  That's this link .  Sorry, I couldn't think of a good science joke related to expectations, but that's what we'll be talking about this evening.  Flying Circuses and Harry Potter Filk Bands aside, expectations are a big part of grad school.  Your expectations, your advisor's expectations, your instructors', your committee's, even your family's expectations shape your world and experience.   Before I talk about what I think of expectation, let me tell you a story about something that happened last week.  My class was assigned 4 papers to read over night (this particular professor had assigned about 50 pages of reading a night for the past two weeks.  It's well known that that this professor can read at warp speed, even if none of the rest of us can).  He clearly expected us to have read everything he'd assigned.  We did not.  For this parti...