Friday, February 18, 2011

You'll do anything to avoid grading

So, I have a stack of lab reports sitting on my desk... I've been working on them for a ridiculously long time.  Mostly, I have been finding ANYTHING to do which will keep me from grading.  I washed all of the dishes in my house, I spent extra time in the lab, I read papers... anything but read through a bunch of lab reports.
Well, my PI threw another great procrastinating tool at me today:  http://ori.hhs.gov/TheLab/
A training tool about research misconduct!  Yay!  Really, it could have been awfully boring, but I would have thought it was a blast compared to grading...  What's neat about this website is that its like those "Create your own Adventure" books, only with a story about a lab with a post-doc who publishes altered data!  Doesn't it sound exciting?

What I learned from this adventure in research misconduct is- my department is apparently not the only gossipy department out there!  Also- graduate school and research can lead to an awful unbalanced life full of disappointments... boo.  If you play as the post-doc, prepare to be depressed.  Not only has this post doc been post doc-ing for 4 years, but he ends up doing an additional two.  Six years as a post doc?  Thats another PhD! Yikes!  Another thing I noticed, things seemed ridiculously competitive!   My group is not so cutthroat, but goodness, I cannot imagine if it were...

Well, back to grading... maybe...

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