Dodo, how is school?

Dodo...I've been wondering how graduate school is going for you? I think about you often as I work with my new grad students and hope you are liking the school and the program.

Hi lotsocats

Since I have been going to school I don't have much time for TCS so I have just seen your mail..

Starting to school again is exciting & being a graduate student is even more exciting & inspiring We are studying the behavioral part of Behavioral Neuroscience. (How about you ??). I am taking 2 core courses; Learning & Memory and statistics, and an area seminar course. They gave me a half fellowship kind of something; still we have to pay a little money, but that's OK. Since I won't be a TA this semester (because I missed the assesment test & because of visa problems), I think It won't be that much hard for me this semester. I am really glad that I am back to school.. Today we had an Happy Hour of Psychology department & I met a few people (I only had conversation with a Mexican girl & a German guy though)

I have a question for you, what is the max GRE score your new graduate students have ? Or what is the average GRE scores for Psychology; do you have any idea ??

How is school for you as a professor ?

Ahhh...Learning and Memory, I loved that class. You will be amazed at all of the theories and even mathematical formulae you will learn for that class. I wrote a paper in grad school for that class about classical conditioning leading to the death of herion users when they shoot-up in a setting other than their usual place.

Make sure you pay lots of attention in your statistics class. My biggest regret is that I didn't force myself to learn more stats. I now have to consult with statisticians if I have to do anything beyond basic linear equations.

Most graduate schools require a minimum combined Verbal and Quantitative GRE of 1200. My school is a small one, where we offer only the masters degree, so we require only 1000. I chose to stay away from the big schools which have the publish or perish mentality for their faculty. Also, I love to teach and in the big schools, the professors just don't spend much time teaching....instead they focus almost exclusively on research. That just wasn't my cup of tea.

Make sure you spend a lot of time talking to the American students. That is the best way to improve your conversational English. We have quite a few international students in our program. They always struggle with their English until I "force" them to hang out with the Americans....only then does their spoken English improve!

I love being a professor because I really enjoy working with students and I like doing small research projects. And...the hours are flexible, so I don't have to be there from 8:00 - 5:00 every day.

Good luck and talk to those American students!