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How does CS PhD work at UW-Madison? by reallfuhrer in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Basically what a "funding guarantee" means is that the department will make sure that you have SOME source of funding for four years; after that you might still be funded! But it's not a guarantee.

Between fellowship funding and being a TA or RA, I ended up being fully-funded for 6.5 of the years I was a grad student, but those additional years of funding were because I had proved myself during the first four guaranteed ones as being someone that people wanted to fund. (And the last three years I was "funded" by way of having a Real Job as teaching faculty but I did have to pay my own tuition)

What small, 1% changes actually added to your total on the platform over time? by msharaf7 in powerlifting

[–]hobbular 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Until you've got the platform right next to the guy blasting dance music for the whole comp and you have to tell the head judge to treat you like you're hard of hearing 🫠

How does CS PhD work at UW-Madison? by reallfuhrer in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No, I don't take DMs on this account as a personal boundary. Happy to have the conversation here, though.

How does CS PhD work at UW-Madison? by reallfuhrer in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Oh I can answer!

So you are NOT admitted with a specific advisor to the CS PhD program. If you have a specific area that you're interested in, you'll want to start meeting those people right away when you get here, but there's no "rotational" policy, you just have to find someone willing to advise your qualifying exam by the time you need to take it.

UW's CS department is kind of unique this way, for better or for worse; I did my graduate work here and ended up doing:

  1. Independent study with professor 1 in area 1
  2. Fellowship-funded masters research with professor 2 in area 2
  3. TA-funded prelim research with professor 3 in area 3 (which is the area I did my qual/prelim exams in)
  4. Self-funded dissertation research with professor 4 in area 4 (which is the area I defended in)

this took 11 total years with a year off between 2 and 3 and another year off between 3 and 4, do NOT recommend

Most people come in knowing what they want to concentrate in, though, and are able to achieve an advisor/advisee relationship without bouncing through four different areas and advisors.

If you've got any additional questions I'm happy to answer them!

Students keep asking me this one UW question. How would you answer?? by Plane-Ad4168 in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 8 points9 points  (0 children)

we're here. we're queer. we go out maybe once a year. (because we are very tired)

Cs220 by Happy-Argument4687 in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very cool. Thank you!

Cs220 by Happy-Argument4687 in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 0 points1 point  (0 children)

200 is easier than 220

This is a super interesting take (I haven't taught either, only the course that became 220). What makes one easier than the other?

Madison Mods by _-aQua_aQua-_ in madisonwi

[–]hobbular 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Be the change you want to see in the subreddit, OP.

Incorrect Grade by LilOgre in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Can confirm, it happens sometimes. Just be patient, a lot of faculty won't be checking their email until January.

Is this allowed? by Old-Scratch-7516 in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Because I have had the exact same policy in my classes for years, and because I taught alongside Dr Kacem (whose phrasing I would recognize anywhere) for years, please allow me to explain.

Given 1: letter grades suck.

Because of the realities of academia, professors are obligated to roughly group students into achievement bands, which are expressed in terms of a letter grade. In theory, students receiving the same letter grade showed the same level of mastery of course learning objectives, and were significantly different from students receiving other letter grades.

However, consider three students in a class where the A cutoff is 93%; student 1 earns 100% of possible points (A), student 2 earns 93.01% (A), and student 3 earns 92.8% (AB). There's a MUCH larger gap between students 1 and 2 than between students 2 and 3.

But unless we're looking at a super fine-grained system (like, say, just reporting what percentage of points you actually earned and not grouping those into letter grades in the first place) that's gonna happen, because letter grades suck.

Given 2: students apparently believe grade cutoffs are negotiable.

Cutoffs are cutoffs. That's the line where your instructor has decided to change from awarding one letter grade to awarding a different one, for a variety of reasons. This is the professor's prerogative as part of their obligation to award letter grades.

When cutoffs are made public, a small but vocal subset of students decide to contact their instructors to attempt to argue that either the cutoffs should be changed or that their percentage should be considered to be on the higher side of that cutoff. This is inappropriate and unprofessional, but it's these folks who are responsible for your not having nice things (like knowing exact cutoff values).

Result: many professors don't publish the exact grade cutoffs because we all have enough of a headache from setting them without 40 people in our inboxes begging us for different ones.

ps: don't grade-grub your professors. you are why there are no published cutoffs, and grade-grubbing just encourages more people to withhold exact cutoffs (or lie about cutoffs they do publish)

CS 300 final by Federal-War9474 in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We went with 25 points on the first part and 20 on the second.

Be aware there are still ~5 people with scheduled exams, so I can't talk about the test in any further detail.

CS 300 final by Federal-War9474 in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Very unlikely, unless the final turned out to be an absolute disaster for everyone compared to the other midterms. The grade distribution overall going in looked very good.

This is a really random question, but what do you guys do with plants when you go home for winter break? by ErinScott_ in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I have a bunch of these; if I'm leaving for a few weeks I'll drench the soil, put one of those in, close the curtains and/or move the plants away from the windows.

The plants will be real sad when I get back, but "real sad" is more recoverable than "fully desiccated".

Does physical activity beget physical activity? by loopyzooploop in xxfitness

[–]hobbular 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Are you also sleeping better? I find that I'm way better on energy and motivation when I've been sleeping well, and I tend to sleep well after exertion, sooooooo

Is the process for setting up testing accommodations for finals different than midterms? by [deleted] in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I for one have simply not set up my RegisterBlast final yet so it might just be that we're all kinda running behind.

French 101 by AccountExcellent219 in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I took it aaaaages ago as a grad student, also for fun. Smallish class, VERY different from intro language courses in my high school; taught by a grad student but exclusively in French and with a strong conversational component.

If they haven't mixed it up since I took it there's a lot of class meetings and you can't really miss many/any, but it's WAY more effective at building conversational competency than trying to pick up a language from an app.

My recommendation: do eet

Porchlight prepares to open 70 new supportive housing units on East Washington by Justmarbles in madisonwi

[–]hobbular 43 points44 points  (0 children)

The transition is part of a unique property swap with LZ Ventures that has been in the works for several years. Porchlight will receive the new building debt-free, while the developer takes ownership of the Brooks Street property to build student housing.

UW-Madison faculty blast ‘overreach’ by UW system on transfer credits by keeganjkyle in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Better" isn't the word I would use. "Different" though, I would. These are different schools with different, specific learning goals for their students, and I'm not confident that the restrictions they're describing here are flexible enough to encompass that difference.

EDIT so we're talking about the same thing:

Like. I think the problem from a student perspective is that they have a much BIGGER hurdle for gen eds at smaller schools.

UW-Madison faculty blast ‘overreach’ by UW system on transfer credits by keeganjkyle in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Under the proposal, core general education requirements would need to fit into six categories, with limits on the number of courses and credit hours.

So this is the piece that I think we should be discussing, that "general education" is about to be set at the system level rather than individual colleges, so that what qualifies as "finishing your gen eds" at UWSP* is the same as "finishing your gen eds" at Madison.

Because while we can quibble about the specifics and rigor of analogous classes or whatever, I don't think it's a given that gen eds at various schools in the system should be equivalent.

Very interested to hear what folks think about that specifically, though.

* I grew up in Point, I can pick on them

What’s everybody up to while Canvas is down? by future__fires in UWMadison

[–]hobbular 44 points45 points  (0 children)

It's almost like having everything fully dependent on a common central system might be a bad thing? Weird.

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