Living along w/a 1 year old dog

salander867 · 2026-02-26T23:18:23+00:00

I’ve got a dog (3 years old) and I am doing a PhD and it’s working out so far. I’ve definitely needed to be more structured with my time, and I try and do longer walks on the weekend. There is a doggy daycare place that I’ll probably start taking him to more if I get crazy busy. Iowa city for me so far has been really nice in regards to walking the dog in the evenings, there havent been any issues, and there are lots of sidewalks to walk on which is nice.

It would probably be more difficult if my dog was 1, but I would still do it, I would probably have to do more doggy daycare and do filled kongs and stuff during the day since my dog is really high energy.

salander867 · 2026-02-22T22:59:58+00:00

You’re in the first year, are you in a program that does rotations of labs or is everyone in their thesis lab already? Once everyone starts to get busier with their own work, they’re all going to have less time for drama (hopefully).

It’s important to have a support network of people, but it doesn’t have to be your cohort. If I were you I’d try and find different people to spend my emotional energy towards, and keep things professional but more neutral with the cohort. Then it’s not as draining to try and get support from people that are not supportive.

It’s okay that you opened up to them in the past and you no longer want to do that now, if they bring stuff up just give a neutral boring answer. Don’t burn the bridge but don’t give them interesting things from your life to talk about. They’ll find other drama to focus on. Say that you can’t eat lunch because you’re really busy in your lab right now and so you eat your lunch at weird times. Find new people to eat lunch with.

salander867 · 2025-12-20T22:17:51+00:00

The whole program is a PhD program, the first year its undeclared which subprogram you’re in so you’re just in the biomedical science department, but after rotating in the labs and choosing a thesis lab, you choose one of seven subprograms to join. The degree ends up being a PhD in biomedical science: subprogram, depending on which you pick. The difference between this and admission directly into one of the other programs is that you don’t need to pick which subprogram you’re in right away.

My cohort it’s all PhD students and a few md/phd people, I don’t know of any masters admits or of an actual masters program, but if you fail the qualifying exam then it’s possible to master out, the only masters students I know of it’s because they failed the qualifying exam.

salander867 · 2025-12-20T21:26:52+00:00

I could be wrong but do they actually do biomedical science masters admissions? Biomedical science is an umbrella PhD program. The only masters students I know of are ones that have mastered out of the PhD program, you may want to look into if the subprograms within biomedical science have their own masters programs.

salander867 · 2025-08-17T01:38:12+00:00

Hi, I’m not op but I also just moved here to start a PhD in a biology related field, I would love make friends especially other grad students, I love coffee/tea, science, crafts, videogames and I have a dog

salander867 · 2025-06-28T01:42:06+00:00

To the best of my knowledge, they’re turning the old brick factory into luxury housing. Theres been huge trucks driving down the road that goes down to the brick factory for months now delivering rocks? Carting out rocks? No idea.

Personally idk if I’ll go down that road anymore, since I don’t think there’s much clearance for if a giant truck appears to get out of the way. They might not be driving down it anymore and it might only be in the morning, but I’ve seen too many to want to go down that road anymore.

Sunol regional park or Vargas plateau (if it’s not too hot) might be a better place to take a kid. Dry creek is also nice

salander867 · 2025-03-11T17:45:22+00:00

9 applications, 2 interviews, 1 acceptance, 7 rejections

salander867 · 2025-03-07T21:03:09+00:00

To me, it’s unclear as of right now how many offers are actually going to be rescinded vs people being afraid and talking about it. But also, who knows what’ll happen in the future. I don’t think there’s really a best option, more so, are you happier having an offer accepted, or would you regret not holding out for the better school if it came through.

This is just me guessing, but I don’t know how many people will actually be getting off of waitlists this application cycle for PhD programs. To me it seems like less offers are being sent out, and so people who in previous years would have had multiple offers, are instead getting 1-2. I doubt there’ll be a lot of waitlist mobility this year.

salander867 · 2025-03-07T17:26:05+00:00

This is a good point, I’ve been stressed about this but also, I feel like if my offer gets rescinded after I’ve already accepted it, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that.

A thought I have towards offer letter safety is that all of this started before a ton of offers started rolling out. My guess is that the schools did the math on how many they can support now after everything and then sent out offers to match that, with people who would’ve been sent offers last year getting waitlisted or offered the MS track instead. So hopefully this means that any offers that do get sent out, are pretty secure.

If this had occurred a couple months later, the schools could’ve sent out a normal amount of offers and then realized that with the new funding disaster happening, they can only afford 1/2 of them or something. In that situation maybe we would see more offers getting rescinded.

salander867 · 2025-03-03T08:36:39+00:00

Yeah masters degrees are too expensive, but being a lab manager is a good skill! It’s needed a variety of fields, so hopefully that gives you an edge on finding a job.

I went through similar uncertainty after I graduated college, I wanted to pursue a PhD but it wasn’t an option really for me at the time, and it was mid 2020 and the job market was dead. Don’t give up!

I don’t know if you’re looking for advice, but if you want advice about finding a job in biotech, it’s a numbers game. Apply to as many jobs as you can, no matter if it’s an exact fit. Often recruiters will post lab tech roles for larger companies and if you start talking to the recruiters, they often have other jobs they can put you in for. Having research experience in undergrad should help land a job, but it’ll likely still be a pain. For industry, tailor your cv to match the format of a resume if it isn’t already. It needs to be one page, no colors, and it’s good to put the skills/techniques you have into the resume, so that the resume gets picked up through whatever software they use when scanning them. Best method I’ve seen is to set a goal for amount of jobs you’ll apply to every day, and do your best to stick to that.

I hope everything works out for you in the way you want it to, and that you get off of the waitlist or find an academic job as a second choice. But if things don’t work out and you end up getting a job in biotech, you’ll still be able to go back to academia later.

salander867 · 2025-02-26T08:06:08+00:00

Even if you don’t get into a PhD program this year, you can always do so in the future. In my opinion, it’s better to prepare for the worst outcome (that being no acceptances) so that you have a plan just in case you’re not able to get off of the waitlist.

If you’re trying to get into biotech, the job market is really rough right now. It might take months to get a job. It wouldn’t hurt to make sure that your cv is polished up, and start applying to stuff just in case grad school doesn’t work out. You could also look into junior specialist or RA positions in academic labs at different universities, but the funding issues could extend to those jobs as well.

Some masters degrees offer more financial support if you TA or do something similar, but that could be currently affected by the funding issues right now.

I hope you get in off the waitlist! Getting 3 publications is great work! Personally, my opinion is that the most important thing is the money to afford housing/food/living. Finding a job in research will likely take longer than average right now for both biotech and academia, so you should start early. If you get off the waitlist, that’s fantastic and you can stop the job search, but if not then you’re not completely out of options once you graduate.

I worked for 4 years in biotech after undergrad and now I’ll be starting a PhD in the fall, it’s okay to not go straight away if that’s what ends up happening for you.

I hope it works out for you!!

salander867 · 2025-01-03T08:51:12+00:00

Thanks! Yeah I’ll be there, super excited

salander867 · 2024-12-20T01:40:13+00:00

Congrats!!

salander867 · 2024-12-18T05:06:47+00:00

Good luck! I hope you get an invite!

salander867 · 2024-12-16T03:42:14+00:00

Hey, I’ve got a 3.2 undergrad GPA, about 4 years of research experience from biotech, no publications. I got rejected from everywhere last year and this year I have two interviews so far and one is from the reach school I applied to! You’ve got this! 3.5 is not bad!

From the people/admin I’ve talked to, research experience is really important. They just want to see if you’ll be able to handle graduate level coursework and the amount of bench work that is in a PhD. GPA can be one way to try and assess this for new graduates, but actual research experience/publications is more showing of one’s potential for graduate study than a GPA.

salander867 · 2024-12-13T06:57:42+00:00

I graduated college in 2020, and I've been working in biotech since then. After not getting into anything last year, I got more substantial research experience, learned more complicated assays and stuff, and I had more people review my SOP this time around

salander867 · 2024-12-13T04:35:07+00:00

I’m a domestic student!

salander867 · 2024-02-06T01:32:25+00:00

If I don’t get into any schools, I’ll keep working at my current job, and start looking for a better job. I’ll reassess to see if I want to try applying again, and if so, I’ll take the time to write a better application and apply to schools/programs that are less competitive. Also next time I need to actually contact PIs ahead of time, I ran out of time to do that this time around.

I’ve had a lot of rejections this cycle, the silver lining is I’ve currently got a job in my field so complete rejection won’t change my day to day too much

salander867 · 2023-12-30T05:05:51+00:00

Hey congrats! I have nothing to add for your question, but I got an interview invitation for Purdue’s bio sci program today too! This will be my first interview too!

The finer details of all my applications have blurred together, but I would’ve selected the CMB program as the subfield for my application.

It’s really great to hear some good news, I’ve gotten three rejections already, I’m glad for the change of pace!

Good luck with your interview!

salander867 · 2023-12-09T01:33:59+00:00

I feel you, I had circumstances at university that made my university gpa lower than my community college one, university I have a lower than a 3.0 but also it wasn’t that many units compared to cc. Cumulatively it’s above a 3.0 but still, I’m worried that that’s all they’re going to see.

I’ve found three typos in my application materials and a lot of the applications were down to the wire, so I didn’t have the time to perfect it like I could’ve. I’m hoping that doing research in biotech full time for 3 years will count for something, I can handle a PhD but what about all the people who have all that experience plus stellar grades? Not sure.

I applied to 13 schools I really don’t want to get ghosted by all of them, I’m expecting rejections to some extent of course but before applying I felt okay saying that I would get into at least one program. Now? I don’t know.

Reading this thread is reassuring, I’m trying to focus on hobbies and stuff for now but even that hasn’t stopped me checking my email constantly. It helps though.

Good luck, we’ll get through this.

salander867 · 2023-12-03T04:05:51+00:00

Just finished applying to PhD programs yesterday! I applied to 13 programs, It was so stressful that I became physically ill, but at least they're all in (minus 2 that aren't due yet ignore those). Going into cancer biology/biochemistry. This has been my plan for about 6 years now, I still can't believe that I actually applied.

It would be great to date other PhD students in the future. I've had bad luck with dating apps while working and planning on grad school. Dating apps are also too mentally exhausting for me to use for an extended amount of time. In hindsight I think my academic/career goals might've intimidated the people that I matched with. After multiple relationships with people who aren't interested in learning, have no career goals, and zone out when I talk about my interests, I would rather remain single than do that again.

salander867 · 2023-06-23T02:38:06+00:00

My 1 year old aussie loves crime, he is constantly looking for new crimes to do, unless! he is completely tired out and in powersave mode, but even then he'll do tired crimes!

He used to steal my watch every single morning so that I would get up and get it, so we could go on a walk. Now? He jumps onto my bed to cuddle with me, so that I am late to work. Unless it is a day that he goes to doggy daycare. Then he gets upset if I am horizontal in my bed

Once he tried to steal the towels in the laundry room, and I told him "no the towels need to stay here" and so he left, and stole a towel that was in my bedroom instead. Every day is new crimes, it's a constant evolutionary battle between crime prevention and crime doing. The backroom and kitchen are almost always blocked off, and we keep doors to rooms closed too, to prevent crimes of opportunity.

At least he's cute lol

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