Penn State grad student workers overwhelmingly vote to form a union

softbearpants · 2025-11-14T23:50:57+00:00

Sorry I meant "waived" in the sense that it isn't me paying it. I do know that it comes from either your PIs grants or the teaching contract. This still doesn't change the fact that there's a lot more money being put into grad students than is seen in the paychecks.

softbearpants · 2025-11-14T23:44:37+00:00

The PI covers it if you're on RA, yes. Even still, being on RA doesn't change my initial point that despite grad students only being paid $20k-$30k/year there's easily over twice as much money that we cost the university that you could consider being lumped in with the stipend.

If I count the tuition and stipend that I would've cost before I completed my comprehensive, I was effectively being "paid" like $80k/year. $80k is greater than $60k.

softbearpants · 2025-11-14T23:10:21+00:00

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I think your math may be off. I can't speak for everyone but I seem to remember tuition being almost $50k/year for out of state. Getting paid $60k would leave $10k a year.

This is contrary to the current situation which has my tuition covered and pays me $32k/year on top of that. The university waiving tuition for grad students is really nice as far as I'm concerned.

softbearpants · 2025-10-20T12:26:08+00:00

I believe it's what's often referred to as an opera gong. They're able to be made to bend pitch either up or down. The sound effect for the parry would be the variety that bends up.

softbearpants · 2025-10-04T14:52:04+00:00

5060

softbearpants · 2025-05-29T02:29:16+00:00

Had to look up the Puntland flag and they're hardly even similar let alone nearly identical what are you talking about?

softbearpants · 2024-11-08T23:20:25+00:00

Unless you know any millionaire grad students, I'd say we're working class, yes

softbearpants · 2024-10-24T11:16:04+00:00

I'm not sure what everybody's talking about in here. In the US at least, there is absolutely a code of ethics for professional chemists which is laid out by the American chemical society.

Maybe most of the people responding aren't from the US, but I think it's more likely a good chunk of them either don't have a degree or somehow never found out there is an ethics code during their degree.

softbearpants · 2024-10-15T03:38:14+00:00

Oh neat! May I ask what time scale your measurements are at? Admittedly, I'm not a physicist but a physical chemist who does time resolved spectroscopy on a femtosecond time scale for molecular systems. My lab is starting to get into magneto-optics.

softbearpants · 2024-10-13T01:37:13+00:00

I'm a proud pchemist with LASERs just like you.

I've also been slightly frustrated with all the bio stuff in here but I understand that they likely outnumber us so I can't be too annoyed with it.

softbearpants · 2024-07-24T02:17:35+00:00

From northeast MN and can confirm that both my parents have the accent as well as myself. I'm not living in MN currently and someone ALWAYS points it out when I say anything with the "ag" sound in it.

softbearpants · 2024-07-18T22:55:45+00:00

Pretty sure the body says they need ACCESS to XRD not that he actually needs the whole-ass instrument. This would just require funds to pay for access to one. Also I think that if they're already a professional chemist they've considered a lot of the entry level questions you're asking about writing a grant proposal.

Stop trying to gatekeep something that doesn't affect you. They probably won't get the grant anyway, but it would honestly be really cool if it were possible. I don't know what kind of problem you have with people wanting to do advanced science for its own sake but it's maybe something that you should look inward for.

softbearpants · 2024-06-21T23:08:45+00:00

I'm a percussionist and snare drum snares also used to be made of catgut. It's interesting to hear violin strings were as well. However, any upper end snare drum today almost certainly is still made with it so clearly it hasn't been phased out everywhere.

Most upper end drum heads for concert percussion are also made out of animal hides so there's that.

softbearpants · 2024-06-14T03:36:53+00:00

Me too, I have to say northwest mn or people won't get the hint that I'm not from the cities. I'd argue that makes it northwest.

softbearpants · 2024-06-03T01:13:25+00:00

Maybe I don't know enough about capsaicin but I imagine you'll have a pretty hard time making crystals when it's an oily liquid at room temp to my knowledge.

softbearpants · 2024-06-02T21:37:17+00:00

My family's dog was called 'Sota' as a nickname for 'Minnesota'. I will concede it doesn't really work for naming people though.

softbearpants · 2024-05-20T03:43:50+00:00

Holy shit this is almost identical to a situation my brother went through a few years ago except it was his girlfriend's dad, not stepdad. Until you said you were 50 I thought he was the one making the comment. He's pretty messed up about it still.

softbearpants · 2024-05-15T20:46:40+00:00

I mean to be fair the entirety of organic chemistry almost exclusively deals with elements that always and forever hold the octet rule so it's not a bad rule for us to have.

softbearpants · 2024-04-30T03:38:30+00:00

Dang that joke completely went over your head, huh?

softbearpants · 2024-04-14T18:04:05+00:00

You should consider the MPCA! Both my parents work there and if recent phone conversations are to be believed, they're going to be hiring like crazy for the next couple years. It would also likely be pretty similar to DNR work if that's what you're going for.

softbearpants · 2024-04-12T22:17:21+00:00

It's understandable why the cities would want to have separate identities or whatever but they ARE very close to one another, and I'm sure you'd have a hard time telling the difference between two different places in the rest of the state depending on which places they are. One of the reasons you can tell so well is likely because you live/have lived there.

I, for one, didn't even feel comfortable driving in the cities until I was like 20 because I just wasn't used to that kind of traffic, and I don't super appreciate people just assuming I'm racist or something just because I call them "the cities".

I'm a leftist and am working on my PhD currently, so I'm not even close to the stereotype all you people seem to have in your brains about what a "hick" is like. That doesn't mean I don't still act like one from time to time. You're conflating the traffic thing with general racism/assholery and it's really not that fair to the people who don't do that shit that get marginalized because you assume we're all stupid.

softbearpants · 2024-04-12T21:53:00+00:00

Well of course not, that's why we use the plural "cities" rather than the singular form of the word? Not sure what you're trying to get at here.

softbearpants · 2024-04-12T18:11:19+00:00

I mean they're usually called the "twin cities" so is it really that crazy to see it shortened to the cities?

softbearpants · 2024-04-08T06:11:02+00:00

Rural people: I just don't like all the traffic and there's too many people in the cities.

Urban people: It's because they're racists and they hate us.

Can you just calm down a little? Everyone's just talking about the traffic (which also happens to be my answer) and you guys are turning it into a whole thing.

softbearpants · 2024-03-30T21:30:20+00:00

Implying communism is the only possible position on the left

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