Graduation Invitation Letter For Guest Speaker: Fill & Download for Free

For me it began as though I was returning to the scene of my previous crimes. In my department, defenses, oral comps, and many seminars all take place in one particular conference room, so I had been there before, many times, and had experienced some rather horrendous humiliations there. But I had taken a very long time to finish my dissertation, and had done so out of state and hadn’t been back into that room in 7 years. I hadn’t seen many of my committee members face-to-face in nearly as many years, and one member I had never met at all. In the moments before it all began I was panicking, conscious of all my deficiencies, and replaying in my mind some of my worst memories of graduate school.Then I began to present my prepared talk and after two sentences I was no longer in student mode, I was in professorial mode. I had been teaching for several years and I knew how to lecture. My mood and the mood of the whole room changed. I felt I was no longer the student trying to pass my exams but rather an invited guest speaker.After my presentation, the “outside” committee member, the one I had never met and who had given me the least amount of written feedback (so I could not anticipate what she would say), opened the question period. She began “I think we can all agree that the dissertation speaks for itself and there is no need to ‘defend’ it . So let’s just move right along to talking about what differences you envision for the book version . . .” And internally I nearly exploded with relief. That set the tone for the rest of the questions.After the questions everyone not on the committee was asked to leave the room. After a few minutes my advisor opened the door and asked me to come in, and said. “You’re going to be a doctor, congratulations.”Honestly, I felt that the defense helped me to exorcise a lot of my demons and to let go of some of the stress and trauma I associated with being a grad student. I’m glad I had to do it. I also think it helped my professors (who were still tasked with writing letters of recommendation for me) to see me in a new, more professional, light.

I invite others to weigh in as well but here are a few thoughts.As a transfer student you have less time between enrollment and graduation to get to know faculty. These are folks you will want to write recommendation letters for jobs, internships, grad school, etc. Go to their office hours and attend when there are guest speakers.Take an hour or two to figure out what services your fees are paying for. For instance, there is a “tech materials fee” that includes various software programs at no additional cost to you.Visit the botanical garden. It is wonderful.Buy the books, and buy them in the format that is most helpful to you. Read the books and other assigned material. Keep books from your major.Multiple studies, from multiple disciplines, have found taking handwritten notes aids in retention and understanding. Minimally, turn off your WiFi in class so you are not tempted to surf in lecture.UCR students come from varied situations. Listen when when they talk about their experiences. They will teach you things the faculty cannot.

Well, I had a good time, but I’ll have to flesh this out later.Never offend the camp cook.Take a good selection of music. And reading (not easy; if you take reading which is too easy, you will go thru it too fast; then you have nothing to read).My new ice buddies, who overwintered, gave me a thumbs up for an overwinter endorsement if I ever so chose.I got invited by friends who are glaciologists on one of their summer drilling/coring expeditions. I was invited because “I was a known quantity” being skiing buddies and having a couple years stint in snow hydrology (a little different). I was cheap labor, and family implied nepotism. I was already a talented enough climber and skier, dealing with avalanches and crevasses.Some your biggest misunderstandings about the place is to mistake tourist photos taken along the coast where you can see the few animals (marine), relief (mountains), and the ocean. This is not most of Antarctica. This is tourist Antarctica.Our drilling project was fairly big as funded projects went: 10 people (we had to drill in 3 shifts with a hot water corer (this had some advantages like we could take the occasional hot tub within our melters).I spent a couple of months living out of a Scott tent in the field with my skiing friend Hermann. His boss and my friend was one of the smartest men in the world (prior to our trip he ran Caltech for 3 years AND started his Antarctic trips; I had other PIs from other institutions like UIUC that part of the honor going down there (to the Ice) is meeting brilliant people like my friend Barclay (he was also the featured guest speaker on a Caltech Alumni trip to the Peninsula).So we staged out of CHCH, NZ (you have to get used to acronyms and abbreviations), flew down in a C-141 (you learn about barter), learned to drive and handle all kinds of oversnow vehicles: Sprytes, snow machines like Alp 1s and Alp 2s, Tucker Sno-cats, Hagglunds, and lighter machines, I learned to drive and use a bulldozer.I took 90 rolls of film (bartered 15 (really just gave them away), 3 rolls malfunctioned 1 roll was a penguin rookery roll (damn), 1 roll was our first day of drilling (damn), and the 3 was not critical (you have to know about Murphy)) and about 14 hours of blank VHS video tape. I also brought music and video (Never Cry Wolf, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and 1 other I have to try to recall). I was the only person in camp with classic music (Mozart’s Greatest: this made me popular for a little different change).Ours was the 2nd year email was available in the Antarctic. It was installed for my buddy Carol (new from the prior year; we had relatives in Utah where she grew up). I just saw my friend Thom who installed Internet for the USA at McMurdo and Pole (he’s proudest of sending the first email from the South Pole with the set up he had). They worked at my normal day job. I was with another institution entirely. Email changed morale in the Antarctic.No amount of email will compare or equal a Care-package of chocolate chip cookies, paper mail (quickly becomes public property if like a magazine (I was sent the first issue of Wired (“You have weird friends”)) or book.Morale is very important. You also have to send your share of atoms out (letters, postcards, gifts from the MacTown store).It’s light 24 hours a day in high summer. This doesn’t mean anything to you unless you know and appreciate snow metamorphosis (snow bridges rarely get enough cold to resolidify making them more dangerous). You’d better adapt to sleep (goes for the Arctic, too (see ahead)).You have to be at your game to survive in the Antarctic. You have to know how to survive and live in the snow (know your priorities (everyone who goes out into the field has to take Happy Camper School (I already used to teach winter mountaineering and what’s called advanced snow craft (single handed crevasse rescue (person or a snow machine (yes, you might have to drag a snow machine which fell into a crevasse)))))).Every season, typically, someone dies somewhere in the Antarctic. The news spreads around, and then everyone sobers up. The year I was there it was a Norwegian a few 100 miles from us. The following year, it was a USN weather man the day before he was going to go home. I know the exact place he fell off Castle Rock (class 4, the BFC guys place a fixed hand line there). You have to take hazards seriously all the time.Sometimes, on your days off (taking time off is important), you might tag along with some other scientist on their project. So I saw and shot video of seals and penguins, and skuas. People who came with us were OK until they saw us jumping roped into crevasses for practice; then, to them it didn’t look so good, but was fine to watch us practice.Eating was great! We typically had a turkey for holidays, and great means like king crab and lobster. Scott and Co. didn’t eat this well even if we stayed 1/2 occupancy in their type of tents. Chocolate is important; in subsequent year, I sent buddies gummy bears, and they very quickly became very popular. I also donated obsolete NASA hardware which was going to be tossed, and the NSF didn’t have to pay for that transfer of equipment (I got popular for that, too).We saw history: saw both of Scott and Wilson’s huts and Shackleton’s hut. Hey Charlie Bentley wasn’t a name on a map, but a guy we ate dinners with. My buddies got topographic features named after them (you can be alive; my name is in the queue but obviously low priority, others had name conflicts by already existing names).I was the youngest explorer in the group. This was my first year, everyone else on my project had been to the Antarctic (land or ship) in some prior year including Katie (a graduating Caltech Senior (youngest in age), who did a tour on the R/V Nathaniel Palmer the year before, was our youngest person at 21).One gets a chance to chat with friends on earlier trips or over-winters (very intense).So we were about 84S 135W; the joke on the official USGS Antarctic map was the then label “Clouds”. This is about 400 miles from the Pole. Buddies flew 200 miles South to tie local GPS points to some rock rognons (they found living lichens (I loaned them my video camera which they had a gas of a time)). This was, and officially still is, unclaimed. Well, buddies on another project claimed our territory for the Alaska Independence Party.For some people, toward the end of the trip, it can be stressful being away from people. You give those people allowances.I have a photo of one of the UW guys I met earlier in season kiss the ground in the dark at CHCH, this was his first soil in 3 months. And darkness.You read books. Read nothing too light and easy. I donated a James Joyce biography and a couple of his books to the MacTown library. I also left the Clancy book on subs that I got at LAX.You become a sort of Ambassador for your country. So I got a medal (all Americans who work down there officially get one).Little things become important. My laptop died, and friends at Apple did their best to help me, but that saved time not tinkering too much (we did have a small unconnected local LAN of 2 SUN workstations in another project). We used HF and FM radios. Had I gone back, I might have tried a low speed packet radio experiment.“A 6 can be a 10”. That’s what women told themselves (this is both good and bad). It’s not the macho place it once was. One of my friends, installing satellite equipment got treated like a Queen at Black Island (they had not seen a woman in months).You learn about the utility of cargo containers and the special forklifts which can drive inside them.We flew around in ski-equipped Hercs and Twin Otters.You never take liquid water for granted. Everything otherwise freezes. You learn the importance of various anti-freezes: glycol, alcohol (methyl; poison), etc.We got to blow up 800 lbs of extra explosive (another project’s seismic charges).Freshies are prized. But some people have what others might regard as strange diets (one of Arctic pilots ate nothing but strawberry ice cream).We the “chosen frozen” can tell who has been down there.1 cool experience was watching the Sun traverse the sky counter clockwise. This contrasts with the Arctic. Have the Flat Earthers explain that.If you over winter you get to see the Aurora and the Southern night sky. You’d see the Southern night sky in NZ, and it ain’t like the North.In the years which followed, various friends passed away: 1 killed by an avalanche, 1 fell off Mt Cook, older age took others.While I’m not averse to another trip to the Antarctic, I’ve done 18 campaigns with their other relatives to the Arctic. Free trips to Alaska, annually, good food, no questions asked (I’ve already had 2 suggested slaves volunteer and get picked). A couple of Quora (company) swag photos appear on other posts.