Where can I find a "nurturing" engineering graduate school?

Graduate School
21

“just as you had that “Aha!” moment, that there is so much more you don’t know beyond that…and that can be very frustrating at times.”

Makes sense.

“Finally, no professor is willingly going to let you hang around for 4 years getting a master’s degree.”

If that’s truly the case, then I guess I’m screwed for now, as far as going to grad school.

Regardless, thanks for your replies.

22

mwd…your post (#18) is the first one you’ve written that made some sense to me.

It is a great idea. I’ve actually seen it work out for people when they’re working at a full time job and take one class per semester and in the summer. Especially if they are in the same city and can actually come to class…they’re employers don’t mind that. The employer will pay for some of it. Some money corporations pay for education is not taxed. I’ve seen students transition this part time schedule into a PhD program.

If I had to do it over again, I would have tried something like this rather that going for a Masters full time. I will say that bh is right in that no prof will let you stay funded for 4 years in a masters degree. Many programs may not let you be full time for 4 years…there will be policies against this.

…I hear you on wanting to “Master” subject. I don’t know if K-12 is the best example to give though. Maybe just keeping it at a subject you “mastered” in high school will make more sense to people. I was a TA for 2 years in grad school for an undergrad class. I tried to be positive, but often this was difficult. Often you were dealing with students who were just so far behind that it felt like you had limited time to spend with them or you were just putting out fires with them. Like just helping them work thru some basic problem and moving on to the next student, rather then making sure they’ve mastered the subject on any real level.

There were several problems I saw with these students (some of the problems were not the student’s fault)

  1. They're always overloading with classes. Their class loads were almost never reasonable. Part of the issue is they only had so much money and tried to cram in as many course as possible. Part of the problem was that were getting bad advice....leading me to my next concern.
  2. Awful or no academic advising. Students were taking too many classes, or they were taking courses without taking the prerequisites. No academic advisor in their right mind would have recommended some of the schedules they were taking.
  3. Students did not have the study skills to work in groups. You need to learn to work in groups to succeed in academia.

The point is that they students did not have enough time and were getting dumb advice from advisors. They were not able to learn or master material. Part of taking “ownership” of your education is NOT always listening to academic advisors. Part of it is acknowledging that you are paying and you can chose what you pay for.

Hope this helps!

23

As a high school teacher, you can be nurturing towards a student but don’t have room for research (unless, by some miracle, you worked as a RA during the summer).

I have no doubt that, if you made it to a college-level professorship (and, even in engineering, that’s a big if), you will be a nurturing professor, but part of a professor’s job, especially a tenure-track one, is to do research. At least you understand that life as a graduate student is stressful and, for any of them to succeed, they need to keep stress levels at a manageable level, and I think you would become one of those professors that would genuinely care about their well-being. After all, most of the time, an unhappy student is a student that is less productive, which, in turn, will hurt you and your funding prospects.

Sounds like high school teaching may be more suited for you (despite the ridiculous amount of disciplining you will have to do)…