Midterm week

Apparently the physics department at my school talks to each other and they try and plan it so that there are never too many midterms in a week/day. This may seem small but I've never seen this anywhere else and it greatly reduces some of the stress of graduate school (ignoring that I only have 1 physics course, rest are in other departments). Does anyone else have a department that does little things like this?

I have to admit imposter syndrome is setting in pretty bad here. It doesn't help I joined a group where I'm technically a senior student(phd candidate vs masters candidate) but is in a somewhat different area than I am used to. I am having to play catchup pretty quickly, and this is made worse as our group is large and so tracking down the appropriate resources(or finding out that they even exist) can be a pain. I found out the other new student to the group was assigned a mentor to help him with everything whereas I was not. I'm taking this as a sign of my advisors confidence in me, but it still kind of sucks.

On the plus side my new desktop comes in this week hopefully so no more lugging laptop back and forth constantly and using a small 13" screen. Downside is expectations are increasing quickly( along with my workload) and I'm not sure I can keep up with the increasing amount of work(I'm doing 2 or 3 different projects, one industrial type committee, teaching and grading a graduate course, taking 3 courses, and supervising the installation of some new nasa facilities here). Does this seem like a normal workload for a first semester PhD student or am I just whining?

Comfort vs New Frontiers

The group I joined at my PhD schools is incredibly large for an engineering research group. The topics are also pretty spread out. It's all under the banner of ... hmm I suppose I need to pick an alias for my research. How about cars. So there are many many subfields we look at spread over quite a few people and professional support staff. The area I've focused in so far through my masters(at a different university) could be useful to this lab. On the other hand I have the opportunity to branch out and do something different. If I choose this route it's likely to lengthen the time until my first publication in this lab however. So do I go with something that will give me another skillset, but likely result in fewer publications, or a longer time to graduate, or do I stay with what I'm good at, but applied to this group's area?
What's the tradeoff between learning new skills(in a fairly different field, although somewhat related still) compared to getting publications. Does having a wide variety of publication topics look good enough to warrant this?

Graduate student freetime.

As as graduate student I don't have the most freetime. I have to teach and grade for a course(for free), do my 20-60 hours a week or research, and have 3 classes. Each of these individually is almost a full load for any person. I am not special, most graduate students have loads similar to mine. I have noticed that as the teaching and class load increased, my research has suffered. This is due in part to my research at this point mostly being to play catchup to a field I just entered, but also because I just don't have enough time to dedicate to thinking creatively about problems in my field. I find I can only make my brain be useful for so many hours out of the day. How many USEFUL hours do other graduate students manage to squeeze out of their day? If I can get 4-5 hours of very creative thought I'm usually pretty happy(plus another 10 or so of labor, note taking, and keeping track of small details about my work).
This begs the question though, in the small amount of freetime that we do get as graduate students, what do people do with it? I brew beer, some educational reading, and a lot of time just vegetating my brain on tv or movies. Its like television, or a book is the least effort my brain can manage to process sometimes. What does everyone else do?
On an aside, a question I have been wondering, in everyone's experience do you think that people in graduate school drink more or less than equivalent age people working(assuming same field, socioeconomic position etc). Ie your friends that finished college and worked at that engineering firm, or research lab...do they drink more than you in graduate school, or less?

How do you choose what to post when beginning a blog?

I was originally going to post a question about how labs start up, and I realized no one actually reads this. So this brought up another issue. When you start a blog do you just pretend you have a few readers at least even if you don't, and be able to post questions towards your readers, or do you mostly make declaratory posts? I would like to be able to post questions and get responses(How does your lab handle such and such) but without a readership it seems like a bit of a waste of the question. Would it be better to just post informative posts until I develop a readership? I suppose if I had people reading this that would be less of an issue, or at least one that applies less to me. If you do post the question and get no responses, would it be weird to post it again in the future?

Frustration

University administration isn't particularly known for the speed at which it conducts its business. This is getting ridiculous however. I moved up here to my PhD institution June 5th on the assumption I would start work right away and get an early start so I could be productive by the time the school year started. It's August 6th and I still haven't been hired on. I've been going to the library for the latter half of summer each day to try and get in the habit of being at work every day, but it's disappointing not being able to get a jump start on research. I can do some background reading, but until I know my exact topic it's a bit hard. Now I'm waiting on a background check to come through. I haven't been paid all this summer so money is starting to get a bit tight as well which means I couldn't even take the summer to go on vacation and have fun.

How have you my non-existant readers dealt with long time periods with no pay and dashed expectations? Well at the very least there is a rather cute girl down the line of study desks I'm at.... That hardly makes up for 2-3 months of no pay however. This also means when school starts back up I have to work that much harder to publish often.

I'm trying to decide, for the science type posts I eventually plan to have on here whether I should do things in my area, or branch out and try and explain/commentate on something new? Anyone have any advice on whether staying within your specialty increases burnout?

Huzzah, it begins!

Hi,
 I'm starting my Ph.D. studies in electrical engineering and a blog seems like a great way to get into the habit of writing frequently as well as helping to develop a better writing style. This will most likely be a combination of my gripes about graduate school and the ordeals I face, as well as hopefully a little bit of technical coverage of whatever area is interesting me at the moment. I suppose we'll have to see how it goes. Now I just have to figure out how to get someone to read this so I'm not just writing to myself!

On the off chance that someone ever reads this post, anyone know some good twitter feeds to follow. Currently the only ones on my list are @doc_becca and @IEEESpectrum. Some other nice Prof/Grad student twitter with interesting content would make a nice addition to my list.

As I write this I am sitting at the library here. I've had to take over a spot in the library as the background check here hasn't gone through yet meaning I don't have access to my graduate office, as well as not getting paid. Finding out I wasn't working until 3 months later than I planned was quite a shock, but I guess I am at the mercy of my PI and school on that one. I wonder how common it is that start dates slide around? In anycase the library has the coolest little study booths. They are well lit for the most part, 3 power plugs each on the ones along the wall, as well as windows down here. Studying with so many books around me is stimulating also. It's impossible not to feel motivated when surrounded by so much knowledge, although at times it can make you feel a little inadequate as well. The Juice bar on the first floor is kinda nifty also.

What cool features does your library have?