Best students ever!

To all my previous students:

I'm truly sorry but you have been downgraded by two levels in the student quality hierarchy by my current students, Ashley and Kelsey, because they baked me a cake here in Nicaragua. To understand why this is significant, you should know that it is the end of the dry season here in Chinandega, the hottest part of the year in the hottest part of Nicaragua. So, turning on the oven feels almost exactly like jumping into the smoking volcano that is visible through the kitchen window.

 Kudos to Ashley and Kelsey. They've raised the bar. It might take brandy and cigars to surpass them. I feel sorry for their successors. Good luck to them, the poor bastards.

Sincerely,

Cliff

National Science Foundation Graduate Student Forum

The National Science Foundation has created a website for graduate student forum

intended to encourage discussion among U.S. graduate-education stakeholders. Recent reports recommend several courses of action to improve U.S. STEM graduate education, but many of these reports lack input from the graduate education community broadly. This forum will provide the NSF Division of Graduate Education (DGE) a direct connection with graduate students, faculty, university administrators, employers, and others who want to contribute to the national dialogue.

On the site, they post questions and readers are encouraged to post answers as comments. It's worth a visit if you're interested in the NSF, science policy, or graduate education. It's only a three month trial run, and it's already been up and running for a while, so don't delay if you want to participate in the discussion.

The URL is http://nsfgradforum.wordpress.com/ or you can click the link in the first sentence.