Grad Student Rant

[greencrayon]

I don't know if you guys (or anyone who works in an office that has meetings) use Doodle to make appointments... If you don't, the gist of it is: You put a bunch of dates/times on a calendar. Each participant marks off the dates and times that work for them. When everyone is done, the dates/times that work for everyone are marked green.

So for my committee meeting, I did this and gave them a 2 1/2 week spread of dates. Only one day worked, with two times (it is impossible to get five professors together at the same time.) So I send out an email saying "here's the date and time, I'll let you know the room number when I reserve it." I get an email a few minutes later from a secretary saying "Oh there's something on his schedule at that time." My boss is going out of town for a week after that, so it looks like I wont get my meeting done until March. Lovely. 'ksjdf;kdsjf;lkdsj;ldskj

[yellowbelly86]

Sounds really annoying.

[Deleted]

I deal with this a lot for campus meetings. There's been many times you just bite the bullet and say 'sorry X, but this works for everyone else and this item really needs to be discussed/resolved.'

[dr.girlfriend]

That sucks, but for me it's often the case that some stragglers take so long to respond to the doodle poll that by the time they do I've added more stuff to my calendar. I can't keep 12 slots open forever, people!

In this case I would email the secretary back and say, "Prof had previously indicated he was available, and this is the only time that works for all involved.  Can the conflict be rescheduled?"  Worth a try.

[Deleted]

In grad school, I e-mailed each committee member (or his secretary) directly and said "what times are you available the week of X." I often had to move my meeting earlier or later than I preferred due to my advisor's frequent travels. If you have five committee members, you'll need to plan committee meetings well over a month in advance. They each have a lot of things on their calendars.

[shakeitout]

When I was in grad school, we had a monthly student workshop and we used Doodle to schedule it. One particularly difficult person to get along with said he was available for just 4 of the times out of 50 possible. So annoying.

[Deleted]

I'm glad my coworkers use Outlook. You can just look at everyone's calendars.