It's the holiday season now here in the US. There would be a christmas party organized by the deparment at the end of the semester or near the beginning of the holiday. Yesterday (December 11th) is our department party or the christmas dessert party as they called it. The so called Party is in fact an informal gathering of the faculty members and Ph.D students.

Our department is relatively pretty small (but most productive in research in the whole world!), with only 12 faculty memebers and 2 staffs.  There are also 14 Ph.D students. About 2/3 of the faculty were present in a very small meeting room (They don't have a faculty lounge here, which also surpried me).  The department chair made a short speech with thanks and wishes to all the people. It's not so interesting with those guys who are so introvert and has no fun! The party last only for about 30 minutes and all are left!

This reminds me the department party at USF I participated a week ago. They have  a very big room for faculty activities. The room was full of faculty members and Ph.D students as well as delicious western food.  I can tell that people at the department of Psychology at USF are more extroverted and excited.  

BTW, the I/O psychology program in USF recruit more than 15 Ph.D students every year and they have a total enrollment of more than 50 doctorate students in the program right now. The Psychology department has more than 160 Ph.D students! That is really a place to learn something.

December12, 2007