Advice for Graduate Student Advisees
How to deal with me:
- First and foremost, don't depend on me to remind you when your deadlines are for things like your candidacy exam, general exam, or what forms have to be filed when or where they go, etc. - check with the grad school and the departmental grad studies committee for stuff like that. All I do is sign stuff.
- I'm pretty attentive to my email - that's the best way to contact me.
- For grad students who want to talk about research, it's usually better to set an appointment with me than come to my office hours. Use office hours for class-related discussions.
- I'm usually pretty flexible. I'll meet as often as you like or as seldom.
- I don't like theses and dissertations that are stand-alone, throw-away projects. If they don't contribute something to the intellectual and/or software environment around here, then it's not worth my time and effort.
- If you're unfunded, go at your own pace; if you're funded, go at my pace.
Contents:
The passing the qualifier exam only depends on the score.
Determination of who passes the qualifier is determined only by those responsible for preparing the exam.
Evaluating research Potential is now a separate step.
There is now a separate determination of having demonstrated research potential.
Evaluating research potential is now separated from the Qualifying Exam and consists of two parts:
- 9 hours of 788, 793, 888, 999
- A written project report approved by the advisor.
The form for the Candidacy Exam is as follows:
- a major and two minor areas.
- an Oral presentation of the research proposal
- Written exam for major only
- 2-hour Oral exam for major only
- Committee consists of major advisor and 2 faculty in major area, along with the CSE representative and the Graduate School representative.
Fill out the graduate school form.
Check with them on when it needs to be filled out and filed with them.
Give me a list of courese you've taken in graphics (and related areas).
Annotate any 788s, 793s, etc., listing as much as possible the topics and projects you were involved in.
Typcially (but it varies from professor to professor), major exam is week long takehome and minor exam is long weekend takehome.
My questions will typically include a question on advanced rendering, a question in your area of interest for your research, and a question that is some type of open question in computer graphics.
I expect your answers to be typewritten (word processor).
You can search the literature for material unless explicitly instructed not to.
You shouldn't really have to concern yourself with length, but for very general length guidelines, I would expect at least a couple of pages for each answer and probably no more than ten pages.
I don't expect you to discuss the questions or answers with anyone else.
After the exam, I don't expect you to discuss the details of any answers with anyone who has yet to take the test.
Ask all members if they want copies of all the writtens.
I want a copy of all of them and the grad school rep gets copies of all the writtens.
For the oral, prepare a 5 minute 'intellectual history' of yourself in order to introduce yourself and calm down.
The biggest mistake you can make is to get rattled.
If you don't know the answer to something, admit it and go on - it won't flunk you (usually).
There is a separate presentation of a research proposal required by the Department - see Research Proposal below
It's your responsibility to schedule a time that is acceptable to all committee members (except the grad school rep) and to reserve a room (usually one of the CSE conference rooms, but DL680 is also possible).
Some students bring donuts or other food to the general exam.
I don't encourage this; you have enough to deal with already.
I do recommend having coffee at the exam.
The thesis option for the Master's degree is a reasonable way to go.
Sometimes students opt for the thesis because they want to leave here with some kind of significant project they can show that they have done.
Often, the project can just be an independent study project, but some students want something more significant than what independent study usually produces.
Graphics lends itself to theses projects.
In general, you should expect a thesis to extend your stay here by one or two quarters.
On the upside, it replaces the Comprehensive Exam.
To qualify as a Master's Thesis, the work should be something new, but not necessarily a quantum leap in the state-of-the-art.
Being 'new' can take the form of a new survey or taxonomy of existing material, or it may be some piece that contributes to a Ph.D. dissertation.
Personally, I tend to discourage programming projects that don't really contribute to either the computing environment around here or contribute to some larger research project.
I discourage 'throw-away' programming projects which don't really contribute anything useful.
Theses require a lot of resources (both of the computing environment and of myself) so they should be worth the effort.
Graduate Studies Committee:
A student who wishes to exercise the thesis option for the MS degree must satisfy the following conditions:
- The student must have completed all core courses with grades of at least C (not including C-) and may not have received a grade less than B- on more than one core course.
- The student must have earned a grade point average on the core courses of at least 3.0
The student may retake one or more core courses in order to satisfy these conditions; any previous grade will then be ignored.
A form listing core course grades and the proposed faculty thesis advisor must be signed by the advisor and by the chairperson of the Graduate Studies Committee no later than the quarter preceding the quarter in which the degree is awarded.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pat answer for 'what makes a dissertation'.
It's kind of like art - I know it when I see it.
In general it should:
- advance the state-of-the-art in some quantum way, (not just an incremental improvement - that's more of an undergrad honors thesis project). A Master's thesis should contribute to the literature (i.e., be publishable) but not necessarily be a significant advance like a Ph.D. dissertation should.
- address a problem of some importance - not some esoteric thing that nobody really cares about - you must be able to justify why members of the intellectual community will be interested in what you've done.
- be non-obvious, intellectually interesting - many things take a lot of work to do, but have little or no intellectual value
- be doable in one to two years for a Ph.D. dissertation; for a Master's thesis, I would estimate one quarter to do the research, one quarter to finish the researhc and write it up (and then, often, one quarter to really finish it and graduate).
Writing and defending a dissertation has several purposes:
- to some extent, to actually advance the state-of-the-art
- to show that you can actually 'do research': identify a problem, come up with potential solutions, and select, implement, and defend a particular solution.
- to put you through the rigors of researching and writing a complete, polished, piece of work (a not-very-often-articulated, but immensly important aspect of doing the dissertation)
- to show that you can talk about your research as a peer
When laying out a disseration, you should think about telling a unified, complete story about the problem solution.
You don't have to solve every aspect of the problem.
It's o.k. to have loose ends - as long as the loose ends are not central to the theme of the dissertation and as long as you identify the loose ends and address the reasons for not pursueing them.
It's o.k. to admit that time does not permit addressing something.
You should give reasons why every decision was made along the way.
The more central the decision is to the main theme of the dissertation, the more justification you need for the decision.
It's o.k. to do something because "that's the way it's done in the literature"
as long as your research does not depend heavily on that decision.
A research proposal should contain the following:
- A concise statement of what research you're proposing (this can be anywhere from 1 to 3 sections of the proposal):
- a statement of what the basic problem is, why it's important, why it's non-trivial, why it's intellectually interesting, what's the hard problem?
- generally what the state-of-the-art is,
- a statement of what you're planning on doing and what contributions to the literature you'll make.
Make sure you talk about what the hard problems are that you will attempt to solve.
It should not just sound like a programming project.
What makes this PhD dissertation research worthy?
- A list of the most closely related research found in the literature - and a short statement of how your proposed work differs from what's out there already
- A description of the work you've done so far and how it relates to the proposed research.
Include anything you've done that is related to your topic - not everything here needs to be directly applicable to the rest of your research.
- your research plan
- A more detailed description of what you plan to do for your research - usually for graphics this involves an implementation that is a 'proof of concept' for your thesis
A timeline
- A plan on how your are going to evaluate the success or failure of your research - some quantitative comparison and/or subjective evaluation (by someone other than yourself) - how do you know when you're done?
Write. Write. Write.
I expect you to submit your Ph.D. research as a journal article or SIGGRAPH paper; a master's thesis should at least be submitted to a conference.
It would be good for Ph.D. students to submit to a conference early on and the journal/SIGGRAPH article at the time you are wrapping up.
The Department expects Ph.D. students to have some significant publication on their resume by the time they graduate and, of course, it benefits you when hunting for a job.
(As an aside, publications are the main way I get some benefit from spending time advising you; I should be second author on any paper you write about stuff that I advise you on.)
Write technical reports. If well chosen these can be included as chapters in the dissertation.
They help hone your writing skills and make you do literature searches that will have to be done for the disseration anyway.
They help to lay chronological claim to intellectual territory which may be necessary if others are working in the same area.
They also help to pad out your vita.
Submit conference papers.
These have the same advantages as technical reports plus they give you feedback about your work from outside sources and they help to get you name known.
Conferences also tend to give you feedmack in a timely manner (as opoosed to journal articles).
Of course, submit journal articles if appropriate.
However, because of the long turnaround time (a year is not uncommon), any feedback you get will probably not arrive in time to help your disseration.
The thesis/dissertation should "tell a story".
There should be a central story (solution to a problem) that is developed.
There should not be any loose ends dangling, unless those loose ends are not central to the story.
There are practical limitations (e.g. time constraints) to thesis/dissertation work and people understand this.
You can't solve everything - but your work should be complete with respect to the problem that you've carved out for yourself.
A basic outline follows.
Deviations from what is below are certainly possible and will depend on the subject matter:
- Introduction
- statement of the problem to be addressed
- motivation as to why the problem is important and why it's solution would be of interest
- explaining why a solution to the problem is non-trivial
- Related Work
- For a thesis or dissertation, this should be a good, complete survey of the state-of-the-art.
This should NOT be a brief listing of a few references.
It's should be thorough and fairly detailed.
The more your work builds on another, the more that work should be explained.
- the presentation of related work can be chronological or a taxonomy of approaches, but should have some organization
- Theoretical Solution
- an explanation of the algorithm, procedure or approach irrespective of implementation
- Implementation
- a description of your specific (partial?) implementation of the proposed solution
- the implementation should be at least a "proof of concept".
It doesn't have to be a complete, robust, ready-to-commercialize, piece of software, but it should work on a good variety of inputs,
- a description of the hardware/software on which the implementation was carried out.
- include at least rough timings.
If your work is being proposed as a better solution to what's already in the literature, then comparative timings should be included,
- Results
- a description of the quality of results, processing time, pre-processing required, etc.
- you should strive to include some objective measure of the success of your algorithm in comparison to others and/or in its effectiveness in getting the job done (e.g. subject testing),
- this should a critical evalation of your algorithm; include weak points and failures as well as successes.
- Conclusion
- Summarize the contributions of your work - in priority order,
- explain why your work is different and better than what's been done before
- Future Work
- ways to extend the range of inputs that the algorithm handles
- ways to speed up the algorithm
- ways to reduce memory required
- Acknowledgements
- hardward/software developers you stood on the shoulders of
- readers/reviewers of drafts of the paper
- Your advisor
For some general guidelines:
- Justify claims - either by reference to the literature or in the text itself.
- Establish definitions of terms used - don't assume too much from the reader.
- Avoid use of vague terms, such as somewhat, a certain distance away - explain what values you used and why.
Get Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It's a thin book and has some gems of how to write. The basic premise is 'keep it simple'. If you can say it in less words, do so.
Some basics, mostly from EoS, to watch for:
- Omit needless words
- that v. which: that is the defining, or restrictive pronoun, which the nondefining, or nonrestrictive.
- "The workstation that is broken is in my office." (tells which one)
- "The workstation, which is broken, is in my office." (adds a fact about the only workstation in question)
- the semicolon can be used to separate two complete sentences
- "It is the eighth week of the quarter; it is too late to drop the course."
- Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas
- Parenthetic expressions, also called explanatory remarks, are not really meant to be enclosed inside parantheses.
- Place a comma before a conjunction introducing an independent clause. If a dependent clause, or an introductory phrase requiring to be set off by a comma, precedes the second independent clause, no comma is needed after the conjunction.
- "The situation is perilous, but there is still time to pass this class."
- "The situation is perilous, but if you are prepared to study hard, there is still a chance to pass."
- lay (transitive verb) v. lie (intransitive verb):
- "The student lays an egg."
- "The professor lies down."
- principle (a basic truth, essential quality, or rule) v. principal (first, highest, or foremost in importance or rank; also financial principal).
- Of all the rules, which is the principal principle?
- its versus it's
- use it'swhen it's a contraction for it is
- use its when its use is for possessive purposes
- to versus too
- too can be used to mean also as in I too think...
- too can be used to mean excessive or very as in it's too much.
- your versus you're
- Think about how you're using your words; is it used as a contraction or in the possessive sense.
- may v. might
- You may use may when it refers to permission
- You might use might when it's possible to use it, but you don't need permission.
- can v. could
- You can use can when it refers to permission or ability
- You could use could when it's possible to use it
- none as a number is usually singular.
- I think there is some leeway on this because none of the rules is absolute.
- subject-verb need to agree on single/plural
- The set of possible mistakes is non-empty (because the *set* *is* empty, but *mistakes* *are* possible).
- alot (a lot: a large amount) is not a word even though allot (allot: to distribute) is.
- He has to allot the proceeds from the sale to his employees.
- He has a lot of proceeds to allot to his employees.
Here are some other guidelines - but note that some are more a matter of personal opinion and may vary depending on who's on your reading committee:
- Tend to avoid first person, especially first person singular. Repeated use of 'I did this' and 'I did that' becomes boorish. 'We did this' and 'We did that' sounds a little better even though in a single authored work doesn't make sense. 'The system does this' or 'the implementation does this' or 'in this work this was done' or 'this was done' usually sounds better.
- Don't use a reference as a construct in the sentence. E.g. 'In [5], this approach is used' is not good form (in my personal opinion). Instead, say 'In Dr. Doe's paper [5], this approach is used' or 'this approach is used [5]'.
- Watch your tense. Usually, when talking about what is in the research literature, use present tense, not past - because it *is* in the literature, even though the paper *was* written in the past.
For example, "Dr. Doe uses this approach [5]" instead of "Dr. Doe used this approach [5]."
But whichever way you do it - be consistent in your use of tense. don't switch between present and past tense.
- Watch you usage of 'a' and 'the'. This is mainly for non-native speakers and is one of the major problems.
It will take me a lot longer to review your manuscript if it is filled with these kinds of grammatical mistakes.
Try to eliminate basic grammatical errors before the manuscript gets to me.
Graphics terms: spelling, capitalization, hyphenation
- boundary representation or BRep (v. Brep or B-rep)
- cuboid (is a rectangular solid v. cube)
- Euclidean (v. euclidean)
- free-form deformation (v. free form deformation or Free-from deformation)
- Newton-Raphson (v. newton-raphson or Newton Raphson)
- polygonization (v. polygonalization)
- ray tracing (v. ray-tracing or raytracing)
- regula falsa (v. Regula Falsa)
- superquadrics (v. super-quadrics)
- Voronoi (v. voronoi)
- octree (v. octtree)
Also see Common Errors in English Usage
For an M.S., get one other CSE faculty member. For a Ph.D., get three people on board as soon as you start writing.
Most committee members don't get involved too early (other than the major advisor), but you should give them the opportunity to do so if they want.
Oncy you have a well-defined topic and have identified the work you must do to complete the thesis/dissertation, it's a good idea to have a meeting of your committee and present your plan.
It's usually a good idea to do this with everyone present at one time, although this can also be done individually with the committee members.
Sometimes it's good to do this more than once with the committee.
Prepare about an forty-five minute presentation.
Start off with a 5 minute 'intellectual history' of yourself.
This will be followed by a questioning period from the committee members.
I usually run defences so that outside people can hear the presentation part of the defense, but then I ask the visitors to leave during the question and answering period.
This may change.
Here are some on-line notes (not mine).
Here's another one.
Some things to think about:
- Motivate why your audience should listen to you:
- State what the problem is
- Say why it's important
- Expain why it's non-trivial to solve
- Review what others have done about it so you can position yourself relative to them
- Know your audience: Think about what you want people in the audience to leave your presentation with:
- Are they in your area? Are they in Computer Science? Are they in Science and Engineering? Are they the uninitiated? Tailor your talk accordingly.
- Don't inundate them with unnecessary detail if you don't expect them to understand it or care about it.
- Work top-down: give them the big picture, then more detailed info
- Drop down to the detail level only to show the flavor of it
- Give people info to follow up on - access to you, URLs, citations, etc.
- Know your material:
- You should know the material well enough to field questions about it; try to anticipate what might be asked.
- If you're asked something you don't know the answer to, admit it and make a mental note of it. If appropriate, find out the answer to it and get back the person who asked the question with the answer (important on job interviews or small research meetings).
- On questions which require involved answers, let the questioner know you'll be glad to talk with him/her about it after the presenation. Do NOT tell the questioner that it is 'too complicated to explain' (I've heard that on a couple of occassions).
- Know your competition:
- What/Who are you comparing your work to?
- What underlying assumptions differ between your work and others?
- What is the fundamental advantage offered by your work: speed, cost, mumory, usability, generality, extensibility?
- Pay attention to your presentation mechanics:
- Plan how you're going to position yourself when explaining things using a blackboard or overhead or slides
- Scope out the physical layout of the podium/presentation area. Figure out where you're going to put an overhead both before and after you use one.
- How are you going to point to things on the screen? At the overhead? at the screen? with a pointer? with a laser pointer? with your finger? (how many times have I seen someone point to the screen on their laptop instead of the overhead projector screen?)
Also, trying to hold a laser pointer still is impossible - use it to circle an area on the screen.
- Time yourself
- Look at the audience; don't keep your back to the audience.
- Don't mumble
- Don't drone on and on about some small point
- Figure out how much of the screen everybody in the audience can see and position your overheads accordingly
- Plan how you are using your presentation material. If using multiple methods (e.g., overhead and blackboard), plan how you're going to move from one to the other.
- Plan what additional material you need to draw or write during your presentation
- Pay attention to your presentation material:
- Think about color schemes
When using text on slides, think about color schemes - you need high contrast between letters and the background. Red on blue, and blue on black are very hard to read. Good color schemes are: white on blue, yellow on blue, black on red
Check out the sample text color table for color combinations.
Be forewarned that you should evaluate colors by previewing them in the medium you are going to end up using for your presentation.
For example, viewing colors on an RGB monitor is not the same as viewing the colors on a projected slide.
If you're using slides you should create a test slide of this table and see how readable colors are once they are projected - and under the same viewing conditions as your audience.
- Only put keywords of phrases on overheads/slides
- Don't put more than five or six items on an overhead/slide
What I consider to be the mainstream computer graphics journals in generally a priority order:
-
Computer Graphics
(until recently, certain volumes were the Proceedings of SIGGRAPH)
Except for the Proceedings issues, the articles are marginal.
It does contain some interesting stuff on the field in general, such as their education issue which lists all the programs in computer graphics.
-
Transactions on Graphics
(TOG) (T385A23)
One of the most well-respected journals in graphics.
The articles tend to be long and all-encompassing, but there are some exceptions.
-
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
(TVCG) (T385I245)
This is a new journal.
It is aiming to address archival works.
-
Visual Computer
(not in the library)
A good journal.
The articles are pretty interesting.
-
The Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation
(not in the library)
This often has interesting articles, but overall the journal is fair.
-
Computer Graphics Forum
A European Journal. Fair.
-
Computers and Graphics
I'm not very familiar with this one.
-
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
(CG&A) (T385I23)
Recently has become more of a trade journal and less of a research journal.
The articles are usually of general interest.
-
Computer Graphics World
More of an industry-watch journal.
Not very academic.
Sometimes has decent survey articles or tutorials.
A few that are related, but special-purpose:
-
Presence
Relatively new journal on teleoperators and virtual environments.
-
Transactions on Computer - Human Interaction
(TCHI)
One of the most well-respected journals in graphics.
The articles tend to be long and all-encompassing, but there are some exceptions.
-
Journal of Graphical Tools
A journal trying to bridge the gap between research and practical applications.
I think this has been discontinued or is about to be.
More geometric modeling and computer aided design than mainstream graphics:
-
Computer Aided Design
(CAD)
(TA174C58)
Very good journal on CAD-type stuff.
-
Computer Aided Geometric Design
(CAGD) (QA464C65)
Very good journal on CAD-type stuff.
-
Computer Aided Design, Engineering, and Drafting
(CADED)
(TA174C585)
-
Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling
(not in the library)
I'm not very familiar with this one.
More image processing:
-
Graphical Models and Image Processing
(used to be Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing) (T385C57)
A very good journal, but tends more toward the image processing and vision issues related to computer graphics.
-
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI)
(TK7882P3I33)
A very good journal which tends toward pattern analysis and not so much graphics.
Every now and then, interesting graphics-related articles appear.
-
Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing
Now is Graphical Models and Image Processing
Jobs
(starting to keep track of last time I heard they were looking)
-
Apple
-
Auto*des*sys
(Sept. 1997)
a CAD software company for MAC and PCs
they need people who are generally good programmers in addition to graphics people.
-
Adobe
(June 1997)
-
Blue Sky Productions
entertainment
-
Boss Film Studios
entertainment
-
deGraf/Wahrman
entertainment
-
Detail Ltd.
(Aug. 1997)
games software development company
-
Digital Domain
(Aug. 1997)
entertainment
-
Disney
(Aug. 1997)
entertainment
-
Dreamworks
entertainment
-
Engineering Animation Inc
(Aug. 1997)
2625 North Loop Drive
Ames, IA 50010
Adrian Sannier
vox: 515.296.9908
fax: 515.296.7025
email: ace@eai.com
entertainment and other animation
-
R.J.Evans & Associates
(head hunter)
Lori Gill, Project Recruiting Director
26949 Chagrin Boulevard
Beachwood, Ohio 44122
216/464-5100
fax: 216-464-8276
-
Honda
(Aug. 1997)
Cindy Downey / Tamara Jenkins
Coordinator
Honda R&D North America, Inc.
937-645-1908
emp@oh.hra.com
-
Imageworks
entertainment
-
Industrial Light and Magic (ILM)
entertainment
-
Lamb & Company
entertainment
-
Metrolight Studios
entertainment
-
Bill McBride (head hunter)
798-5390
-
Pixar
entertainment
-
Pacific Data Images (PDI)
entertainment
-
PyroTechnix
(Aug. 1997)
30 Garfield Place, Suite 600
Cincinnati, OH 45202
game development company
-
R/Greenberg Associates
entertainment
-
Resource Marketing
(Sept. 1997)
Multi-media, advertising
Front Street by North Market
they take CSE interns for tech support and multi-media work
-
Rhythm & Hues
5404 Jandy Place
Los Angeles, CA 90066
800-448-9534
entertainment
-
Silicon Graphics
-
Sony Pictures
entertainment
-
Structural Dynamics Research Corp.
Michael Ettinger
James Escoe
james.escoe@sdrc.com
(513)576-2702
-
VIFX
(Aug. 1997)
entertainment
-
Will Vinton Studios
(March 2000)
entertainment
-
Xaos
entertainment
Intellectual pursuits aside, there is life outside of OSU.
If you are from out-of-town or out-of-the-country, you may not know much about the area.
Here are some things of interest to check out.
- Diners (a.k.a. greasy spoons) and other interesting eateries
- Nancy's Diner on High Street (owned by Cindy; paragon of diners)
- Rube's Diner on Indianola - second only to Nancy's...and less crowded.
- the Chef-o-nette on Trabue (if nothing else, a great name)
- Stan's on Westerville road by Morse
- Blue Danube on High south of Hudson (a.k.a. the Dube)
- The Dutch Kitchen out in Plain City, Rt. 42 (Amish Country)
- The Leaf, maybe 20 miles on north 71 for home cooking
- King Avenue Coffee House - vegetarian in Columbus!
- Whole World Pizza on High north of campus - also vegetarian
- the Knotty Pine in Grandview - one of those neighborhood bar/restaurants
- the Red Door Tavern in Grandview - ever had a fried baloney sandwich?
- Fork and Fingers in Delaware Oh. (off north 23) - Mexican; not a chain.
- Homestyle Buffet - you want decent food cheap - one price all you can eat - at Easton
- Fine Dining
- Out on Main - downtown, very good food and a nice atmosphere (caters to the alternate lifestylers)
- La Plaia - for *fine* Italian dining, in Columbus Square Shopping Cntr.
- Gloria's on Henderson - great cajun cookin'
- Pierre's Bistro - Grandview, great food, but if you're a $tudent, you $houldn't be here....
- Snapper's - in the Short North. Even if you don't like fish, you'll like this fish. Reportedly a award winning pork chop dish, too, for the red meat eaters among us.
- Columbus Fish Market - another great fish place and it's close to campus; not cheap; most like it better than Snapper's
- Tapatio's - tasty Caribbean food, relaxed atmosphere, outdoor
- Haiku - Short North, very good Japanese food
- Crescendo Pastoria, 6860 Riverside Dr.; fine Italian dining
- Bars with ambiance
- Larry's (of course) on campus - who else has chess sets and poetry night
- Dick's Den on High - a legendary establishment with a mixture of campus types and local color
- Top 'o the Flint on Flint Road off 23 north of 270 - a neighborhood bar, but what neighborhood?
- The India-Oak on the corner of Indianol and Oakland Park (more or less) - mainly locals
- Crest Tavern on the corner of Crestview and Indianola
- Bernie's on campus - one of the better beer selections around campus
- The Library on campus - for a less 'campus' hole-in-the-wall bar
- Markets of interest
- North Market on Spring Street on north end of downtown - great place to browse
- Carfagna's on 161 by I71, you want olive oil, they got olive oil, and a great meat counter. One of the few independents
- Aldi's - you want cheap, here's cheap. I go to the one on westerville road by north 270
- Wild Oats - for natural food and more...
- Things to do and see
- Short North - just north of downtown for shops, bars and restruarants
- COSI - Center of Science and Industry
- Columbus Zoo - surprisingly good
- City Center Mall - downtown shopping
- Easton - Les Wexner's dream mall provides all kinds of major stores and entertainment
- Polaris Ampitheatre - great if you don't live in the neighborhood
- The Brewery district - restruarants and (what else) drinking, right by I70 and east of High
- German Village - little gems to be found here and there of shops, restruarants, and bars. just south of I70 and east of high
- Plain City - Amish country to the north west of Columbus. for furnature and food and plain living..
- Yellow Springs, Ohio - home of Antioch College who refuses all government money, has the aura of hippies, and the main drag is peppered with interesting little shops
- Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum (at the other end of the political spectrum from Yellow Springs)
- The Crew - professional soccer
- The Clippers - AAA baseball
- The Blue Jackets - pro hocky (coming soon)
- most anything at the Ohio Theatre, Palace Theatre, Southern Theatre
- various dance, comedy, theatre groups around the city
- Hocking Hills, Wayne National Forest - to get away from it in the nature of southeast Ohio
- Canada, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway, Smokey Mountains, upstate New York, Pennsylvania - to get away even further...
Rick Parent
Last updated: Monday, 23-May-2011 17:03:28 EDT