Grev

I'm excited/nervous about moving out too. I'm from Oregon, and our school systems run later than most places (Fall term starts mid/late September), so looking for summer housing in April? Feels crazy! I've been to Boulder before, but that was a day trip a few years ago and I stayed with family in Denver. I'll be going out to meet the department in person in April, and was wondering if anyone had any recs/horror stories for campus area hotels. Also- what are people excited about doing in/around Boulder (besides research )?

In your case, you could easily email the Graduate Coordinator and tell them you're happy to accept. Also ask if there's anything you need to do to formalize your application. My school had an online portal where I had to click a few things and submit a deposit in order to formalize my acceptance. Your department will be very happy to help you through the process. And also, congratulations!

Does anyone have advice on how to evaluate an apartment sight-unseen? If you can't make a trip out for home-hunting, what questions should you ask and what should you look out for?

Anyone else moving to the mountains this summer?

If you know who the hosting professor is, it should be fine to send them a quick email asking if it would be appropriate to bring a small host/ess gift. If you're more comfortable bringing something than not, you could consider bringing something small that's local to where you're from. Coffee or chocolates are good options, as are mugs/magnets or small novelties from your area. I don't know what kind of travel you're looking at, but last time I flew with a bottle of wine it was a bit of a pain on the airplane.

Hi SSJ, I did my BA and MA at UO in a different field, but I can answer a couple of your questions. First, your questions about the transition to Portland are probably best directed to the UO Architecture department directly. I promise you're not the first person to ask them, and that they'll be happy to clear things up! UO operates on the quarter system, that means 3 trimesters of 10 weeks each (Fall, Winter, Spring) during the academic year. You'll spend September through June of the first year in Eugene, and then transition to Portland for the remainder of the program. I have no idea how competitive that transition is, but the department can inform you. Eugene is about 2, 2.5 hours south of Portland on the interstate. The logistics of moving within the valley aren't that difficult. Graduate housing in Eugene is competitive, and not significantly cheaper than finding your own place. I think the typical wait-list is about 8-12 months, so probably not worth it for you. If you look between 3/4 of a mile, an 1 mile from campus, housing gets much cheaper. Sharing a two bedroom with a roommate is a great option. Duck's Village and housing developments near Autzen Stadium (the football arena) are "lovingly" called the Sophmore Dorms, and tend to be expensive and noisy. Best of luck!

In a semi-related question, how do you all feel about publishing with your first name, or with an initial or what? I have what I feel is a very "little girl" sounding first name, and a very common last name. My first name isn't a diminutive of anything, but it sounds a little bit fluffy and has an alternate spelling I'm always having to explain. Think "Pansie Smith". I've had problems in informal settings where people don't take me as seriously (between the name and being short, it's a pain), and I wonder how much of this might carry over into my professional life. I've considered initialing, "P. Smith", but I'm not sure I like that better. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

I picked up Catalan living in Barcelona for 3 years, which is an AWESOME way to get a language but not viable for everyone. Once you've got two Romance languages (say Spanish and Italian) reading the others comes pretty easy. I can understand written or spoken Portuguese without much trouble. French is the least phonetic one I've found, and IMO the hardest if you need more than just reading knowledge. The "fastest" way to pick a language up, if you can swing it, is really an immersion experience. Talk to your program about doing a summer of intensive language study in an appropriate country. Generally speaking, passing 2nd year with a B or better seems to fulfill the requirement at most schools. In general, certain Asian languages are considered to take longer to master, and may require you to take up to four years to achieve reading mastery. Japanese, for example, isn't much worse than Latin or Hebrew grammatically, and isn't hard to pronounce (from English or Spanish), but the way it's written requires you to memorize thousands of symbols and that takes time.

I'm curious about the height/heels thing here. All the tall girls and women I know talk about how heels make them too tall.

City Lights

Borrowing Antihumanist as the example: I wonder if there's a quantity/quality thing happening here? I mean, you need to be able to work with a department as a whole, but you only get one adviser. What do you folks think- is it better to have a tight match with one faculty member, or a looser match with a few? And does that change if your applying to an MA, or after having completed your MA?

For me, it depended a bit on each recommender (I had four). The one I was closest to got a quick email as soon as I'd made my decision. I then followed up with nice hand-written thank you cards mailed to my other recommenders (I am poor and physically far from my old campus). The one exception was one of my recommenders who's retired and doing a LOT of traveling. He was kind enough to write me a letter between international trips last fall! I just sent him a longer email because I don't have a physical address for him. In the notes I mentioned where I was accepted, and where I decided to attend. I also tried to say some personal kind of thanks to each recommender, both for the letter and for help I got from them during my BA/MA. There's basically no wrong way to do this, so be as excited and positive as you can/want

So last time I was in grad school was a few years ago and I was the only person in my program comfortable scanning books into PDFs. Based on a couple other forum threads times have changed for the better My question to all of you- do you have recommendations for e-readers and/or PDF annotating software that is foreign language friendly? Also, which e-readers seem to have the best library of non-English e-books? My personal interest is in Spanish/Catalan/French/Portuguese friendly devices, but if you know X reader is better than Y for Arabic (or Japanese or whatever) then please jump in too!

I know this is a bit of a long shot- but does anyone have a rec for folks doing a lot of reading in foreign languages? I've been out of the PDF annotating loop for a couple years, but I've had special characters (ñ, á, ç, etc.) give me trouble with word highlighting and annotating programs before (since they're expecting English).

First, I'm going to have to disagree with this statement- 3/4 credit hours of graduate level work is hard whatever discipline you're in. Math is neither inherently easier nor harder than Literature, etc. My MA was on the quarter system (4 credits/class generally) and the recommended pace was two graduate seminars, plus a few credits in Pedagogy related to the mandatory TA component. I took three seminars one term, and while it was do-able in the short run I was also spending 8-10 hours a day in the library working on coursework or preparing/teaching my class. On another occasion I did an independent research project in addition to my other two courses. My supervising prof let me turn in a (longer) joint paper for the project and one of my seminars, and without that I think it would have been way too much work. Grad school is about quality of learning, not quantity, I've found. Also, the term you take exams think of the exams as being at least a full class' worth of work and stress. Definitely don't double up that term if you can help it.