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CarlieE

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    PhD Social Science

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  1. CarlieE

    Atlanta, GA

    I'm in Atlanta now. Look up Decatur (north of Memorial Drive). It's where I live and its a nice place, good school districts, very family/dog/kid oriented and safe. Also, Virginia Highlands has decent places for roughly 600-800 for a 1 BR or about 900 for a 2 BR. Candler Park/Little 5/Poncey Highlands and Inman Park are super nice but also super expensive. You could also try Old Fourth Ward. There are some cheper apartments in Midtown, but they are generally iffy. If your wife is going to GSU she could also look into Oakhurst which near is along Dekalb Ave and this road will take her straight into the GSU area without much traffic to deal with.
  2. We're taking our MA comps this month. We get 6 questions, two which are mandatory and the other 4 are selected from a pool of options. We get 5 hours per day, so 10 hours over 2 days. The exam begins at 9am and ends at 2pm, then repeat the 2nd day. 3 questions per day (1 mandatory and 2 we choose from the pool). Max words per essay answer is 1,500. Our reading list has 193 items on it. This breaks down to roughly 1 1/2 hours per exam question.
  3. I agree with everyone above who said go for school 2. If it helps here's an article from the chronicle of higher Ed that looks at jobs for graduates from two and three level tier universities compared to t1 phd grads.... Turns out (in some fields) that tier 1 ranks don't matter quite as much as we think in the job market... Take the article however you wish, but I think it's worth reading. http://chronicle.com/article/What-Are-Low-Ranked-Graduate/136823/ Also, top 25 in your field or top 25 overall? Ranks are funny things... All depends what parameters are being set. My school is #6 for my field but #20 overall for the grad programs.
  4. It might actually be a pretty fluid transition for you, or less of an adjustment as you might expect as universities are increasingly corporatizing their methods and policies. As far as academic being less mentally draining than a corporate sector career... well... it might not be so easy to say one is better than the other. Academics don't work regular work hours; they work all the time including weekends and holidays. Especially if you're on a tenure track. (There was an article in the chronicle of higher ed I think that said that the avg work week for academics runs about 70 hours for pre-tenured asst or assoc professors) You'll need to teach, do committee work, advise students AND publish a book (generally). That last task is usually done when you're not on campus, so that's where most academics' free time goes to; something you have to do on your "own" time. Also, even after you get tenured you're still assessed every X number of years (5 or 6 seems to be what I gather) and your publications, conference presentations, talks, administrative contributions and mentorship (AND your teaching) is taken into account. Also keep in mind that many academics also leave the faculty and start careers in the administration of universities, though perhaps later on in their careers. All that said, for me, I'd go into academia. I like research and I like teaching. I wouldn't consider it an easier job than in the corporate world (which i've also been in, in the insurance industry). It's equally as demanding, with workload, deadlines and politics; but it's different, both in the experience and rewards.
  5. It's definitely worth doing, but as mentioned above, you should check with your department as well since some courses (at my school) are for "grade" only and not auditable while others are and there may be limits to how many you can audit and details like that.
  6. my 2 cents... I went with a macbook air 13" and it works out great for me. I even edit basic films in iMovie (experimenting with ethnographic film). It's not the best, but if its portability and light weight really help, especially since I have to travel over the summer and winter breaks. When I really need something with a big, high resolution display I go to school and use their iMacs. Storage seems to be an issue for some people which is fair, but I use drop box and an external 1TB hard drive so I don't feel that I run out of room. It also forces me to purge and clean up on a regular basis. it all comes back to what you're using it for, and what works in your lifestyle and study choices (ie. coffee shops, libraries or at home).
  7. I think it really depends on a lot of factors. We really can't be comparing stipends across fields, locations and needs. I mean, city vs country living make quite a difference, not only in how much stuff costs but the kinds of activities people prefer or can do in those respective locations. Also, it seems as though the discussion here is mainly around cost of living for single persons... It's quite different for grads with spouses and/or children ie. with rising costs of daycare and additional health insurance etc. And as someone mentioned above, it also matters if you have a 9 or 12 month stipend; and for how long is it guaranteed? Or must you reapply every year? Was your stipend negotiable at the start or was it a flat, non negotiable offer? In my case I get just under $22k which is great for my field, and its fixed for 4.5 years (but doesn't include field work) at 12 months. Everyone in our dept gets the same so there's no negotiating. I live with my partner so my rent and utilities are half what they might be on my own. That said, we still are on a tight budget and what extra money we have generally goes towards a nice night out for dinner and occasional movie. Date might for us typically means a cheap dinner out and a DVD rental! Of course, we do save up for nicer things for bigger occasions but its meager.
  8. I've been feeling the same... oddly enough, when I've talked to other grads it seems we've all been feeling similarly but no one's been saying so... I googled "how to cope with grad school" yesterday and came across this article: http://www.gradresources.org/articles/emotional_fatigue.shtml which I found helpful.. at least now I know it's not just me.. For me, I feel isolated even when I'm surrounded by people and even while I'm interacting with them sometimes...it's more than "just" isolation and I'm trying to figure out a way to reason with it so I don't get wrapped up in my head.. I know my post isn't helpful in that I'm not offering a solution, but perhaps it might help to know that the reason you might be feeling isolated is endemic and inherent in grad life in general.. : / a kind of paradoxical "collective isolation" *ironic lol*
  9. For iPad users who want to annotate PDFs, add text or highlight in different colors: Notability is a good one, as is iAnnotate Both sync to Dropbox and you can email out as PDFs. If I have a physical paper reading I have to do (i.e. chapter in a book on reserve at the library) I usually take 10 minutes to scan it in as a PDF and then annotate it on my iPad. This ensures that I'll have a copy of all the readings along with all my other notes on my hard drive for the future. I also use Genius Scan to take photos of papers and turn them into PDFs that way. The quality isn't so great so I generally just use this for handouts or pictures, or stuff that's just a couple of pages of not-so-fine print.
  10. I think occasionally about the schools I didn't get into... Not with regret but I wonder what life might like if I had gotten accepted and gone there instead... Just random thoughts... I also wonder about what my experience might've been like if I had stayed with history instead of anthro... I understand what you mean though when you wonder and feel bad. I applied to 5 schools and luckily got into my first choice but I got rejected from all the others. When I feel down on myself I get into a rut thinking that maybe I really wasn't good enough and that luck really carried me all the way through... It's the imposter syndrome talking and trying to suck me into a depressed vortex... I think it might be worthwhile to examine why you're not happy with your program and if a switch might be worth it.
  11. Grad seminars are famous sites for posturing. Honestly, in some of my classes I wouldn't be surprised to see a student get up and thump him/herself on the chest and whoop like a primate in some bid for discussion dominance. Sometimes I find myself checking out of the discussion when things get to be too much. I give myself a few minutes to blow off steam by texting/fb chatting to a friend, usually one back home who doesn't know the Chest-Thumper Then after I give myself a few minutes to calm down, I try to re-enter the discussion, but on another topic or bring one up.
  12. I agree with platysaurus. I'm doing a PhD and hoping to get into academia when I'm done, but I'm not going to sweat thinking about it until I get further along. I'm in my 30s and I've had my share of jobs I've hated; I'm in anthropology just because I like it. So for me, when I'm done, if there are no jobs in academia I'm going to try seeing what's going on overseas in Europe, Australia, Asia in the academy there; and if there's nothing there then NGOs or the corporate sector. And if THAT fails then.. .hmmm... *gasp* the state dept. There'll always be something and really, I think once we've slogged through the poverty of grad school, we'll be just fine.
  13. So I've had a color nook, a kindle ( still do; the b/w kindle keyboard) and an iPad. FWIW, the iPad is the one I use the most and which I find to be the most productive and conducive to reading and annotating. I convert almost all my readings into PDFs and load them into dropbox, then use iAnnotate on my iPad to annotate them - it saves as a PDF so I can read the annotated ones almost anywhere. My problem with nook was that it was too small, they have fewer apps and it was awkward to annotate with. Granted, I had the original nook color a few years back. My problem with kindle keyboard 3G is that the annotated highlighting for PDFs SUCKS. I mean it really sucks. It highlights the wrong lines and its hellish to get it to re-highlight the right ones. I give up most of the time because by then my concentration in reading has been broken and distracted by the highlighting mess up. Also, if you get PDFs which are scanned books then you can have a really problem with rotation and moving around the screen. Kindle's great for reading kindle books and PDFs that come off jstor but not scanned stuff. The reason I use my iPad: I highlight with a stylus so it feels like a pen, it can highlight in various colors (my kindle was in b/w) and I can write notes in the margins or type in comments. I can move freely around the page with zooming in with pinches in seconds, rather than using arrow keys that move too much to the left or too much to the right. There are also apps for blackboard and dropbox and a host of other things which makes my utility of it much more than just reading. There are days when I just take my iPad to school and that's all I need. The downside of an iPad (for me): the back light takes getting used to. I got gamer/computer glasses for my birthday which tint yellow and make it easier on my eyes (Gunnar glasses) and they really do help. You have to make sure you're charged or bring a charger if you plan to use it all day, though my battery lasts a good 6-7 hours even in full use. (Yes, I read from about 9am - 4pm with a half hour break or so for lunch 2 or 3 days a week.) The cost of course, but I bought my iPad 2 refurbished so it wasn't too bad and it hasn't failed me yet. I also asked for a griffin rubber case with stand for Christmas (which I got) so that lets me just throw it into a bag and go. Some people say that the internet connection is distracting - and yes, it can be (I play words with friends on it too) - but that's just a matter of discipline. Just my two cents having been (and still am) a nook, kindle and iPad owner...
  14. It's really not so bad and believe me, not EVERYTHING gets done. For instance, this week the department had 4 events (1 special speaker, lunch said speaker, a talk, a job talk for a new professor and lunch with that candidate). I attended one of those events. The others conflicted with my film screening and class time. DNAgyrase - I'm glad you got to talk to your PI; that helps. I just told mine that I changed my mind on a research design field school in the summer and I haven't gotten an email response back yet... Hmm.. but he DID tell me that (based on its curriculum) it might not be something that is relevant to me. I decided it wasn't relevant enough. The fact that a friend of mine wants to meet up in Cambodia and traipse Angkor with me over that same time has NOTHING to do with it whatsoever.
  15. My program has a minimum of 12 credits per semester, but each course is 4 credits generally... some labs are 1 credit, some seminars vary from 1-4 and some out-of-dept courses are 2 credits. We're free to mix-n-match so long as we hit 12 credits per semester. I believe that TAing counts for a couple of credits too so that goes towards the 12.
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