dat_nerd

^ Gnome Chomsky in 3..2..1..

This is a life or death decision, your PI will clearly kick you out of the program if you email him.
 
lol just email him. put on your big boy pants. 

Dear Professor X, 
 
My name is Coconut Water, an incoming Masters student in the Department of Education at UCLA. I am writing to ask whether it would be possible for me to take your class 'Topics in Awesomeness' in the upcoming Fall semester. This class was recommended to my by my advisor, Prof Y, since my research interests include Awesomeness and Amazingness. I believe your class would be a great way for me to round out my classes for the Fall and to start thinking about a topic for my thesis. Please let me know if you have any questions or if there is any additional information I can provide. 
 
Thank you,
Coconut Water 
 
---
If this is someone who you might consider collaborating with, or having on your thesis committee or some such, you could include a line about looking forward to meeting this prof in person in the Fall.

*High-five*
 
I was homeschooled until a couple years before college, and I'll always be grateful for it. Keep up the great work!

Honestly? Because a PhD is the time to set yourself up for the rest of your career. 
 
Post-doctoral work and TT positions just get busier, not easier, and the stakes are higher. Learning how to balance your work and life while you're in grad school, and the stakes aren't as high, is how you become a productive academic long term. 
 
I know a PhD program is hard work and difficult, as does Fuzzy- we're both almost done with our programs. 
 
You can, and should, expect to have a work-life balance in graduate school. 

Thanks for starting this, callista! Good to hear that the semester is going well for you.
 
I've been pleasantly surprised by my first semester. I'm starting week 3, and I haven't found any reason to dislike grad school. Suddenly, I get to take classes in whatever I want, I get to do research in whatever topic I'd like, and I get to spend my time however I decide. My co-advisers are fantastic. It all seems overwhelming when I think about the long term goals (quals, papers, TAing, more papers, etc), but then I remember to take it all one day at a time.

I withstood my first committee meeting without anyone noticing I didn't belong!      

I feel you. I get certain parts of grad school can be hard, but the shit people on GradCafe complain about is ridiculous. Look at the status updates on the side. You see shit like this:

Week 1: OMG soooooo stressed. Applied to 10 schools. Hope I get in.

Week 2: OMG soooooo stressed. Got into my top choice. Hope I get funding.

Week 3: OMG soooooo stressed. Got full funding. Hope I find an apartment.

Week 4: OMG soooooo stressed. Found an apartment. Hope I like my roommate.

Week 5: OMG soooooo stressed. My roommate rocks. Hope I find a parking space tomorrow.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Nervous much?

Accepted grad students: Could you share a piece of advice, a website, an advice article, or other piece of information that helped you the most when completing your applications?
 
I'll start: https://sites.google.com/site/gradappadvice/
This website, especially the application timeline page, helped me immensely. 

Because I'm only 23 with another 4-5 years of school ahead of me, people haven't been bugging me about babies yet.  My husband and I are set on not having babies, although the possibility of adopting an older child has been thrown around as something we might do in the distant future. The kicker is that we got married at 21, and usually people who get married that young are intent on having children young too.
 
As soon as we have extra income, we're going to blow it on travelling Can't wait!

I'm closing this one because you've made this post in two other places. You only need to post once to get comments.
 
People can go to the thread in "The Bank" () if they want to reply.

I don't talk to people. Maybe I should try it.

tl;dr? Well, here's a summary of the last 6 pages.
 
The OP (cat) solicted advice and then received unsolicited diatribe (wrapping paper).
 

 
They didn't forget the tail, and there's the bow on top! You're welcome OP. Thanks for stopping by the Grad Cafe.
 
 
P.s. there are cookies on the way out. 

Well I'm a virgin, so there's that.

I'm sorry to hear about your current experience! It does not sound ideal at all!
 
First, I don't think any of us can really comment on whether you have to pay back your fellowship, because it is probably something specific to your contract and you would have to talk to people who know about the contract to get real advice. However, I would think it's pretty rare that a departmental fellowship will come with the condition that "you must graduate or pay back everything on your fellowship". More commonly, I see clauses like "if you do not finish the term(s) that you have been paid for, you must pay back that part of the fellowship". So if you left in the middle of a term, you would only have to pay back the money that was paid for you to complete that term/semester. Also, it would not make sense to take money back for services performed (e.g. your fellowship was paid for you to have done some work such as TA/RA) after you have already completed that work. There are many non-service fellowships as well, but then they can't say that since you didn't TA/RA, you'd have to pay it back because non-service fellowship means that you did not have to provide any services in order to get the money. But there should be a way for you to discuss this with someone outside of your department (e.g. the graduate school) in a hypothetical manner so that you don't have to tell them you plan to leave or reveal why you want to leave. Anything I or anyone else writes here can only be guesses based on our own previous experiences! Your specific contract may be very different.
 
Also, there are some things you list that are actual unethical behavior that should be reported if you feel comfortable doing so (or talking about with your advisor) but there are also many things that aren't unethical at all--they may not be the best behavior, but nothing actually that might violate laws, University policies, or constitute academic dishonesty. Since you asked for advice, here is what I think your description of your advisors' actions lie and I hope this might help you decide what issues to focus on reporting if you do go that route. Also, some of this is subjective so other people might have other opinions:
 
Actions I think are definitely wrong and should be reported / brought up with your advisor if you want to: 
1. Putting your name on papers without your permission 
2. Plagiarizing your work
 
Actions that are questionable but not necessarily unethical/violations depending on your Universities' policies or other situations/details not known here
1. Last minute editing of a paper without telling you (if you're not first author, the advisor has the right to decide what goes in the paper, although he should have at least shown his coauthors the final draft before submission and allow anyone who doesn't agree to withdraw their name and their contributions to that paper). Without further information, I wouldn't necessarily call telling/suggesting that you remove some statements that the editor won't like to be censorship (if he's right then the editor will tell you to remove those statements anyways). Presenting your work in any medium (talk, paper, poster, whatever) means knowing your audience and strategically deciding what you want to convey. If you want to convince people of A, B, and C (your claims), it might make sense to first present only B if you think A and C are too controversial and might make people ignore your very good points in favour of B.
2. Sleeping with his students--this might be a violation of University policy. Unless the student is underage, it's probably not illegal. I know my current school has no policies that prevent a relationship between a professor and a student.
 
Actions that are crappy things to do but probably not something a prof can actually get in trouble for:
1. Lying to you about himself, the program, and how he feels about your research interests (it's hard to tell between outright lying and changing your mind, or a misunderstanding, anyways).
2. Choosing to publish only in certain journals
3. Not reading the papers cited in his work--75% is a large number, but I'd say many people won't read the entire paper when they cite a work, depending on the reason for the citation. 
4. Poor quality of the education provided by the school--this is super crappy but unless the school promised certain things in writing and then did not follow through, I can't think of a way you can hold the school to providing a certain level of education. 
 
 
I agree that an ombudsperson would be a good path to go. Maybe it's a bit different in the US, but you might want to consider another route too. In Canada, the ombudsperson is a neutral third party that mediates a tough conflict/dilemma. You can/should also seek out someone who would play more of an "Advocate" role--that is, someone whose job is to be on your side. In Canada, these people tend to be employed by the Undergrad/Graduate Student Association at that school to provide legal advice for their students (sometimes they are volunteers from the school's Law program). It might be good to have both an ombudsperson and an advocate with dealing with tricky legal issues like this case.

I agree that there is a fine line between respecting people for what they are and coddling/enabling them to further harm themselves. I think where this line is also depends on your relationship with the person in question. If someone in my family is self harming, for example, if my younger cousin decided that they want to start smoking, I would agree with you and do something about it before it got worse. But if I am on the Internet or in the real world, and someone was smoking, I try not to judge. I mean, I wouldn't directly help them harm themselves but I'll respect their decision and stay out of it. 
 
I think that in this thread, none of us knows the OP very well (I mean, the OP hasn't even posted again so as others have pointed out, this might just be a troll/fake/whatever). I think that in this specific case of this thread, it does no good to try to "terrorize"/"shame" the OP until they "get better". I think that "tough love" only works in cases where there is some pre-existing relationship and that ultimately, you know that the other person means the best for you. For example, a coach being hard on his/her team for a crappy practice/performance. A parent who knows their child could have done better letting them know that life will expect 100% effort from you. etc. Also in all of these cases, it really only works when the "tough love giver" knows the other person well enough to know what works and what won't. But random person on the Internet? Just my opinion, but I don't think this is an appropriate place to do this kind of thing.
 
Also, I don't think I would really agree with/like a society where the weak is pushed to change by their peers. Maybe I am just not a good capitalist, but I also don't always think competition is good. In your sports teams example, what is so bad about two teams of crappy players just having fun on the field and then going for pizza afterwards? I mean, this is basically the definition of the intramural sports teams I play on right now, as an adult in grad school! Why can't we have competitive leagues for those who want to get better and improve themselves and also recreational leagues where everyone is welcome, and the point is to just play the game/have some fun, not actually win. This is how most sports at my school is structured, and I think it's good to have kids sports go this way too (I have no children so I have no idea how kids sports are actually structured--but I would not think a world where only competitive leagues are available would be a good one!). 
 
I don't have my own kids but I have coached plenty of kids* (actually teens) teams in different types of competitions. When my kids lose a competition, I agree, we don't just say "oh well, maybe next time" because hey, they signed up for this competition to win! We figure out why we sucked and we work on it. But I also try to make sure they get positive feedback on the things they did do well. And the kids still worked hard to get to where they are, so they deserve a reward (e.g. pizza) too. There are ways to reward your team when they lose without letting them be complacent with losing!
 
tl;dr: Yeah, I agree that we can be "too soft" on people and enable their problems. But there is a right time and place for "tough love" and I don't think strangers on the Internet with very little information on the actual problem is neither the right time nor place.

You ignorant putz, prednisone *increases your appetite*.  If you haven't been there, then STFU.  Of course people on pred are a smaller percentage.  The point is, you can't assume.  
 
Yeah, I've been living with my wife and her chronic condition for twenty years.  But you're the expert, because there's something called thermodynamics.  What a schmuck.  Downvote me twenty times.  I don't care.

When I stole it. 

PhD students are more important. Get over it please.

Graduate recruitment weekends as a graduate student: mmmmm... free cookies!

Mayonnaise

Meat

What I've learned from this thread: You can see who gives you up and down votes!  I just did it.  It was life changing!
 
On a side note: maybe this thread has gone off-track?

How do you know which ones are undergrads? Haha. 
 
You give very good advice. I never thought about being in the same vicinity all day, but that does make perfect sense. It's not like in undergrad where you'll have random classes all over campus. You'll most likely be in the same building all day. 
 
Very good point. If you really can only walk 20-30 steps at a time, then I would consider that some type of mobility disability. Contact the DRC and they'll be able to better assist you than any of us will. 
 
I like your style, persimmony. 
 
Now my insight... Once again, you can only take 20-30 steps at a time. That qualifies, in my opinion, as disabled. But of course, it's a correctable disability. Grad schools don't start for another 6 months. I'm not saying you need to become an Olympian within that time, but you shouldn't just settle for 20-30 steps. You should make it your goal to increase your steps each and every week. Who knows, maybe by the time you get to grad school you'll be perfectly mobile. 
 
I see what you're saying about having seating, desks etc that are accommodating to your needs. To tie in to my previous point, you do have 6 months to work on your fitness. Maybe it won't be as much of a problem by then. But I don't see finding suitable seating to be such a big problem. I'm sure the disability department provides some sort of seating available and they can place it in the classroom for you. There is someone in one of my classes who has his own desk. I don't know exactly what his disability is. He looks fine to me. But he is an older guy and a war vet. Sure it has something to do with that. 
 
And as far as culture... We've talked about this in the other thread about fitness. You didn't really seem to respond to anyone's advice, or at least anything that wasn't what you wanted to hear. My points were that educated people seem to be more health conscious. You'll find way more vegans, yoga nuts, cyclists, mountain climbers etc on college campuses than you'll find anywhere else in the country. I know 70-year old professors who bike to campus every day. Even if they're not meat head gym rats, they can still be health/fitness conscious. I've noticed that younger undergrads are more into looking good and older grad students are more into being healthy. There's really no way of getting around it. I don't think there's such thing as a non-fit culture. You probably won't have a bunch of classmates being too vocal about their workout routines, but you'll definitely have a lot of fit classmates. 

I finished my lab rotations and am the first in my class to join a lab! Woo hoo!!!