DontHate

I don't know anything about these programs, so I can't answer your question (sorry about that). But just as a warning: people here don't seem to take very warmly to "what are my chances" threads this time of the year.

Haha fucking Anne Taylor... I feel like going for the opposite approach, accumulating so much regular junk mail that I become completely desensitized to new email notifications and stop caring.

Is it just me or is it somehow comforting to know that we have the same stress-eating habits as a tenured Ivy League academic & author of 11 books?

Lately the only thing I've been capable of is watching 30 Rock and singing aloud to really vapid pop songs

I just asked a prof how he deals with stress, and he said "I eat French fries."

I am definitely losing my mind, I think it's been lost for a while now actually

FYI, you often don't need to submit an OPI if you already have a writing sample in Spanish. I know for the Stanford application it's either/or. They also have a third option for proving language level: a letter by a prof attesting to your Spanish abilities.

Now you know how the trolls feel!

I would imagine that people are acting especially ungenerous to each other right now, since they've been pit against one another in a deathmatch for the single spot in their dream school. Metaphorically speaking.

Isn't a samosa basically just a deep-fried pierogi?

It was seriously amazing. I served it at my Chinese-Jewish fusion seder.

Rems, nobody on here right now is being a dick. Seriously, chill out.

I'm pretty sure you're the one who needs to take some of your own advice and calm down."Troll" doesn't mean anyone who's saying anything you don't like. If you don't enjoy the direction a specific thread is taking, don't participate in it. Just because people are having different types of conversations doesn't make them trolls.

yes, that. Imagine if we judged Foucault's hireability on his personal life.

I totally agree with this, and with everything else thestage is saying. It was a threat. Phil was basically saying that if you vent anything on gradcafe that you wouldn't say directly to an admissions committee during an interview, you're screwed. That makes gradcafe anything but a safe space for open discussion. Btdubs, no one said anything about fucking a married professor. I was initially talking about a set of confusing vibes being sent out between two individuals, not a sexual relationship. Even if the relationship in question were sexual, I don't think that would make anyone involved in it a "bad colleague" by default. I know tons of successful, admired profs whose relationships with their legitimate, conventionally-acknowledged-as-acceptable-in-polite-society second or third spouses began with an extramarital relationship. How someone decides to conduct his or her personal life is just that: personal. It has no bearing on the quality of their work. It's not grounds for elevating or derailing a career, unless we live in Victorian England and are so easily scandalized that normal human behavior makes us too embarrassed to see clearly. Sleeping your way to a promotion is one thing, but having a confusingly human situation crop up between a professor and a student who work together is quite another. Especially when no sex or otherwise verboten behavior is involved. Eigen, you said yourself that this forum is meant to discuss the aspects of grad student life that we might not be able to talk about elsewhere, aspects that might be slightly uncomfortable. You called this a perfectly valid topic for discussion. I think Phil's desire to suppress all conversation that he finds icky is downright ridiculous. It's not like anyone is spewing hate speech on here. Are you really so judgmental and conventional that you would demonize a woman and blacklist her from academia just for "pseudonymously" admitting to a chaste but emotionally complex relationship with a married person?

I personally find it less than likely that these posts matter to professors who matter

Elementary school was the best. The teachers were very easy to impress back then.

This year I learned Portuguese, invented the hybrid dish known as "wonton matzoh ball soup," and deleted my Facebook. It's been a year of change, a good year.

next time make sure to include a citation

I don't know what kind of middle school you went to, but those were some of the worst years of my life. Ugh, tween girls. ugh ugh ugh

Fair enough. I hope you get in where you want to go.

I agree, and there are also plenty of legitimate reasons to like it. If you want to work in academia, doesn't violently resenting the entire Ivy League preclude a lot of beneficial collaborative relationships?

I'm sorry bfat, I didn't mean to offend you. I just feel this "inexplicably intense" hatred of certain big-name schools radiating off of your comments, and I think that sentiment has just as much of an "immature nature" as the one that would make a person apply to Harvard only for its big name. I think it's unfair and immature to love or hate any school simply based on preconceived notions and hearsay. That is absolutely ALL I am saying.

Isn't it ok to admit that one might want to go to Harvard? I feel like there's such a stigma against "elitism" that saying such a thing out loud is somehow forbidden. But wanting to go to Harvard is nothing to be ashamed of, that's all I'm saying.

Like some small genuine desire to attend Harvard perhaps?