callista

Make an appointment with the DGS asap.  Or email them.  This seems like way too much to handle!!

You're going to hate graduate school if you don't find ways to turn the corner on this dynamic.

So I'm having a somewhat different experience now that I'm a PhD student. But I already did a Masters. I know some people go straight from undergrad to PhD, but I did an MA in pure economics. Now I'm doing a PhD in natural resource economics. But its really not that different because the first year I take the same micro and metrics sequence as the pure economics students. The only difference is that instead of taking a year of macroecon, I take a year of natural resource econ which is basically an extension of microecon theory.
 
Anywhooo. When I was in my masters, my first year was grueling grueling. And the entire program itself was quite difficult. While there I was maybe one of the average students at best. Now I'm here in a PhD and I'm kinda breezing through it. Which scares the crap out of me, because last years cohort had half their class fail out after not passing their qualifying exams. So I'm scared that I'm not working hard enough and setting myself up for failure. 
 
But honestly I just don't have that overwhelmed feeling that I had in my Masters. Don't get me wrong it has been a very very busy semester but It hasn't been nearly the struggle that it was in my masters. And now I feel like I'm in the upper quantile of students. Maybe I paid my dues and took my lumps in my Masters and I deserve to have a somewhat easier time, but its just a little unnerving.
 
Anyone else feeling like this? Sometimes I wonder if I should've went to another program. The program I'm in wasn't the highest ranked, but they gave me a very generous Research Assistantship and I feel very happy here. I really like my department and my advisor, but once in a while in the back of my mind I wonder if I'm selling myself short and should have gone to the higher ranked program that didn't offer as much money....Cause maybe they would have higher placements and higher long run salary.

You have two issues: abuse and work.
 
If you haven't started already, document the abuse you're receiving and who witnessed it. For example, Monday, October 28, beginning of lab, Dr. ___ said that I was stupid in lazy during the class session. His tone was angry, he was loud. Witnessed by 8 students: John, Joe, Jeff, Jason, Jennifer, Julie, Judy, and Bob.
 
One of the things about graduate school is having to learn new ways of advocating for yourself. This can be especially difficult for international students. You have done what you can to advocate for yourself with this adviser. You've considered your problem and your options. You've verified that it's not just you. You've taken the first step and spoken with him honestly, and he did not listen to you. This is where it gets tricky. He is the person you have to work with for the next four or more years in order to get your degree, so you can't just complain or ignore the situation because you won't be in it next semester. You have several options, one of which is just dealing with it. As an international student, you have people who will help you advocate for yourself, or will do it for you. Go to the international graduate student office (the people employed by the university to help international students succeed at the university, not the student run clubs or associations) and ask for advice on how to proceed. I would suggest that you also visit the university counseling center. Therapists/counselors don't just help people in psychological crises. They also teach people how to communicate with others. The counselor can help you figure out strategies to speak with and to deal with your adviser. This can be particularly helpful because you have a language and cultural barrier. You may be using the same words with the same definition in the dictionary, but you're likely understanding them in different ways. These two resources can help you figure out what you can do to make things better, what rights you have as a graduate student, what resources are available to you to solve the problem, and what your next move might be if you can't get this guy to be reasonable.
 
Document what you've done, by the way. Make a note of the dates and times of the people you've met with to solve the problem, what you discussed, and what the outcome was. For example, the date and time you met with your adviser, your specific purpose (why you met with him and what you wanted from him), what happened during the meeting, how the adviser reacted, and what the outcome was. When you meet with anyone else, do the same thing. Keep copies of anything they give you. We call it a paper trail. If it becomes necessary for you to take the problem to his supervisor (the department chair, director of graduate studies, or some other person who can do something about his behavior), you have documentation that shows what you've done and what you wanted from it. You can take your problem to the university ombudsman, dean of students, international students office, or graduate school.
 
The real problem is that bullying in grad school isn't addressed. Advisers and professors get away with bullying students, particularly vulnerable students like international students depending on a visa or women. Few grad students stand up and complain, and those that do often end up with a back lash. There's a mindset or a sense that it's normal to be hazed and bullied by your adviser because it "toughens" you up for the harsh world of academia. Grad students aren't abused, they're trained to deal with criticism. Grad school is one of the places that no one wants to call it bullying. They want to call it toughening up, or showing the whiny students who can't handle crticisms that they need another job.Your documentation, backed by available witnesses, will make it so that it isn't a case of a whiny grad student's word against a distinguished professor's. There is always risk when it comes to standing up to bullies. Retaliation is a real problem, particularly if you're in a situation where no other advisers are qualified to advise you, or if your university prefers to pretend everything is shiny and happy, so would prefer to pretend no one is ever abused or harassed.
 
Now, you do have rights as a worker if your primary problem is working too much as an RA rather than general harassment as a student. Your rights come from state and federal legislation and from university policy on GA employment. First, find out your university's rules on graduate student employment. They tend to be specific about hours worked. You can usually find the policy on the website somewhere by doing a search for graduate student employment policy, or similar. The graduate school will have a clear policy about graduate student workers. If you can't find it on the website (or in your graduate student handbook), you can go to the graduate school office and ask where you might find it. You should know this policy before you move forward. My university is very clear. Graduates with the full assistanceship (they call if 50%) may not work more than 20 hours per work. If your boss is violating university policy, you can make him stop. You may be one of the graduate student workers that not exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act rules about overtime pay (the graduate school or human resources would be able to tell you definitively, but if you're required to keep a time sheet, odds are that you're not exempt). If you are not exempt from FLSA, then you are due a lot of money. Your original comments don't make it clear about how much time you're spending doing work as a research assistant or how much time you're doing work in the lab as a student. Sometimes these things mix.

Your therapist's suggestion that you email her with this information is a good one. Email it to her, so she can read it and have her fit over the information where you don't have to see her react. But since you know she prefers to speak with you in person, at the end of the email, let her know that you'll be by her office at whatever time to speak with her about it. She really has no right to dictate what you do during your weekends and holidays. Now, she does have some say in what you do with the first two days of the week, since school is in session and you're skipping town anyway. You can expect her to throw her weight around about that, and she'll likely get snippy about the work you're not doing over the break. Sending her the email first gives you some peace of mind. She knows about it before hand, so you can practice what to say to her when you see her Monday rather than tell her and then wait for her to react.
 
I think you have a power-struggle issue. Not that you're involved in a power struggle, but the fact that a power imbalance exists, and neither of you are doing a good job in communicating across the power divide. She doesn't seem to realize that most people need to be praised by the person that hold their future in his/her hands, at least once in a while. The "this is what you're doing right" thing is critical to build or shore up confidence, to keep the student motivated and challenged, and to give the student permission (though the accuracy of that word depends on individual students) to do things on their own. A few, genuine words of praise can do wonders. Most people involved in evaluating large numbers of people over an extended period of time tend to get very focused on the things that need to be fixed to the point of excluding what's going well. It saves time and, in the mind of the evaluator, it should be obvious to the evaluatee that some things are going well because they weren't mentioned. The ol' "no news is good news" thing. It tends to come across to the students as hyper-critical, rather than time-saving. So, here she is, either unaware or uncaring that students need some nurturing. You are colleagues, to the extent that you're doing independent scholarship, but you're not colleagues. She's not thinking about things from your perspective. You, on the other hand, aren't communicating with her, either. It's not because you're not trying (you very obviously are), but because you're not speaking a language she's parsing. You say: this isn't clear, what needs to be clarified; she hears: validate me! Obviously, this does not work.
 
It doesn't help that she's got a brusque demeanor or an inability to adapt to the teaching style a student requires. Perhaps you need to toughen up a bit, and learn to deal with the eat or be eaten way of the academic world, but beating you down doesn't teach that. It just teaches you to be afraid of and not trust the teacher. But, you can't change her. You've done what you can by trying to speak with her about the relationship, and then talking to the DGS when that failed. The trick is to adapt yourself.
 
You're afraid of her (to an extent). You do not trust her. You're to the point where you think an undergraduate is capable of threatening you with her. It's making you miserable. You can't change her, right? But you can change you. Defang the beast, as it were. This means working around her. When you hand over your work for critique, make note of the problems she wants you to fix, and then go elsewhere for more detailed feedback. She says that something is unclear, thank her, and then go elsewhere. Have a fellow student help out, a different professor, the local writing center, whatever. Form a sort of study group with your cohort, where you help each other with your work. One of the problems many grad students face is a lack of a support system. We're usually in a new school, in a new city, and surrounded by people we don't know. The deep friendships that got us through high school, and even undergrad, aren't there any more. Make a support system out of your cohort. You're not the only one flailing around in the deep end, hoping you don't drown. When the people you should be able to rely on (your adviser) fails you, find others to rely on.
 
The other trick is to hear her differently. When she says, "did you even think about it?!" Don't hear: "i think you're stupid and a waste of time." Hear this: "I do not know that I have the people skills of a rattlesnake and I think I'm doing my best to help you out, so I'm asking you to think about what you read by spitting venom." Do not internalize her personality defects as personal criticism. They come across that way, but just because she implies it, that doesn't mean you have to listen to it that way. Look for the helpful and important things in what she says and discard everything else. When you need a shot of praise, start with yourself. Every evening, before you go to bed, look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself one good thing you did academically. Every once in a while, drop by the office hours of other professors that are more likely to brighten your day and have a brief conversation. Ask them how the conference went, or if they think you should go to that conference, or tell them how helpful their class has been in such a such thing. Spending a few minutes with an authority figure that's going to smile when they speak with you can boost you a great deal.
 
Lastly, your therapist can help you figure out how to talk with your adviser. You can't get couples counseling (and if any relationships are in dire need of couples counseling, it's the grad student/adviser relationships), but you can get some tips, and you can have the therapist walk you through or role play scenarios to help you deal with her. You need some things from her, on the emotional front, that you just aren't going to get. So how can you replace her for those things? She's not the almightiest academic in the world, so while you do have to pay attention to her criticisms, you don't have to take them as gospel truth. If she says something is wrong, that doesn't mean you have to fix it her way to please her. You have to fix it, but you can fix it your way. Find  someone you can spend some time with talking about what's happening in your field, and will do so seriously and collegially.

I think it's important to talk about your expectations with your advisor and have them help you establish a routine. Also talk to more advanced students about how they got started. My guess is that you need help establishing who to go to for questions and what kind of help you can reasonably expect from people. No one starts out knowing everything, so it's perfectly fine and even expected that you need help to get you started. However, it sounds to me like you're a bit too passive in this process. If you know what needs to happen, why don't you start doing it? You may get stuck or get things wrong, but it'll be easier to ask questions and get help *with specific problems* that you are having. If you are globally confused, you need to know who you can talk to in order to unconfused. If you know what needs to happen but are just insecure about doing it, my advice is to do it anyway. You build confidence and experience by doing things; getting things wrong sometimes is not a problem, it's how you learn. The only way you can avoid making mistakes is by doing nothing at all, but you already know that's not going to work. Just choose a corner of the project that you are relatively familiar with and start there. Ask many questions, talk to many people, find out who can help you. Simply get started on something. The longer you wait, the more expectations you'll build and the more anxiety you'll create for yourself; the best way to avoid that is not to let things build up, and instead talk them out as they come up. 

Love seeing all the photos of everyone's pets!
 
Here are our three crazy cats:


My husband is allergic to cats, but fortunately isn't allergic to Sphynx! (Some people with cat allergies can tolerate Sphynx, some can't.)

As I type this, the youngest is curled up in my lap, purring away. They are the sweetest, most affectionate cats I've ever met.

I agree with this- this is sorta what I was getting to.
 
Look, at this point, the relationship isn't great. Obviously continuing in the way you have been isn't going to impress her or do anything. Even if you work all weekend, it sounds like she will still make a comment that upsets you. Email her, tell her you're taking the weekend off- tell her you're going somewhere where you wont' have access to the internet if you have to- and you will respond to emails early Monday morning. Then take two days for yourself. Do whatever you want to do, see your friends, and have a drink (or three or four).
 
At some point, you need to decide it's not you. Relax, loosen up, and be yourself. If she says that you should know something, ask her for some good reference or review articles on the topic. Bring up things you've been thinking about- after doing some lit review- and if she says it's stupid, keep it in your back pocket in case you move labs. I feel like she is sorta trying to encourage you but has no idea how. So again, repeat to yourself: you're trying really hard, and it's not working. Consider this rock bottom. So just relax- can't get worse. Don't take every comment she says internally, don't be afraid of what you say- you already think she thinks you're stupid anyway, so what does it matter?- and just start speaking what is on your mind. Trust me- it's a hard process, but I went through it myself. And while you're working on this approach, shop around for your other options in case things don't get better. People switch advisors and programs all the time. This one woman does not determine your life, your career, or anything else about you.

Make an appointment with the DGS asap.  Or email them.  This seems like way too much to handle!!

Make an appointment with the DGS asap.  Or email them.  This seems like way too much to handle!!

Not knowing your field exactly, how much longer will the post-doc be there? In my field, 1-2 years is a typical post-doctoral rotation. 
 
Might be just worth ducking until the situation resolves itself that way. 
 
When I joined my lab, there was a huge amount of tension between our post-doc and our most senior grad student, and definitely made things awkward. 
 
I'll also advise, in general, that a thicker skin is beneficial times like this. Who cares if your post-doc things you're lazy? It's what you think of your work ethic and to a lesser extent, what your PI things, that matter. 
 
You'll always run into co-workers/cohort-mates that are snarky, abrasive, etc. Learning how to not let it bother you is very beneficial, especially if, as you say, your PI isn't the same. 
 
On the first year- what you've said doesn't make me want to fight for her. You don't mention any real positives (good attitude, great work ethic, talented, etc), just some things that make it seem like, at best, she's immature and clueless about a professional attitude (talking on the phone during group meeting?! Laughing when someone makes a mistake?). 

At best, I would stay out of the situation with the first-year's. The other applicant may actually know how to behave professionally, and you'd be standing up for someone whose behavior suggests she is not serious. Her actions at that meeting may not define her as a person, but they do define her as a student.
 
I would tell her in very straightforward terms that she seriously hurt her chances by behaving rudely in that group meeting; that is probably one of the kindest things you could do for her, as she may not be aware that that behavior is not acceptable.
 
As far as the post-doc is concerned... man, the snarky part of me wonders if, if you understand enough Mandarin to know what she's saying, if you'd be able to snipe back??
 
Probably not very professional, either.
 
Have you ever spoken to the post-doc? Not a what's-your-problem conversation, but maybe making a distinct point of saying hello when you see her?

That sounds exhausting.
 
I had a project like that, where the project advisor was, in my opinion, really bad at understanding why our relationship was not working. It was for very different reasons than your situation, I think, but it was very unhealthy and eventually, I had to explain via email and then in person why this was frustrating for me, and I ended up dropping the project. Given, he was not my main advisor, so I could afford to do that, but it's definitely tough.
 
Perhaps it would work for you to outline, for yourself, what you think a reasonable workload would be outside of personality problems. And then within that, sit with a good cup of tea and outline for yourself what kinds of current advisor behaviors would make that kind of workload unreasonable anyway. I think discussing the first part, if you think there is a workload issue, should be fairly simple and I think is easier to defend. One thing I do with my advisor, which I think helps with this understanding, is that we've kind of outlined how much time per week I should/will be working on different things. Then if he asks for me to do extra work, I can explain to him right then, in a matter-of-fact kind of way, what will be sacrificed.
 
The second part is more difficult. Do you know if other advisees are having the same issues?

You're doing a whole lot of blaming other people when stuff doesn't go according to plan. The grad school application process is stressful, I know, I've done it (twice), but you need to take responsibility. Whose fault is it going to be if you don't get in? Are you going to blame it on a letter writer, especially if you opted to not see it? (As in, I knew that prof said to opt out of looking at it so he/she could write a bad reference! And everyone on Grad Cafe must be collaborating with that professor, because they all said the same thing!).
Let me give you a clue: grad school is work. Lots of work. If you don't do well on a test in grad school, you work your a** off twice as hard, you don't complain that you were distracted, or it was unfair, or anything else. Especially in psych - there is no easy subfield of psychology. Get a grip. If you want it, you work for it, you don't whine for it.

This, seriously.
 
Also, I've been following your posts. You make a lot of excuses, and you didn't start really studying until just a few weeks before the test. A lot of people study hard for months and months... It is actually not uncommon to start studying a full year before you plan to take the test.  If you are serious about pursuing a doctoral degree, it's just what you have to do sometimes. You also seem rather uninformed on the whole application process (again, from other posts I've read from you) and a little entitled. My advice would be to take the next year to study up on this whole process, develop a solid GRE study plan you can stick to, and then apply next year once you are in a better place to do so. 
 
Also, you seem to get defensive when anyone suggests you retake the test to improve your scores. We're only being honest because you're asking for our advice. Your scores are not bad but they also are not very competitive for psych PhD programs. 

I'm glad that you met with your DGS; I'm hoping the meeting goes well.  Let us know.
 
A few things, though: your adviser is not your dictator or controller; she is there to advise you.  I remember what it was like my first year; you feel so intimidated and your adviser feels so powerful, but you are their junior colleague, not an employee or their child.  So you're allowed to make your own choices - for example, dropping a class if your course load is too heavy or choosing not to work on the weekends.  I take Saturday and half of Sunday off, and if someone gave me comments on Friday and said they wanted them on Monday I simply say "I can't do that.  I can get them to you by Wednesday."  What is she gonna do, come home with you and force you to work?
 
It sounds like this is your adviser's personality: very critical.  Maybe she's a workaholic herself and is one of those people who thinks that you have to work 100-hour weeks to be successful in academia (it's not true).
 
For example, if she send you an email back that says "What are you going to do on the weekends?" deflect.  Just say, "I only made a bare bones schedule with a few milestones marked on the calendar, but if you would like a more detailed calendar I can do that for you."  Write things in on the weekends, but make sure you give yourself enough time so that if you don't want to work all day Sat and Sun then you don't have to.
 
If she sends you a draft on Friday and you can't get it back on Monday - and there's no reason to, because the NSF deadline is still a month or so away - and she says something like you have to send her something before Monday, say something like "That won't be possible for me.  This needs some work and I want to be sure I can devote the time to it that is necessary to change it.  I can get it back to you on Monday at our meeting."  In other words, give her a little push back.
 
YOU have to be the master of your own schedule - and that includes making time for coursework and other projects but also making time for yourself.  One of the mistakes I made in my first two years was thinking I could work around the clock.  Then you just burn out and you hate yourself and everything by third year.  If you run religiously - make time to run.  Put it as an event on your schedule.  Same thing with laundry or cleaning or even just relaxing and watching your favorite TV series.  Monday nights are TV nights for me and my husband: I cook dinner, I step away from the computer, we settle down and eat dinner and watch TV for 2-3 hours.
 
And if someone asks you to do something when you know you need to run or clean or do laundry or whatever, calculate that time in your day when you are making predictions for when you can get things back - "I can't get this back to you this evening, but I can get it to you by tomorrow evening."  (Try to avoid apologizing - don't append "sorry" to the beginning or end of this statement.)  You don't have to tell anyone what you have scheduled or why you can't do it - that's not their business.  In my experience most sane people are like "Okay" and move on, unless your timeline is unreasonably long or you're working on deadline (like a paper revision or a grant that's due next week).

Pretty penny,
 
Although I'm also a first year, I can say that the load of 14 credits, 20 hours of TAing, and the NSF grant proposal is pretty unreasonable -- especially for a first year student. I've only seen people doing either of those things, not all of them. 
 
A comment about the last post you wrote:
 
"In general, I say what I think, she dismisses it, and I have to end up just nodding my head and agreeing."
 
If this continues to happen (in the case that you don't switch advisors), I would suggest following up your original concerns with a question. For example,  maybe asking something like 1) what she feels you should do or 2) what she thinks about it. This way she'll be prodded into answering your dilemma rather than dismissing your concerns and moving on. I've found that if you simply state concerns, some advisors might just think you're getting something off of your back, then move on.
 
Anyway, like fuzzylogician and others, I am anxious to hear how your meeting went. 
And don't worry, whatever happens, you will be fine. I'm sure you are more than a fantastic asset to your lab.

It might not be a bad idea to talk to a university counsellor/therapist, though. If it's getting to the stage where you're internalising a lot of poisonous sentiments, are scared to check emails and dread meetings, then something drastic needs to change. That doesn't mean your advisor is "right" and you're "wrong", it just means looking after your mental health and trying to avert anything worse.
 
I'd also take steps to look for a new advisor. Be polite but firm to the DGS about how your are a bad fit with your current PI. If necessary start collecting documentation - email conversations, notes of incidents/remarks. 

Hi danieleWrites, I'm sorry that's what you took away from my post. I did not make the argument that a degree gauranteed a good job, but that it is becoming a baseline requirement--those statistics include the two year technical degrees increasingly required for jobs like HVAC repair, plumbing, seaman, home living assistant. I relayed one of the conclusions of the paper, so I think criticizing my reading of that point is off base--I suspect you'd find much in there you agree with in the remaining text. The importance of a college degree for job qualification reality for many, regardless of whether you think it ought to be. Some of the most significant factors going into whether a student can or can't do college level work in the US stem from socioeconomic background, so I'd argue that stating someone is inherently unqualified for education and its benefits is a more "bourgeois" attitude than anything I wrote above. An aside for any readers who haven't read Marx in a while, "education as the key to success" is not an idea closely linked with the Bourgeoisie, but rather has been a tenant of socialism and stands in opposition to the idea of the middle-class as a selfish entity which hoards the benefits of modernization and globalization (the Bourgeoisie as used in sociology and political theory).
 
I did not imply that students are entitled to pass a particular class and wrote nothing to that effect. The point I tried to make are that college degrees are important for much of the work force, the lack of a degree can be a major setback, and therefore the stakes are high for students. Required courses for all majors serve as a bottleneck, and someone who is gifted academically in other fields can drop out of the pipeline at these points, so switching academic directions is not a useful suggestion in this context. For this reason it is imortant to consciously think about what standards are in such a class, how they have or could be communicated, and what level of flexibility is necessary to give students a fair shot. Hard and fast rules without room for empathy are not necessarily an effective teaching tool--is the goal to conform to a framework (eg a grading distribution or rubric) or to help students learn at any pace even if holds up the rest of the class? Niether extreme is good, but I personally believe that adhering to rules for the sake of personal consistancy is not a more moral or ethical stance. I have much more sympathy for a student who gets annoyed at what they perceive as an unfair advantage given to others than I do for the teacher that lays the bulk of the responsibility on a failing student. I was a TA for a student that dropped out with a failing grade, and I think that outcome is at least as much my responsibility as hers, since I took on that responsibility when I agreed to teach. Hopefully you follow where I'm coming from. Beyond the central point reiterated from the linked report, the rest of my posts are personal opinion--I don't agree with everything that's been posted, but I don't think they are invalid opinions either.

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me!....
 
Seriously. Two or three IRBs to file this month (primary researcher on all of them), none of which are my Thesis. Dammit. But hey, 19 page Table of Doom is done!!!!!

Would you consider taking a few night courses at your local community college or university? I suspect a couple geology courses (and maybe more chemistry or physics if you want to work for a petroleum company) would make for a little bit easier sell to programs. I think at least some of the schools you listed have more PhD-centric programs--they mostly aim for PhD students, even if they nominally offer an MS. If you do find a program that will accept you for an MS as a terminal degree, you will probably not be funded, so you'd need to pay tuition, which can be very pricey as an out of state student. While extracurriculars/hobbies are nice, I don't think anyone cares much for grad school, except perhaps as they demonstrate some other quality like leadership or ability to do independent research. Test scores are nice, but the least important aspect of a successfull application. Your personal statement and prior research experience/papers will be much more important. If you have not done laboratory or field research, perhaps you can volunteer with a local lab for a year or two?
 
Answering your questions specifically:
1. "Am I delusional here, or do I have a chance at some of these?"
As GeoDUDE! pointed out, these are top-tier geology schools, so your chances aren't as good as they could be if you can demonstrate research potential.

2. "What happens if I apply but I haven't taken any geo courses? "
You are unlikely to be accepted, but this all depends on the specific program and advisor, so you can target places where this will be less important. Conditional acceptances for graduate school are not something I've heard of. A bridge semester is highly unlikely. A MS is already very short, 1-2 years, and largely filled with coursework and research. There is no time to be playing catch up, and no one wants to pay for the extra time that takes--even if you are paying your tuition, the PI or department still has to sink a lot of money into you to cover research and overhead costs and will be losing money on you.
 
So in summary, I think you can make this happen if it is really important to you, but you need to play the long game. Applying this season is not likely to pan out.

I just remember that I am awesome.

LOL, seriously, I remember that I wouldn't be getting any feedback at all if the people in my professional life thought I was not worth it.  My adviser would just be like "Redo this," and any journal reviewers would simply reject my papers.  The fact that you get a revise/resubmit is evidence that you've done something worth reviewing.

I like juilletmercredi's advice a lot. In fact, you could get yourself this t-shirt as a constant reminder of that fact:

I'm pretty happy with how things are going. I'm getting very busy with courses/TA/research but I'm enjoying it, yet still having time to do other fun stuff on the weekend. I try to get ahead with work whenever I have free time so I can go out later in the week. My advisor seems pretty great. I did go through the impostor syndrome about 2 weeks in. However, after getting some work done for my advisor and another professor, and receiving an "impressive" comment from both on it, I felt like I belonged
 
I was worried my introverted-ness might make it hard to make new friends, but I underestimated how much I've matured and grown confident socially in the 2 years I've worked as an instructor since my MS. I just ignored my fears and threw myself into introducing myself and speaking to people whenever possible and so far, it's going pretty swimmingly *knocks on wood*

I personally didn't think you were bragging by including information about your institution or the NSF grant in your profile signature. 
Just be careful - if you identify your department, university of study and that you are on a particular fellowship...well, it won't be hard for people to identify you. 
 
Though there is a significant difference between saying that "MA students are discriminated against here" and "I feel like I'm getting discriminated against here". Or even "I feel like I'm getting discriminated against here" and "I'm suffering culture shock here". It's hard for people on the Forum to help out if you can't accurately tell us what the real problem is.
 
If you feel that the problem is one of culture shock, then maybe hold back on the questions and try to observe how the natives behave. Is there a way that East Coast students phrase their questions that is less direct/more formal than how you usually do so? Do Ivy League academics expect to be addressed in a specific way that is different to their midwestern counterparts? 
(I know from experience that choosing the wrong option from Professor, Dr. or [First name] can cause academics to bristle - and that the preferred term of address varies between regions. So it might be something trivial that you're unknowingly getting wrong.) 
 
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From what you've said it does sound like there is a gap between your expectations of how you should be treated and what the professors think is acceptable, most likely based on regional norms. When you remark "I expect to be treated with common courtesy" - it is entirely possible that the professors are giving you what they consider to be "common courtesy at an elite institution on the East Coast". 
 
It is also plausible that what you considered "presumptuous" - a professor casually suggesting that you drop the course - might to her have been a helpful suggestion (I mean, sure, if you are running into difficulties within the early introductory stages of the course, it is not completely unreasonable of her to suspect that you might really struggle with the material once you get into the harder concepts later on). 
 
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For me as an international student, the best way to deal with culture shock in a new place is to at least try and meet them halfway (rather than rejecting the new culture entirely). If people commonly wear suits for class...maybe dress a bit smarter in your own daily "grad school" wardrobe? It's also about taking a step back and thinking "Does their remark *really* mean what I assumed it must mean?" 'Cause an awful lot of the time...it doesn't.