quilledink

It's never too early! I presented at conferences during undergrad! In my opinion, as soon as you have research done and interesting results (or even preliminary results to share), you should present. And at some types of conferences in my field (e.g. the one organized by our national society), the idea is to just update people what you're working on--so people present even if they have no results, especially if they are more junior people (e.g. undergrads or first year grad students). It's never too early to get some practice and get your name attached to your topic.
 
Just one tip as a fellow Canadian: If you are attending prior to starting your PhD program, don't introduce yourself as a Masters student! I would just say "grad student". I presented at a US conference at the end of my Canadian MSc and I introduced myself to people in this way and they all made comments like "Oh not everyone needs a PhD" or other vaguely patronizing comments since a Masters student in a US is either in a non-PhD route, or failed out of their PhD program. If you are going to have time to explain our grad program, then sure, go for it, but often, you only exchange one or two lines as introduction and then it gets awkward if you have to spend extra time explaining yourself!!

It's definitely not too early, especially since you'll be presenting on research you've already completed. It would be different if you were in the planning stages of doing the research and had no findings/results to report. You should definitely talk to your new supervisor about the presentation. They might have advice for you, want you to practice your talk in advance, etc. 

I presented at a major niche (is that a thing?) conference in my field in the summer before starting my MA. I'll have added a handful of other major conferences by the time I start a PhD (if I'm lucky), including one that sounds like it's in your field this week. As long as the work is good, I don't see why there would be a reason not to try to present it.

I don't think there is such a thing as 'too early,' really. Some exposure early on is good. The most important thing is to make sure that you give a good presentation, so I would hope that even though it's work you bring with you from another institution, your new advisors will be willing to help you prep for this presentation. The more inexperienced you are, the longer it will take you to prep, so you will want to start early and give at least one practice talk. Keep in mind: a not-so-good presentation by a young student will usually be forgiven, but a good one will be remembered. Your Masters work will surely have lots of interesting and varied content so this will be a good opportunity to learn how to turn that into an engaging talk, which is not an easy skill to develop. It will also give you a low-stakes opportunity to see what conferences are like and to meet some new people. If there is any way to use this work in your PhD program (develop it into a qualifying paper, use an extension for a final paper for some class, develop it into a journal submission), this is a great opportunity to do so and involve someone from your new school in the process.
 
I would say, go for it. The main reasons I would see not to do it are if you don't get any support from your new institution, if you've completely changed directions and this work is not pertinent to what you do anymore, or if your travel will not be reimbursed.

Yes and no. The tricky thing is that there are a lot of different organizations that care about your residency and each of them might define residency differently.
 
I am a Canadian citizen living in California for graduate school. Here are the implications:
 
Taxes: When I file my Canadian taxes, I file as a "factual resident" of Canada (see: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/ndvdls/tmprry-eng.html).This means what you are asking--I file as if I never left Canada and I get to keep all the tax benefits (e.g. GST rebates etc.) When I file taxes in the United States, I file as a " non-resident alien". So, the answer to your question is yes, basically Canada is my "primary residence" and the US is my "secondary residence" (although these terms are not well defined).
 
Health care: My last Canadian address is in British Columbia. I do NOT qualify for BC MSP (Medical Services Plan, i.e. our health care system). The eligibility requirements are here: http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=A24BB960F5234630BCB9DE847EEFD07Band the one that I do not meet is the "physically present in BC for 6 months/year". Therefore, I do not have Canadian health care coverage anymore. I will be able to regain such coverage when I return to Canada and go through a 3 month wait period. Instead, my primary health insurance coverage is now based in the United States, through my University as part of my grad student benefits package. This insurance covers international travel, so if I do get hurt while in Canada, I would be using my US-based health insurance's travel policy.
 
National Student Loans: Sorry, I cannot help you here, because I do not have experience with this!
 
Driver License: I added this category because I think it's helpful/important. This varies a lot with your Canadian province and your new state. In California, no international driver licenses are recognized and international students are considered "residents" in terms of licensing requirements. This means that an international student in California can only drive using their Canadian license for the first 10 days. After this, they must get a California driver license to continue driving (and this means taking both the written and road tests). Note that if you were just visiting California, you can drive for up to something like 90 days on your Canadian license because you're "just visiting" / "not a resident". However, being here for school means you are a "resident" in the DMV's point of view. Additionally, ICBC (the authority that issues licenses in BC) does not like it if you hold both a US driver license and a BC driver license. So, if you ever interact with your Canadian driver licensing authority, avoid telling them that you have a US license unless you are required to.

Oh, an important note: the order you should complete your taxes is:
 
1. US Federal tax
2. US state tax (often requires copy of federal tax return)
3. Canadian income tax (you will require copy of your US tax return if you want to claim paid US taxes as credit towards income tax in Canada [i.e. to avoid double taxing--only important if you are not a graduate student though])

Okay I am back.
 
If you are a Canadian citizen and you are in the US for school you are a "deemed resident for tax purposes". When filing taxes as a resident, you must always file all your international income. Therefore, while you are a grad student, you will always file taxes to Canada, no matter what country pays you and what country you live in. 
 
In addition, if you are a Canadian in the US for school, you are most likely a non-resident alien (NRA). In order to file as a "resident", you have to be in the US for a number of days per year, however, the first 5 years on F-1 or J-1 status do not count. Therefore, unless you did an undergrad in the States, it's almost certain that you are a NRA for taxes in the US. In the US (and most countries), non-resident file taxes only on US-based income.
 
I'll just use some simplified numbers. My income is $20k from NSERC (Canada) and $10k from my school (American) plus a $40k tuition waiver. This is how I file my taxes in each country:
 
1. Canada: I tell the CRA about all three sources of income: the $20k from NSERC, the $10k from my US school and the $40k for tuition. I also claim my tuition paid because this counts as paying my school $40k/year for tuition, then getting it reimbursed. You have to get your US school to fill out a TL-11A (see here: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/tl11a/README.html).They fill out this form, sign it officially and you file it with your Canadian taxes to claim the educational tax credits. At this rate, I'm going to rack up about $250k in educational tax credits by the time I finish (but it's not as good as it sounds, but that's another story).
 
My total taxable income in Canada is $0 because all income that support graduate studies are not taxable in Canada. But I still should declare these income sources. 
 
And you cannot NETFILE because you are not living in the US. Instead, you must use tax software (I recommend the online UFile software) and then print out the relevant forms and mail it to the CRA's International Tax Office.
 
2. You must also file US Federal income tax. As a non-resident, I only pay US tax on US-based income but tuition waivers are tax exempt. There are some US-Canada tax treaty that might affect you. You need to use special tax software for non-residents in order to file your US taxes as a non-resident. I highly recommend these software because they automatically detect all eligibility for tax treaties. My school provides Glacier tax prep software for free to us; it costs $35/return otherwise. Worth it though. The US does not tax-exempt grad students and as a non-resident we get very little tax deductions. Most likely, we can only claim the $4000 or so "personal exemption" so you will pay about 10% tax on the remaining taxable income.
 
In one of my years here, my US income was less than $10k and that resulted in a tax treaty being applied that made the first $10k earned tax-exempt. This was a very good year because I got all of my US Federal tax back!!
 
You must also file by mail as a non-US resident.
 
3. Finally, you also file US State tax. The rules vary for each state. In California, non-residents do have to declare all world-wide income if it is paid for work done in California (so the NSERC would count in this case). I paid state tax on the entire $30k income (the tuition waiver is tax exempt). State tax was the hardest because the non-resident federal tax software does not include the state tax forms (unlike the version for residents). I had to do it by hand and it took many more hours! All to find out that I still owed the State $8 in taxes! 

Hi everyone,
 
I couldn't find a thread on STS nor on history/sociology/anthropology of science, so I decided to start one.
 
I am on of the Rensselaer  STS acceptances this week. I saw that three other people have posted their results, and I'd love to hear from you!  Where have you guys also applied? What do you think about the RPI STS program? 
 
I am an international student and I also applied to Cornell, Harvard, UCSD and UPenn. Based on previous years, I think results will be sent around next week, right?
 

1. Lists. Lots of them. I've been using workflowy for a year now and I like it a lot. 
 
1.1. To do lists: I have weekly, monthly, and semester/year lists that contain different goals with different fine-grainedness. 
 
1.2. Meeting notes: I summarize my meetings either during the meetings or right after, that way I have a documentation of everything that happened and down the line I can search my notes for relevant examples or whatever. 
 
1.3. Deadlines: All conferences, abstracts, one-time things go on a list way ahead of time so I don't forget them. 
 
2. A good calendar. I used to have a physical planner (I likes moleskin) but now I just use google calendar with 5-6 regular calendars (classes, meetings, teaching, regular events, irregular events, private). Everything I need to do goes on there, otherwise I won't remember it. 
 
3. Schedule your off time in your calendar or make it a habit to have certain times off, otherwise your private life can easily get consumed by your work. 
 
4. Learn to say no. Not everything out there should make it onto your calendar or to-do lists. 

I am a fast writer ("disgustingly fast," as my friends put it) but I can only write *after* I've worked through what it is I want to say. I can't just start writing and bullshit or write something vague that will be revised later. I need to have a clear vision of the entire paper before I can start the writing portion. Once I'm there, I build a skeleton of the paper. I start with the section headings. Then I write some abstract and introduction, even though I know full well that I'll need to revise them, because it helps me to lay out the plan. Then I go and write some key points underneath each of my sections, and create subsections. For each new (sub)section I try and put down the key ideas I would like to have there. I point out where figures and graphs should go. I also keep in parallel to the paper a list (I like workflowy for this and all my other list-needs) with the same level of detail - each section, subsection and things that need to be created and go there (graphs, figures, statistical models, things I need to find out, outstanding reading). The goal of all these steps is to break down the work to manageable steps.
 
Once this is done, I can start filling in the blanks, and I try to have each step correspond to something that I can cross off a list, because that makes me feel like I've accomplished something tangible. It even helps me to create an item on my list and immediately cross it off if I've done X amount of work for the day and it doesn't correspond to any entire bullet point. It just helps me feel like I'm continuously making progress and it also helps me keep a record of the size of my steps and when they happened. I start with the easy parts - figures, graphs and descriptions thereof, as well as technical writing, because there is not much thinking to do there. At that point there should be at least a good 5-6 pages of the paper (some in bullet-point form, but never mind) and that's encouraging. After that I just plug away and work through sections, as much as possible in order so I don't end up repeating things in later sections that would have had to appear early. I have a policy of not looking back - what's written is written, it's an accomplished section and I move on. Later I go back and re-read. It's easier to edit once the whole thing is on paper and I think it saves time too.
 
I imagine that creative writing is not exactly the same, but that's the process that works for me.

I know this topic has been debated ad infinitum, but this is one (humanities) graduate student who talks about the difficultly of giving advice to potential students on the question: Should I attend graduate school?
 
tldr: finding the definitive answer to "should I go to grad school" kinda requires knowledge of the meaning of life
 
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/04/graduate-school-advice-impossible-decision.html
 

In that case, I have a bag of fresh high quality air I'd like to sell you.

About your dog: I think that depends entirely on you and your program. I am in a social science program where the majority of my analysis and writing can be done from home, and I prefer to work from home or from a library (as opposed to my cube in the windowless cube farm). When I was taking classes I was generally there from 9-6 or so, but now that my coursework is finished I am rarely at the school itself. I go for meetings, seminars, interesting kinds of things and I do most of my work remotely. My time is verrry flexible, and if my building didn't prohibit it I would get a dog in a heartbeat. Another thing to keep in mind: a dog can be a great comfort when you're all stressed out over graduate school.

Advice?

Age:
-Don't feel like you have nothing to offer just because you are younger. I was 22 when I started graduate school. You got accepted to the program for a reason, and chances are you are just as equipped as any older students are to successfully complete the program, just in a different way.

-Your older classmates may be just as terrified as you. Talk to them. You have a lot in common. You are, after all, in the same place.

-You will feel like an imposter, like you don't belong, or like you are constantly behind. Or all three. It's normal. It will pass. (Well, sort of.) People of all ages go through this.

Adviser related:
-If you are lucky enough to get both research interest fit and personality fit perfect, congratulations! But sometimes, personality fit is more important than research interest fit as long as the research isn't too different. A great adviser is interested in your career development, likes you as a person, advocates for you, and wants to hear your ideas. Even if his or her research is quite different from yours, they may give you the autonomy to work on your own projects and just supervise you. A bad personality fit will drive you nuts, even if you love his or her research. Consider that when evaluating your adviser fit. (This will vary by field: research fit may be less important in the humanities, more important in the natural and physical sciences. Social sciences are somewhere in-between.)

-Don't be afraid to be straight up blunt with your adviser when it comes to asking about your progress. Ask if you are where you should be both academic program wise and getting-a-job-after-this-mess-wise.

-Be proactive. Advisers love when you draw up an agenda for your one-on-one meetings, come with talking points and progress to share, have concrete questions to ask, and have overall shown that you have been thoughtful and taken control of your own program. Of course, this won't immediately come easily to you, but in time you will work up to it. Every semester I type up my semester goals, and at the beginning of the year I type up annual goals. I show them to my adviser and we talk about whether they are too ambitious, or whether I need to revise them, and how I can meet them.

-Don't expect your adviser to actually know what courses you have to take to graduate. They will know about comprehensive exams and the dissertation, but a lot of professors don't really keep up with the course requirements, especially if their program is in flux. Get you a student handbook, and find out what you need to take. Map it out in a grid, and check off things when you finish them. Show this to your adviser every semester. You may have to explain how such and such class fills a requirement.

-Nobody loves you as much as you, except your mother. Keep this in mind as you take in advice from all sources, including your adviser. Your adviser is there to guide you, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything he says.

Studying:
-You will have to read more than you ever did before, in less time than you ever have before, and you will be expected to retain more than you ever have before. The way that you studied in undergrad may need some tweaking. Be prepared for this.

-Corollary: you may find that your methods change with age or interests or time. I preferred to study alone in college, but in grad school, I prefer to study in groups. It keeps me on task and the socialization keeps me motivated. You may find that you shift from being a more auditory learner to a visual learner or whatever.

-You will feel behind at first. This is normal.

-At some point you will realize that your professors don't actually expect you to read everything they assign you. This, of course, will vary by program, but there will be at least one class where the reading is actually impossible to do in one week. The point is to read enough that you know the major themes and can talk intelligently about them, and then pick some of the readings to really dig into and think more deeply about.

-For most programs, don't worry so much about grades. If you stay on top of your work and do what you're supposed to, you will probably get an A. How much grades matter varies from program to program. In some programs, a B is a signal that you are not up to par, and more than a few Bs will warrant a discussion with your adviser or the DGS. My program isn't like that - A, B, it's all meaningless. My adviser doesn't even know what my grades are. But at almost all programs, a C means you need to retake the course, and two Cs means you have to convince the DGS not to kick you out.

Extracurricular activity: What's that? No, seriously:
-A lot of your time will be unstructured. You will have coursework, but most grad classes meet once a week for two hours and you may have three classes. You may have meetings with your adviser every so often and some seminars or things to catch (like we have grand rounds and colloquia that are required), but a lot of time will be unstructured. However, since you have so much more work than you had in undergrad, you actually will have less free time than you had in undergrad. This may initially cause you great anxiety. It did for me. Some people love unstructured time, though. (I don't.)

-Because of this, you'll have to be planful about your non-grad school related stuff.

-TAKE TIME OFF. DO it. It's important for your mental health. However you do it doesn't matter. Some people work it like a 9-5 job. Some people take a day off per week (me) and maybe a few hours spread across the week. Some people work half days 7 days a week. However you do it, there needs to be a time when you say "f this, I'm going to the movies."

-Find your happy place, something that keeps you the you you were when you came in. I love working out. It gives me energy and I feel good. I stay healthy. I also love reading fiction, so sometimes I just curl up with a good book, work be damned. You have to give yourself permission to not think about work, at least for a couple of hours a week. You may also discover new hobbies! (I never worked out before I came to graduate school.)

-Your work will creep into all aspects of your life, if you let it. This is why I hate unstructured time. You will feel guilty for not doing something, because in graduate school, there is ALWAYS something you can do. ALWAYS. But since there will always be more work, there's no harm in putting it aside for tomorrow, as long as you don't have a deadline.

-You may need to reach outside of your cohort for a social life. None of my close friends are in my doctoral cohort. I've met master's students in my program, master's students in other programs, and I know a few non-graduate students I hang out with, too. Go to graduate student mixers. (If your university doesn't have any, organize some, if you like planning parties.) Join a student group that doesn't take up too much time. I had a doctoral acquaintance who kinda laughed at me because I joined some student groups other than the doctoral student one, and I was usually the only doctoral student in those groups, but I met some close friends (and future job contacts) and had a good time.

-DO NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR WANTING A LIFE OUTSIDE OF GRADUATE SCHOOL. This is paramount. This is important. You are a well-rounded, complex, multifaceted human being. NEVER feel bad for this. Everybody wants some kind of life outside of work. Yes, you may loooove your field, but that doesn't mean you want to do it all day long. Some other doctoral students, and perhaps professors, may make you feel bad about this. Don't let them. Just smile and nod. Then disappear when you need to.

Career:
-This is job preparation. Remember that from Day One. Always be looking for ways to enhance your skills. Read job ads and find out what's hot in your field, what's necessary, what's in demand. For example, in my field statistics and methods are a hot commodity, and they're not a passing fad. I happen to really like statistics and methods, so I have pursued that as a concentration of mine.

-Don't be afraid to take on volunteer work and part-time gigs that will give you skills that will be useful both inside academia and out, as long as it's not against your contract. Your adviser may be against it, but he doesn't have to know as long as it doesn't interfere with your work.

-If you want to work outside of academia - if you are even *considering* the possibility - please please definitely do the above. Even if you aren't considering it, consider the possibility that you won't get a tenure-track job out the box and that you may need to support yourself doing something else for a while. You will have to prove to employers that you have developed usable, useful skills and this is one of the easiest ways to do it. But don't overdo it - get the degree done.

-For more academic related ones - always look for opportunities to present and publish. Presentations look good on your CV. Publications look better. When you write seminar papers, wonder if you can publish them with some revision. Write your seminar papers on what you maybe think you may want to do your dissertation on. Even if you look at them three years later and think "these suck," you can at least glean some useful references and pieces from them. Discuss publication with your adviser early and often, and if you have the time and desire, seek out publication options with other professors and researchers. But if you commit to a project, COMMIT. You don't want to leave a bad impression.

-If you can afford it, occasionally go to conferences even if you aren't presenting. You can network, and you can hear some interesting talks, and you may think about new directions for your own research. You can also meet people who may tell you about jobs, money, opportunities, etc.

-Always try to get someone else to pay for conference travel before you come out of pocket. Including your adviser. Do not be shy about asking if he or she can pay. If he can't, he'll just say no. Usually the department has a travel fund for students, but often it's only if you are presenting.

-If you are interested in academia, you should get some teaching experience. There are two traditional ways to do this: TAing a course, and teaching as a sole instructor. If you can help it, I wouldn't recommend doing a sole instructor position until you are finished with coursework. Teaching takes a LOT of time to do right. You should definitely TA at least one course, and probably a few different ones. But don't overdo it, if you can help it, because again, it takes a LOT of time. More than you expect at the outset. If you are in the humanities, I think sole instructor positions are very important for nabbing jobs so when you are in the exam/ABD phase, you may want to try at least one. If your own university has none, look at adjuncting for nearby colleges, including community colleges. (I would wager that the majority of natural science/physical science students, and most social science students, have never sole taught a class before they get an assistant professor job. At least, it's not that common n my field, which straddles the social and natural sciences.)

-Always look for money. Money is awesome. If you can fund yourself you can do what you want, within reason. Your university will be thrilled, your adviser will be happy, and you can put it on your CV. It's win-win-win! Don't put yourself out of the running before anyone else has a chance to. Apply even if you think you won't get it or the odds are against you (they always are), as long as you are eligible. Apply often. Apply even if it's only $500. (That's conference travel!) Money begets money. The more awards you get, the more awards you will get. They will get bigger over time. If you are in the sciences and social sciences, you should get practice writing at least one grant. You don't have to write the whole thing, but at least get in on the process so that you can see how it's done. Grant-writing is very valuable both in and outside of graduate school.

-Revise your CV every so often. Then look and decide what you want to add to it. Then go get that thing, so you can add it.

-The career office at big universities is often not just for undergrads. I was surprised to learn that my career center offers help on CV organization and the academic job search, as well as alternative/non-academic career searches for doctoral students. In fact, there are two people whose sole purpose it is to help PhD students find nonacademic careers, and they both have PhDs. This will vary by university - some universities will have very little for grad students. Find out before you write the office off.

-It's never too early to go to seminars/workshops like "the academic job search inside and out", "creating the perfect CV," "getting the job," etc. NEVER. Often the leader will share tips that are more aimed towards early graduate students, or tidbits that are kind of too late for more advanced students to take care of. This will also help you keep a pulse on what's hot in your field. It'll help you know what lines you need to add to your CV. And they're interesting.

Other:

-Decide ahead of time what you are NOT willing to sacrifice on the altar of academia. Then stick to it.
I'm serious. If you decide that you do NOT want to sacrifice your relationship, don't. If it's your geographical mobility, don't. I mean, be realistic, and realize that there will always be trade-offs. But you have to think about what's important to you for your quality of life, and realize that there is always more to you than graduate school.

-If you don't want to be a professor, do not feel guilty about this. At all. Zero. However, you will have to do things differently than most doctoral students. Your adviser will probably never have worked outside of the academy (although this may vary depending on the field) so he may or may not be able to help you. But you have a special mission to seek out the kinds of experiences that will help you find a non-academic job. Test the waters with your adviser before you tell him this. My adviser was quite amenable to it, but that's because I told him that my goal was to still do research and policy work in my field just not at a university, AND because it's quite common in my field for doctoral students to do non-academic work. If you're in a field where it's not common (or where your professors refuse to believe it's common, or it's not supposed to be common)…well, you may be a little more on your own.

-Every so often, you will need to reflect on the reasons you came to graduate school. Sometimes, just sit and think quietly. Why are you doing this to yourself? Do you love your field? Do you need this degree to do what you want to do? Usually the answer is yes and yes, and usually you'll keep on trucking. But sometimes when the chips are down you will need to reevaluate why you put yourself through this in the first place.

-To my great dismay, depression is quite common in doctoral students. Graduate work can be isolating and stressful. Luckily your health insurance usually includes counseling sessions. TAKE THEM if you need them. Do not be ashamed. You may be surprised with who else is getting them. (I found out that everyone in my cohort, including me, was getting mental health counseling at a certain point.) Exercise can help, as can taking that mental health day once a week and just chilling. Don't be surprised if you get the blues…

-…but be self-aware and able to recognize when the depression is clouding your ability to function. Doctoral programs have a 50% attrition rate, and this is rarely because that 50% is less intelligent than, less motivated than, less driven than, or less ambitious than the other 50% that stays. Often they realize that they are ridiculously unhappy in the field, or that they don't need the degree anymore, or that they'd rather focus on other things in life, or their interests have changed. All of this is okay!

-You will, at some point, be like "eff this, I'm leaving." I think almost every doctoral student has thought about dropping out and just kicking this all to the curb. You need to listen to yourself, and find out whether it is idle thought (nothing to worry about, very normal) or whether you are truly unhappy to the point that you need to leave. Counseling can help you figure this out.

-Don't be afraid to take a semester or a year off if you need to. That's what leaves of absence are for.

Lastly, and positively…

…graduate school is great! Seriously, when else will you ever have the time to study what you want for hours on end, talk to just as interested others about it, and live in an intellectual community of scholars and intellectuals? And occasionally wake up at 11 am and go to the bank at 2 pm? Sometimes you will want to pull out all of your hair but most of the time, you will feel fulfilled and wonderfully encouraged and edified. So enjoy this time!

My sense is that there isn't one thing that most people do. Many people jump straight in after the master's (or skip the master's entirely and jump straight in from undergrad), but many other people also take some time off between degrees. It could be one year, two years, or more. Some people are reapplying to graduate school after being out of school for over a decade. It really depends on your own circumstances... there is no one path that is overwhelming more common than the others. I know plenty of people who jumped straight in and plenty of others who waited. As for me, I waited a year between my MS (graduated last year) and my PhD (which I will start this fall). I didn't do it by choice, however. I had applied to a PhD program for the Fall 2012 season, but was rejected because of an unsupportive LOR.
 
Personally, I wouldn't have taken the year off if I had more control over the situation. I have had an incredibly hard time finding a temporary job in an area even remotely related to my field. Many of the jobs that I have applied to are traditionally positions intended for people like me who only have MS degrees, but since there are so many jobless PhDs on the market now who are willing to work for much less money than they should, I constantly found myself out-competed. Also, no one wants to hire someone who is just going to leave for a PhD position within the year. I suppose that one could always just lie or not mention the PhD plans to my prospective employer, but I didn't want to lie to people in my field... there's a good chance that I'd see them and possibly even need to work with them in the future, so why risk burning bridges by being secretive and untruthful?
 
Anyway, now I'm kind of stuck in this weird state where I've essentially put my life on hold. It's like I've lived these past few months just waiting for the next stage of my life to start, and it's terrible... but there's not much I can do because this is a transitional stage in my life, which means that I can't make any commitments to anything that would last beyond the next several months. I don't like it. Many of the other people I know who took time off between degrees did so voluntarily because they had sweet jobs or other experiences (volunteering, trips overseas, etc.) lined up that would be valuable to them when they applied to programs in the future. In that case, I think that taking a year off is a great idea. But that wasn't my situation; my hand was kind of forced by that one lousy letter writer.
 
This is just my experience, though. I've known what I want to study for a while now, and always knew that I wanted to get a PhD. In retrospect, the entire master's program was probably a waste of time... I probably should have jumped right into a PhD. I had years of research experience from my undergrad, so I didn't really even need the MS or any time off to build up my CV. Your situation sounds different. If you're not sure what you want to work on for your PhD, then you should take all the time you need to figure that out. A doctoral program isn't something that you should jump into without a reasonably solid idea of what you want to study and what you want to do when you graduate. Doctoral research is an unforgiving mistress, and if you aren't working on a project that you're genuinely passionate about, things will get overwhelmingly stressful and miserable fast. Taking time off to think about this carefully could be good for you.
 
So, my advice is to take a year off if you don't know what you want to study by the time that the application deadlines roll around. Just make sure that you have a temporary job lined up for your "off year," or at least some way to support yourself financially. And don't worry about what most other people do... there are so many different paths to a PhD, and everyone you talk to will have a different story.

I think that there are two separate issues here, which I'll address in turn.

First, it sounds like you need to take a more active role in your education. That's precisely what you describe your friend as doing: apply for positions, schmooze with professors, talk yourself up. Since you do less of that, I think it's not unreasonable that professors have less of an idea of your research interests, and that they associate you with your friend's interests (since you describe yourself as his sidekick). Furthermore, since your friend has obviously been successful in his past positions, you can also kind of see why he would be recommended or sought after by other professors. You need to start building a name for yourself that's similar to that. If you do a good job, I don't see why you wouldn't also be appreciated. People are recognized for work they do, not for potential they might have. Prove yourself, and people will take notice.

Second (and more difficult), you need to stop comparing yourself to your friend. A fact of life is that there is always going to be someone smarter/faster/better at something than you are. If you give up as soon as you encounter such a person, you won't get very far. A fact of life is also that it's not always those smarter/better people who succeed more in life, you can affect your destiny by being active and taking initiative. Get your foot in the doorway, get to know professors and try to start collaborations - essentially do the things you say your friend is doing. Hey, maybe your friend will even be willing to talk to you about how he strikes up conversations with professors and gets these collaborations. It's something useful to learn how to do. From your story, I didn't think he was doing anything to harm you, though he may have been insensitive or oblivious when he could have helped you out. If you talk to him, that may change. ... or you may find out that you were right to distance yourself from him, but either way I think you'll use your energy better if you invest it in furthering your own causes rather than comparing yourself to others.

What is this supposed to mean?

You don't even know the full story yet you're willing to blame this on "feminists"? Disgusting. You're what's wrong with rape culture.

That's the plan! I don't want anyone else to have go through the waiting anxiety for any longer than they have to. It sucks.

The ironic thing with wine-infused wine gums? One version of the story is that wine gums were invented for recovering alcoholics!

Someone posted elsewhere on the site-- I wish I remember where, probably in "Waiting it Out" -- about the "science of being happy" and how, when we have limited choices (some of them not very good), we tend to make ourselves happier anyways with the option we've been given. This is probably what's happening to you -- you've gotten into a great program (congrats, by the way!) and so you are mentally going over all of its strengths in your mind "just in case" you don't get into any other programs. Not to psychoanalyze you or anything -- the exact same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago when I got into my last choice a few hours before getting into my top choice in the same day. I rationalized myself as happy at the last choice school for several hours, and then was over the moon about my top choice afterwards But, all the same points I used to rationalize the last choice are now still legitimate arguments in my head as to why I should go there....
 
I say stick it out unless you know for sure that you would go to this school even if all the other schools offered you equivalent or better offers. And definitely try to get a feel for the program and department before settling on it without having heard back from the other programs first!

Someone posted elsewhere on the site-- I wish I remember where, probably in "Waiting it Out" -- about the "science of being happy" and how, when we have limited choices (some of them not very good), we tend to make ourselves happier anyways with the option we've been given. This is probably what's happening to you -- you've gotten into a great program (congrats, by the way!) and so you are mentally going over all of its strengths in your mind "just in case" you don't get into any other programs. Not to psychoanalyze you or anything -- the exact same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago when I got into my last choice a few hours before getting into my top choice in the same day. I rationalized myself as happy at the last choice school for several hours, and then was over the moon about my top choice afterwards But, all the same points I used to rationalize the last choice are now still legitimate arguments in my head as to why I should go there....
 
I say stick it out unless you know for sure that you would go to this school even if all the other schools offered you equivalent or better offers. And definitely try to get a feel for the program and department before settling on it without having heard back from the other programs first!

Someone posted elsewhere on the site-- I wish I remember where, probably in "Waiting it Out" -- about the "science of being happy" and how, when we have limited choices (some of them not very good), we tend to make ourselves happier anyways with the option we've been given. This is probably what's happening to you -- you've gotten into a great program (congrats, by the way!) and so you are mentally going over all of its strengths in your mind "just in case" you don't get into any other programs. Not to psychoanalyze you or anything -- the exact same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago when I got into my last choice a few hours before getting into my top choice in the same day. I rationalized myself as happy at the last choice school for several hours, and then was over the moon about my top choice afterwards But, all the same points I used to rationalize the last choice are now still legitimate arguments in my head as to why I should go there....
 
I say stick it out unless you know for sure that you would go to this school even if all the other schools offered you equivalent or better offers. And definitely try to get a feel for the program and department before settling on it without having heard back from the other programs first!

There are no guidelines of when to accept except your own. If you're certain that this is the school you want to go to, then accept it. Schools generally want to hear your decision as early as possible.

I've been getting into chocolate covered frozen bananas lately. Obviously, you can only enjoy this when you are at home. I just microwave a bar of really dark chocolate (even though I like milk chocolate much better) with some peanut butter, spread it on banana slices, and freeze. One hour later you have a yummy snack and a serving of fruit.

One thing that often works for me is deciding to write something bad.  As bad as possible.  That way you get something out, it's so stupid it's kind of funny, and then you feel better about taking the next step.  And you can un-bad it a little bit at a time.  Before you know it, you've got something pretty decent.
 
I had to use this approach a lot when writing SOPs.  Sometimes I got so anxious about applications that I would do it in all caps: DEAR FANCY UNIVERSITY, I WOULD LIKE TO GO TO YOU BECAUSE YOUR PROGRAM IS SO, SO PRETTY.  I WRITE PLAYS ABOUT BAD THINGS, AND I DON'T TAKE UP MUCH SPACE.  PLEASE CONSIDER ME.  LOVE, TEETHWAX.

I know what you mean and it is SO FRUSTRATING. I feel like I could be locked in a completely empty room with nothing but a typewriter, and I would just twiddle my thumbs forever. I had it as an undergrad, but since I only had a max of one class per semester that required real papers, it wasn't so bad. Grad school, of course, is all about the writing, and I found that my time away from college did not shake my paper writing anxiety.
Ironically, I have no problem writing under informal situations. I am a slow writer, but aside from that I wrote a blog for work with no problem, I have been known to write 1,000-word emails and then have to edit them down, and a quick perusal of grad cafe will confirm that I am naturally long-winded. Doesn't matter. With papers for courses... it's something different.

I don't have a lot of advice, but I did get in with a counselor last semester, and he asked me to try to keep a journal/log of how I was feeling/what I did when I was in these writing situations. It was mostly to guide our conversation for our next meeting. You might try starting one now, so you have more to talk about -- or more concrete examples of it -- when you have your session.

One thing I noticed about myself was that, although I would never consciously frame it this way, I think of papers as a reflection of my intellectual soul. Any poorly argued point is a reflection of a mind that hasn't fully considered the issues. Any repetitive word usage is a sign I don't know how to wield the English language. And so on and so on. (Note I am not writing papers on "soulful" things -- it's the writing process, not the topic or even my opinions, which make me feel exposed.) I've never considered myself a perfectionist (certainly my housekeeping habits would confirm I'm NOT a perfectionist in other areas) but even being a "good enough"-ist can be debilitating if I can't even write a rough draft for my personal perusal that I can clean up later. Ironically, the one "escape" I have from considering a paper an extension of my soul comes when I am simply out of time and have no choice but to turn in a bad paper. Then, it's not a reflection of my soul, it's a reflection of my circumstances. But of course, this procrastination results in WORSE papers. It's illogical, which is what I hate most about the situation I think, because I am generally a very logical person.

The way my counselor is trying to get me to think about things is more like a law of averages. It's okay if sometimes a paper only reflects a B- intellect, because that paper will be viewed in the context of other things -- better papers, class participation, etc. -- that will, together, combine to give people a sense of me. When I write a 5-page policy response paper, I may feel like I'm baring my soul, but the prof grading it probably isn't making such strong connections between the paper and my worth as a human being; he's just grading the paper for what it is. He actually recommended I shoot for B-quality work sometime, just so I'm not paralyzed by a need to get it all right.

A friend shared a quote with me a really like: "Done is better than good." Note that it's not, "done is better than perfect," which everyone would agree with. This is stronger in favor of getting something done so that more important things can come. Of course this philosophy could be abused by some people, but people with writing anxiety are not the kind of people prone to just blow things off. We made avoid doing them, but it is because of revery, not neglect. Anyway, it's a good motto.

I tried something that helped me a bit at the end of the semester on this big lit review I had to do... it is FAR from perfect, but I at least felt that I kept the wheels spinning, even if forward progress was really slow. My strategy was break the writing process up into so many parts that it lost its reflection of me in the process, and because of this, I was able to write it. Here is a glimpse into my neurosis:
There's this great website, writeordie.com, that basically offers a text window that you start writing in, and it makes annoying sounds when you stop writing for more that 5 seconds or something. It's designed more for creative writing, where one wants to keep the creative juices flowing. It doesn't work very well for academic papers, where you need to stop to look stuff up regularly.
So, I decided to make an outline first, with the quotes and page numbers as needed, so that I could reference that without having to stop writing. But, an outline a big paper is still a reflection of my intellectual soul, and even this was overwhelming.
So, I instead made outlines of the articles, much as you would outline a textbook chapter or something. I used the author's headline, made brief notes about the paragraphs, put in some quotes I liked, etc. This was outlining someone else's work, not creating my own, so I could do this without the anxiety setting in. Oh, and I limited myself to a half our per paper, which was not enough time for a good outline, but it was enough to get something done and kept me on pace. I figured if I found a gaping hole in my research, I could always come back.
THEN I used Write or Die to convert the outlines into paragraph form. Since the program doesn't allow for formatting anyway, I knew I'd be going through it again, so I was more liberal with making notes to myself like "[closing sentence about irony of budget cuts resulting in more spending down the road... Falk quote maybe?]" which kept me going. I could do this because I was summarizing an outline, not creating original thoughts. But, in the process of summarizing, my voice started to come out and I started to make a few connections between things, which helped me to create/organize the thoughts that I would want to put into the final paper.
THEN I copied & pasted into Word, moved paragraphs around, and started to flesh out the summaries with connections and evaluations. I think I finished the closing paragraph about 3 minutes before the paper was due to be emailed... sigh. Like I said, things were far from perfect.
This was the first time I've tried writing this way, and I don't know if I could transfer it to something beyond a lit review, which has less of "me" and more of my sources than other kinds of papers. But what I do know is that the simple act of writing short summaries of journal articles we'd read had been an earlier assignment for the class, and I had major writer's block even doing that. So, by breaking things down a lot, I was at least able to do SOMETHING where I hadn't been able to before, and maybe if I had done that all along, I wouldn't have had so much to do the last few days of the semester, and maybe I would have spent the proverbial "eleventh hour" finding better ways to phrase things instead of writing things for the first time.

I don't know. I'm interested in seeing what others have to say. In the mean time, know that you're not alone, and that counselors at student health centers are used to such issues. Good luck!