Grace187

Some questions to consider: Are you planning to go to school full time or are you considering both work and school at half-time? Will teaching experience be beneficial to your future career goals? I don't think anyone expects to live well off of a PhD stipend, but can you make ends meet at your current funding level? Will doubling your income but paying tuition still provide you with more money than the full funding, and if so, is it worth all the additional stress of trying to juggle two priorities and a seriously busy workload? I'm in a similar situation and I completely understand wanting to maintain ties with your current office, but I have been advised against additional work from my program--even just 2-3 hours/week externally. (This would be in addition to my full funding, which doesn't require TAing.) Primarily because you become very busy, very quickly and there is not a lot of time left over for external obligations. I have made the personal decision that this PhD is my top priority and I should devote all my time to getting the most out of it. I worked 20hrs/week in both my undergrad and masters programs, and I'm rather looking forward to actually having time to just do research and school work. How novel!

Some questions to consider: Are you planning to go to school full time or are you considering both work and school at half-time? Will teaching experience be beneficial to your future career goals? I don't think anyone expects to live well off of a PhD stipend, but can you make ends meet at your current funding level? Will doubling your income but paying tuition still provide you with more money than the full funding, and if so, is it worth all the additional stress of trying to juggle two priorities and a seriously busy workload? I'm in a similar situation and I completely understand wanting to maintain ties with your current office, but I have been advised against additional work from my program--even just 2-3 hours/week externally. (This would be in addition to my full funding, which doesn't require TAing.) Primarily because you become very busy, very quickly and there is not a lot of time left over for external obligations. I have made the personal decision that this PhD is my top priority and I should devote all my time to getting the most out of it. I worked 20hrs/week in both my undergrad and masters programs, and I'm rather looking forward to actually having time to just do research and school work. How novel!

I think I'm going to hold off on celebrations until I officially accept a program, but celebratory dinner and drinks with friends for sure. I have my eye on one of the new tablet/laptop combos, too.

I agree that it's not a good idea to pursue a PhD without funding, but I absolutely agree with the statements above. This must vary greatly by program and by school, but my personal experience with friends in current PhD programs is that two year funding (through assistantships, PI grants) while completing coursework is pretty standard. After that, my sense is that many people are written into existing grants or co-write them with their advisors. Securing your own funding through your own grant, I believe (again, limited experience, and I could be way off here), is on the rarer side. The benefit is this is that it allows you to pursue exactly the type of research project you'd like to do. Don't lose hope on UGA--they're still considering awards and waiting on responses. I heard (unofficially) from them last week.

Thanks for sharing the funding issues with UGA. I'm in a similar boat--accepted for PhD, but waitlisted for funding. Hope it comes through.

I love this!! Except for your kindergarten teacher crushing your dreams, that's rotten. When I was in kindergarten we had to write down what we wanted to be when we grew up. I raised my hand and asked my teacher how to spell "entomologist." She looked at me blankly and said, "How do you think you spell entomologist?" She was very encouraging, though. I eventually moved on to other things (including a brief span of digging holes in the yard when I wanted to be a paleontologist), but I wanted to study insects for years and years. I'm in medical geography now, but I've carried this into an interest in vector-borne disease. And I still have the pinned bug collections my dad and I made in Elementary school, hanging in my home office.

I feel you guys. I'm pretty much committed to a small geographic region for career reasons, so I only applied to two programs. Rejected from one school that was a bit of a reach, and accepted but waitlisted for funding at my top choice--through their preferred source of funding anyway. Verdict is still out on another potential funding option that won't be considered until they hear back from other students on funding option #1. I won't go for a phd without funding, so I'm at the mercy of other's decisions too. I'm a little bit paranoid that everyone's funding is going to take a hit with this whole sequester thing, and that my fellow students will jump on funding opportunities where they can. Here's hoping they're accepted to bigger and better things. General feedback from department and POI is that they want me in the program, they're hopeful, and they have their fingers crossed for me, with undercurrent of "patience, grasshopper". (Anyone else bummed by the "we want you!....but not enough to fund/accept you first round" sentiments, btw?)