danieleWrites

How goes it in Zoomie Land? I was Navy, my spouse was Army for a while, 11B, LRRP, went to Desert Storm with the Big Red One, spent the rest of his career with the Arctic Light before cancer kept him from shipping out to SF Q school. He says to keep all of your sick call slips. Jungle rot is 10% from the VA, for example.

TakeruK, Mathcat, Vene, you're obviously not veterans, so: DROP! is an order to do pushups. It has many cultural meanings that movies like Private Benjamin, In the Army Now, or Full Metal Jacket, or anything involving boot camp or basic training can explain. It comes from the sensibility that pain will make you think. Someone needs to publish a drill sergeant quote of the day calendar. The weird thing. It's pretty simple. In the military, a person has two names: their rank and their last name. You call people who are equal to you or beneath you in rank by last name or by rank, occasion

I think the one thing I'd import from my Navy days is DROP! Some people could really use doing push ups. It's also very weird that one of my profs thinks of PhD students as colleagues, so we are to call her by her first name. It is, apparently, not Doctor.

Interesting argument that shows quite a bit about how people interpret ambiguous terms in different ways. Like "application fee" or "processing". I find myself pretty much leaning toward Justin123's point of view, which is that in exchange for his application fee, his application should have been evaluated by someone qualified to make the evaluation. I don't feel this is "entitlement" or "whiny" or someone complaining about not getting into a school or into a safety school. I think it's reasonable to expect service for payment. Had the university made it clear what the application fee was not

Find out why your original research adviser dropped you. Make sure that's what happened, actually. "Stopped advising me" can mean a multitude of things. If you're still nominally this person's advisee, either find out how to change advisers and make it so, or find out how to get back on track with your research. Once you've got a clear reason why you've been dropped, figure out how to address whatever shortcomings got you dropped as an advisee. Then, go to your professor's office hours and ask him if he has any openings in his lab group and what you should do in order to become a part of it. E

USA, here. I started out in computer science and collected F's to the point I was on academic probation when I switched majors to English with a soc minor (eventually switching to sociology with an English minor, and then getting a BA in English, too, 'cause I'm all why-quit-school that way). I'm in an English PhD program now. The only time I've ever had to explain what the heck happened during my freshman career was when they asked me why I was crazy enough to take calculus. In the US, programs often look at your GPA in your major first, then overall GPA. If your in-major GPA is stellar a

I figured I'd be a scientist, sociology to be specific. Math and esoteric theory? What's not to love? Anyway, I was reading Marx in my junior year for a soc theory class and we were assigned to read Death of a Salesman in my Am. Lit survey class (I was minoring in English because I rather fancied myself a creative writer). The Gundrisse + Death of a Salesman = light bulb time. Fast forward to my poetry class, after getting my BA in soc and while chasing a BA in English, creative writing emphasis, and one of my many "discussions" with my prof about getting all didactic with my audience. Light b

I have no idea about job prospects in your field, however, I would imagine that work involving climate change, conservation, water, or food will be turning into a growth industry soon. I do have some advice for you. Read the peer reviewed journals in your area(s) of interest. You should know what your basic research interests are so you can find a program that will help you do what you want to do. Reading the journals will show you what work is being done in your area(s) of interest, which will also give you some basic ideas about what's out there to research and what you might like to pur

I'm still getting letters from schools and I'm in my second year. I'm fielding email and snail mail from a variety of institutions, some of them quite prestigious, inviting me to join an MA program or other. None of them are in my actual field, either. Not that my BAs wouldn't get me into these other fields, but, seriously.

Check into auditing a bit. Some universities don't charge, or charge a minimal fee. Some universities charge full tuition price. If you're funded it may or may not cover the cost of auditing a class.

Rather than take the word of "usually said," do a little bit of research. Find out what sort of job placements recent grads from PSU have gotten. If that information isn't available on the program's website, you can email the department itself and ask. Find out about U of F, as well. You can also find out where their graduates have gone on to further their studies. PhD is different than getting a job since the criteria for acceptance into a program is different than the criteria for an offer of employment. Your scholarship will outweigh your school's credentials, generally speaking. People