danieleWrites

I went through two bachelors degrees and one masters degree (fully funded) with an out of control seizure disorder. However, in order to maintain that funding, I had to meet minimum requirements: 9 credit hours of coursework (3 classes) and 6 credit hours of teaching (2 classes). I could not drop down to taking two classes and teaching two or I would lose the TAship. ADA had no effect on this. I was accommodated (and still am) in the student ways, but not in the funding. I discovered this to be the case after speaking with a disability lawyer and the epilepsy foundation. All the school must do is provide reasonable access to education through accommodations. They do not have to change requirements or content. Schools shouldn't turn you away for the disability, but they could turn you away from some funding opportunities. Speak with your current school's disability services people to ask them more about how they deal with disabled graduate students. Speak with your current program's faculty, particularly the ones involved with selection graduate students (if that program exists) for advice on how to apply.

No idea if this might help you at all, but the department-designed rubrics in the three composition programs I've been involved in (as teacher or student) have defined the letter grades in this manner: A: exceptional competence B: competence C: suggests competence D: suggest incompetence F: incompetence Just doing what you're supposed to is the bare minimum of what one should do to pass. Following assignment directions without originality or creativity is a formula for a C. While this model doesn't unilaterally fit everything (you either remember the quadratic equation and can apply it or you can't), it does model a better manner of looking at grades than one where A is meeting standards, B is not quite meeting standards, C meets standards even less, D almost fails to meet standards, and F fails to meet standards. The A as meeting standards penalizes students for higher achievements in their coursework because it gives the same award to uninspired work as it does to original or creative work.

Go to your campus counseling center asap. Most campuses have someone on call all of the time, so even if the counseling center isn't open, you can call them. I say this not because I think the counseling center is going to get you to embrace the joys of grad school, but rather because you feel trapped by your obligations and you don't want to harm yourself and your future by being hasty. You may discover that dropping out right now is best for all involved, or you may find someone that can help you make it through the semester, and then quit. I don't know what your financial obligations would be if you dropped on an assistanceship. Actually, I don't know what mine would be. Huh. All of that pressure, the guilt, extreme depression, anxiety, and exhaustion are horrible things to live with. If you feel like you're at the end of your rope and absolutely can't take on more second of it, find out what emergency counseling services are at your university. I typed the word "counseling" into the search bar on my university's home page. A few clicks later and I was on their counseling center's page with a lot of information, including a number to call at any time, on any day, all year long. If you can wait, go on Monday. Don't stop. You need someone in your corner that will listen to you and will put your health above all other considerations; someone that you can trust to keep your confidence so that you can make your own decisions about your academics and TAing, rather than have gossip get to the department and have them make those decisions for you. Your adviser isn't doing that for you, and really isn't in a good position to help you through this.

Booker isn't my adviser, Slattery is, though several people seem to think he'd a be a great person to have on my dissertation committee. We apparently geek the same types of things. I have never met him, though I've read his stuff.

I have a Kodak ESP all-in-one. I don't print double-sided often, but when I do it usually has me print one side, then flip it over and print the other. If it's a long document, it will print all of the odd pages, then I load those pages into the hopper and it'll print all of the even pages. I always screw it up and I'm not sure how. Mostly, because I print double sided once every blue moon or so. I do have a recommendation, though. Check cost of ink cartridges. I do know that with Kodak printers that do color, if the color ink is empty, it won't print black and white. It uses color ink when printing black and white (for no earthly reason I can figure out). It also seems to "use" ink if the printer isn't in use for long periods of time. Though it's supposed to be cost saving in terms of pages per penny, it hasn't turned out quite that way. I bought my kidlet a Brother because he didn't need an all in one and he prints maybe 30 pages a semester. My previous printer was a Lexmark all-in-one and I as very pleased with it. I switched to Kodak when it died because it seemed printing would be cheaper. It hasn't been that way for me. The Lexmark did print double-sided very well. I rarely had to print double-sided twice.

It depends on how you decide to define the word "scooter", purple. Licensing laws tend to define scooters as vehicles that require a tag and a motorcycle endorsement. Mopeds are vehicles that do not. Most dealerships have to maintain their insurance at as low a cost as possible, and in order to do that, no one test rides without a motorcycle endorsement. Generally speaking, however, 50cc and up requires a motorcycle endorsement, 50cc and down is a moped, not a scooter (for legal definitions), and grown men underpower mopeds. As you said, states and dealerships vary.

Just had some advising and that meant examining course offerings, which lead to my semi-annual daydream of what would be the perfect course my department could offer, and what would constitute the reading list. If your department offered the perfect course for you, what would the title be and what would be in the reading list? For me, at least this semester: Seminar in 20th Century American Literature: Globalization and Capitalism Reading list: Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk What Is the What, Dave Eggers Tripster Monkey, Maxine Hong Kingston Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlien Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway Hopes and Prospects, Noam Chomsky Runaway World, Anthony Giddens plus some critical articles by Terry Eagleton, Chinua Achebe, Suman Gupta, and others.

The comp lit job market in the US sucks rocks right now. Have you considered taking your interests globally, instead? Could you do comp lit in France? I suppose my question is more about whether or not you want to be employed in the US, or if you could see yourself doing work in global literary studies in another country. I have no idea about comp lit in other countries. I just know that my comp lit PhD candidate friends are all from other countries, except for one, and will be returning once they get the PhD.

Why would you want to be in a program that would require you to lie? You want to take courses that will develop your career choices, not stymie them. If you want to load up on tech writing and comp rhet courses, why go with a program that wants to shove you into literature? I told my DGS, flat out, that I want to make sure my time in the program was broad enough to get me into several non-academic jobs I can qualify for. He was very pleased to hear it and made several suggestions about how to formulate my dissertation and the course I'll take. Any DGS that pays attention to the world knows that that the job market for graduates sucks rocks right now. Job placement for students is important for departments because that's one of the things they're rated on. We professor tracked folks face stiff competition to get a job. You? You're looking an industry. I would suggest honesty. Maybe you won't get into the school you prefer, but you will get a program you prefer. You'll get help making those important contacts in the academic publishing industry.

I love this question! And all of its many variations. Like, here's my draft, how am I doing? What do you think of my draft? Do I need to revise more? All of them asking: what kind of grade and I looking at here so I can decide what kind of work to do on it. I love this question because it's one that they always end up regretting. They want an easy answer, and I have one that requires a lot of thinking. During the time period between the day I assign the first major essay and the day the final draft is due, I hand out a print copy of my grading rubric, a 4 paragraph (one page long) essay that I paid my then 14 year old kid 5 bucks for, and we discuss what the words on the rubric mean. These are the criteria that constitute an essay in the A range, B range, and so on. I have a column that explains what an A is. It demonstrates exceptional competence, and exceptional competence is, well, a long sentence about originality, logic, ideas, and whatnot. Then more columns that break that sentence down into specific criteria. So, when the "what grade does my draft have" questions crop up, I ask them to trot out the rubric and evaluate their own writing based on the criteria. The inevitable "I don't know what you want?! How am I supposed to know if I'm doing okay!" sort of thing comes up and my reply is always: how will you know if the resume you will send to your dream job is what they want until after they've gotten the final draft? It's my job to not only evaluate your writing, but to teach you how to evaluate your own writing, as well. You're not going to email me next semester when an essay is due in another class to ask what grade you'll get. You'll have to figure that out yourself. So, what does the rubric say about your thesis statement?

Can 50cc engines handle hills decently? That depends on the model and the load. My school sits on top of a hill I call the Alps whenever I walk up it. I've seen 200 pound guys with backpacks on the Vespa sized scooters. They go up the hill, but I can hear the engine lug and some of them noticeably slow down. A car can go uphill well, put 1,000 pounds of human being in, and the uphill starts getting more difficult for the car. You can get 150cc scooters that'll go just fine in regular city traffic without running a lot of horsepower. In fact, there's not much difference feel-wise between a 50 and 150 until you get over 30 miles an hour. With a 50cc, you can really feel the lack of engine power. Like any other vehicle purchase, it's a test ride them to figure out which one is for you kind of a thing. Eagle Rider does scooter rentals if you want to do a longer test run (and have the money to pony up for a rental). You will need a motorcycle endorsement on your license, however, to test ride anything or rent anything. If you're in the I'm-not-really-sure-a-scooter-is-what-I-need camp, renting one for a day or two can save you money if you find out it doesn't suit your lifestyle. If you're pretty sure, test riding several should be enough. Don't just test ride one, though. Visit multiple dealers and ride multiple scooters. They all feel different, even between similar models. Find the one that fits you best. You can always come back and get it later.

My SOP didn't make a single mention of my publication record, work record, or presentation record. I focused on why I wanted a PhD (1 to 2 sentences, depending on the maximum length of the SOP; I wrote an SOP for each school, but the first sentence or two was the same for all), what I wanted to research, and what the program could for me, and, in some that required it, why teaching was a requirement along with my teaching philosophy. Don't address your shortcomings in your SOP unless they're major shortcomings that would otherwise make you someone they wouldn't consider, like a person with a BA in a field that isn't closely related, such as biology, or the fact that you've been a barista for the last 5 years you've been out of college. Instead, make sure you pick the best people to write your letters of recommendation. Give them copies of your best work and some of the classes you've taken from them, so they have something to refer to when they write the letter. Most undergrads aren't published and internships aren't as important as your scholarship. Of course, I'm working from a literature framework in the United States. Still, some things are universal, and one of those things is the general lack of publication credentials in the average undergrad. Some get published, some get into colloquia, but mostly, it's GPA, recommendations, and writing sample. Speaking of which, you should check to see what kind of research award opportunities your university has, such as a colloquium, awards, and whatnot.

Sure, why not. I'm not a historian and what I know about Latin American isn't as much as my relatives would like, but I do know writing and I do know something of the drug trade. I picked up a degree in sociology before I got into English.

This answer depends on you as an individual, how you study, and what you know about what you need to learn. Now, the average high school math teacher must repeat a sequence of math between 3 and 5 times for the average student to understand it. Then they go home and do homework. Learning a concept takes time. Getting a refresher on it is different. It's my opinion that at a certain point studying becomes counter-productive. Instead of learning or refreshing, it develops anxiety. What that point is, is different for everyone. For me, it was 3 days out. I quit studying the GRE vocab and math problems. Instead, I looked at the logic of the exam and learned that. I wrote down formulae that was a bit slippery in my mind (quadratics I can remember, APR, not so much) and arrived for the exam with enough time to read each formula out loud to myself a few times. But, I'm in literature. They were sufficiently impressed with my math scores to ask me why I got them, and my math scores were barely enough to scrape into the average sociology program. So, honestly, if you don't know it by now, you're not going to learn it, unless there's only a few things to learn. If you did learn it, you can refresh yourself. Just make a study plan. And make sure to learn the logic of the test and the questions they ask.

I am delighted by the telescope-time machine idea. I will be babbling no doubt flawed physics for the next month at this rate. On a completely random note, someone put Nic's face on Miley's body for 8 seconds of Wrecking Ball. Nic rocks it better than she did.

That does sound helpful. English classes almost always require conferences throughout the semester, so I have the opportunity to ask the students, individually, how they feel the class is going for them and get immediate feedback without the whole you!suck thing. It's not as honest as an anonymous comment would be, but it's also stops the negative comments without explanation.

That's actually longer than I thought it would be. Thanks for answering! There's this story called The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges. It's very Many-Worlds Interpretation. It always got me to thinking about how we understand time and how people understand how we really see things. When someone sees something, they aren't seeing the thing as it is now; they're seeing the thing as it was in the past. No news to physicists, right?

Deadlines vary. If you intend to apply for the fall semester and for a fellowship and/or teaching assistanceship, you should have your application to the Graduate School in by the 1st of December. You do not have to submit via mail. There is an online form. For the fellowship, you should apply by January 15. The deadline for the teaching assistanceship varies depending on which department is funding you. If it's the English department (which does carry the largest number of TAs on campus), then it's January 15 (it's on the English Department's webpage). If it's Communications or languages, I dunno.

That planet flying out in the dark, the one that's been in the news these days, got me a bit curious. Well, the news articles mentioning ligh-years did. So, question. If Guy 1 is standing 10 meters away from Guy 2, approximately how long does it take for the reflected light on Guy 2 to reach Guy 1? In human terms, it's pretty much instantaneous; however, it seems to me that in mathematical terms, that number is not 0. I don't have the first clue how to calculate that or even hazard a guess, other than something like a trillionth of a microsecond. Which seems wrong.

There is something you should remember when it comes to students evaluating the teacher, particularly in terms of how useful things in the classroom. They really can't judge some of the things they're asked to judge. My previous institution had the evals solicit student comments on homework. I don't remember the exact wording, but the student was, essentially, asked to judge the efficacy of the homework in instruction. I had a few comments about "make work" assignments and dithered over that for weeks when working on my next syllabus. How do they know I assigned "make work"? What did I assign that was "make work"? I couldn't think of a thing. I had a purpose for each assignment. It turns out that it's less to do with whether or not the assignments actually were make work or inappropriate for the course. The students are learning the subject, they aren't in a position to judge how much and which types of assignments best facilitate learning and evaluate student progress. Only another person who knows the subject well enough to teach it can do that. How can a student discern the purpose for an assignment and agree that it's appropriate? If it's not because of familiarity with the subject, it must be some other cue. So, I did the same assignments, but I situated their position in the course when they were assigned. That's all it took. They needed to know that I understood the purpose and had a reason for what I asked of them, particularly assignments that didn't have immediate, logical connection to what they already knew about the subject, such as turning in an annotated journal article discussing something in their major. I had one that told me that the student would have learned more about composition in a conversation with a goldfish than s/he did from me. The only student who didn't improve over the semester was the one student that was mostly not there, including teacher evaluation day. So what did that mean? That s/he didn't learn anything? Or that s/he believed s/he didn't learn anything? There will always be the few "I can't stand her!" evaluations. If there are a lot of those, that's another story, but the one or two can be ignored as unhelpful. The trick is to decipher what the situation really means. If a student offers criticism or suggestion that will improve some aspect of the course, the question is first, is this an aspect they can accurately evaluate? If so, what needs to be changed? If not, what is the real problem and what needs to be changed? I like the way my university does things. Evaluations aren't returned until the next semester so there's no way the evaluations can alter the teacher's behavior toward the class. Sometimes it might be a good thing, but usually, that's a ethical problem that doesn't need to happen.

Some taxonomy, perhaps? Mopeds generally refer to two wheeled vehicles that run the gamut from a bike with a motor on it to a "scooter" with an engine less than 50ccs. Mopeds generally do not require a motorcycle license to ride and rarely get above 35 mph. Scooters are step-through motorcycles. That means you don't have swing your leg over the seat to get on. They are motorcycles. Their engines are 50cc and larger, up to 840cc. You must have a motorcycle license to ride one in the US. How fast they go depends on the size of the engine. Honda makes a scooter called a Silverwing, which many people are choosing to use as a touring motorcycle instead of the Goldwing. It's large, goes over 100, and can carry a lot of weight. Scooters like the Silverwing have been made into trikes. Motorcycles, as we generally understand them, are the 50cc or greater bikes you swing your leg over. They come in several varieties, dirt bikes, cruisers, baggers/touring/dressers, trikes, cafe racers, sport bikes, sport touring, dual sport, and a few others. We'll skip that. Before you buy one of these things, do yourself a major favor: take a motorcycle safety course. These things are not bicycles and I see too many idiot college morons zipping around on mopeds as if they're a bicycle messenger. Get to understand the limitations of these things. You live in LA, and since you're talking about lengthy bus rides, I imagine you're talking about a commute of some distance through traffic. The primary difference between scooters and motorcycles, safety wise, is the size of the tire. Tires heat up and expand on the road and scooter tires can't handle as much pressure. The faster you go or the more heat you encounter, the less safe you are. Scooters also seem to come in mostly road-colored paint (grays, beiges, and so on). Not a good plan, even if it does hide the dirt. Another issue, and this is personal preference on my part, is the drive. Most of the motorcycle family is chain or belt driven. A very few of the larger motorcycles have a shaft drive. If you purchase a chain drive, you have to oil and adjust the chain every 500 miles, more often if you do a lot of stop-and-go or move through dirt. If you get a chain drive, learn how to maintenance it. I prefer belt drive. Motorcycles have to be maintenanced every 5,000 miles and it's more expensive than oil changes in cars. This depends on model and the shop you go to. Tires are replaced more often, usually in the 10 to 15 thousand mile range. My kid's scoot hit 14,000 miles and the service, plus repair, is costing just under $1000. My motorcycle's average service was in the $300 range. My spouse's is just under $200 (yay Victory!). Factor in insurance and whatnot. Do not buy a tiny scooter, like a Vespa unless you're traveling short distances where there isn't much traffic. If you plan on using the thing to do much moving around, get something with a larger engine. We got my son a 400cc Majestic by Yamaha. It holds his backpack and full face helmet under the seat, gets up to 70 (but that's not a safe speed for his particular scooter), and gets about 60 mpg. It will hold two people plus some baggage. We put a set of corbin saddlebags on it and he uses it for shopping as well as commuting to school. It's road colored. He's nearly been hit a few times. We bought him a motorcycle jacket that's the kind of reflective, neon green you see on some firetrucks/road signs. Anyway, we picked up used for half the price. I used a motorcycle to commute, it was more expensive, but it was nice on the Interstate. Hit up the Motorcycle Safety Foundation website. Invest in learning to ride.

Drop an email to the comp lit director in the schools you're interested in and ask them specifically if they want English-only writing samples, which you have one from your undergraduate work at the University of Awesome, USA, or if they will take a writing sample in Spanish, which you have from your masters-level at Universidad de Bueno in Madrid. PhD programs are interested in seeing relevant work so they can make the best selections possible. Few of them have problems answering questions that can't be found easily by looking on the website. My comp lit program wants something in literature that shows critical thinking and writing ability. But every program is different. Unless you have the time to develop an English version of your better Madrid papers, or an all new paper, you're better off with the Shakespeare.

I don't have much of an opinion on that. I've watched people do sporting/athletics, but haven't participated so much. I know that calories = energy. A calorie is a measurement of heat. I also know that metabolism makes a difference. Calories stuck into storage tends to fatigue people. I have half the caloric requirements as my spouse, even though he's older, because of metabolism. I'm sedentary and he's pretty much ready to do any advanced military maneuver at any time, physically. One of things he talks about that you didn't is vitamins. Skip sugar in favor of vitamins. 12 ounces of regular V8 juice (the pure veggie, no fruit stuff, preferably low sodium) will have more impact on energy than 12 ounces of soda. Add some coffee to that, and there's some more energy. Sugar is cheap energy because it's empty calories. Once you burn through the simple carbs, there's nothing left for the body and the sugar crash comes. It's why those 5 Hour Energy things are packed with B Vitamins. B Vitamins are full of energy. Have you considered shifting from walking to weight lifting as your primary exercise? Walking just burns calories while you're walking; it won't really do much else for you. Lifting weights will build muscle, and this muscle will raise your basal metabolic rate. A higher BMR means your body burns calories all day long, not just while you're exercising. You should also hop onto a BMR calculator and figure out what your BMR is. That's the calories you burn every day just existing. A pound of fat is 3500 calories. In order to lose a pound of fat a week, you should eat 3500 fewer calories a week than your BMR + activities (there are calculators for that, too, which will add average calories a person will use in a sedentary life all the way through highly active life). You may not be getting enough calories, or enough nutrients, or both. Losing more than a pound to two pounds a week tends to put the body into storage mode, where the body slows the metabolism as much as possible in order to conserve calories. The symptoms for super slow metabolism include exhaustion. If exhaustion is an ongoing problem, your university will most likely have a nutritionist you can see at the health center. S/he can help you pick your diet and discuss your weight loss plans and goals. Exhaustion is also a symptom for other things. You can get a physical at the student health center to check for other problems.

I don't have anything to add to what fuzzy and julilet put so well. I agree with their ideas. However, this is the way I construct the academic world, as naive a I am: When I submit work for publication or to present at conferences, my credibility comes from my institution first. My name means nothing to the person(s) looking my materials over, but the University's does. I am not me, but Graduate Student in Specific University. What the reviewer thinks of me is directly related to what they think of the university. If my name is Graduate Student from Yale, I have a lot more credibility right off the bat than someone named Graduate Student from Podunk U. This is borrowed credibility and it cannot maintain itself for long. The reviewer then opens the materials I've submitted and begins to read. They may not read more than the first few lines before rejecting it, or past the introduction, but they must read some of it. This is where I begin to be me, not Grad Student from University of Whatever. Because they must judge my words, the must judge my competence, as well. And this is done mostly independent of my school. Sure, a Yalie will have the benefit of Yale's credibility far longer into the submitted material than a Podunk U student, but that won't last the entire work. Yale doesn't get people published, the work does. I got into the program that I thought best for me (yay!), but I don't think anyone considers it the bestest of the best anymore than they do the worstest of the worst. It's one of those middle-road places that puts out great scholarship and not-so-great scholarship. The reality, though, is that reputation does matter to a degree. As fuzzy said, the PI and department matter more than the school when it comes to academia. When it comes to MFAs, the Ivy Leagues have nothing on the Iowa Writer's Group, for example. I stick my nose up at the University of Phoenix because I think it is substandard and harmful to scholarship overall. I would be more of a skeptic jerk if I were reviewing someone with the University of Phoenix attached to their name simply because of that opinion. If your school has a reputation, in the academic community in your field. of churning out substandard scholarship and substandard graduates, you'll have to work a bit harder to prove yourself should your program get the stink eye from the academic community in your field. The second part of this is about scholarship. If they are churning out substandard work and graduates, are they going to offer you what you need and want in terms of challenging you to be a better scholar? Are they offering courses and faculty that meet minimum standards? If you're taking courses throughout your candidacy that would be considered remedial in most other programs, there's a problem that personal scholarship can't always overcome. The lack of knowledge will clearly show in your work. I don't know your school, field, department, or PI well enough to make that call. What I do see is that you don't want the school's name on your diploma. I have a school on my MA that practically no one has heard of. Most people will assume my diploma has a typo in favor of a larger school with a similar name, so I can fully understand getting a masters where you are and moving on to a PhD in a different school. If my MA program had offered a PhD, I would have gone elsewhere anyway. They're great people with a lot to offer, but the MA is the limit of the program's ability. Not enough faculty and budget. As far as the GRE goes, just because the scores are valid for 5 years, that doesn't mean you won't retake it should you apply to another program for you PhD. I don't think anyone would think it weird for someone about to graduate from a grad program to retake the thing with different scores. It would show your growth as a student (according to ETS). The potential schools would be more interested in your MS GPA and your record there because that's not only newer work, but more relevant to your PhD. So, at the least, publish and go to conferences.