danieleWrites

I have a problem with this particularly. Graduate students do not take introductory courses. If you're taking an introductory course as a grad student, you're far enough away from your field that you'd need permission for it to apply to your candidacy. This teacher clearly thinks this is introductory and that the materials she inherited from the original professor need to be dumbed down because she thinks she's teaching it to lower level students for some reason. While I appreciate the desire to not cause problems for this teacher's future career, or make waves in the department, I don't think this is a problem that should be ignored. First of all, the teacher has clearly stated that she's making the course easier. It's reasonable to assume that everyone in class finds it too easy, and if any find it too difficult, then they shouldn't be in the course in the first place----it was not originally intended to be an introduction. If it had been, this teacher would not feel it necessary to tell you she dumbed it down into an introduction. So, I disagree with the opinion that its easiness is a matter of interpretation. Secondly, when you get an A in this course, your transcript will certify that you are capable of top-notch work in whatever the course is. This will be a lie because she is not teaching that course. She's teaching a completely different course. It would be akin to getting college algebra instruction in a course entitled String Theory Algebra. If the syllabus she's using backs up this lie, that you're getting a high level course, not an introductory one, it's your career and future that's on the line. You should speak with her immediately. If nothing else, she should explain why she thinks graduate students are in an introductory course. To be fair to her, she inherited this course and the materials you're working with. She most likely wrote the syllabus, but the books were chosen by the professor who originally designed the course. This is a sucky situation for an adjunct to be in. She has to figure out how to teach the course and what that course's purpose and philosophy is with little, most likely any, discussion with the person who designed the course. She probably had little input from the department and has to fly this thing blindly, on her own. Adjuncts are disposable. If she screws up, they don't care. Being human, she probably fell into her comfort zone---the introductory level---for whatever reasons. While these things might give her reason to teach the course as she has, they don't give the her or the department a good reason to give you substandard instruction. You can write firm teacher evals, but they probably won't do anything about the course itself. Most likely, they'll only change whether or not the department will use her as an adjunct again. The real fault lies with the department. If she thinks it's an introductory course she needed to dumb down, it's because the department wasn't clear enough about the course when they handed it to her. She should be familiar enough with her field to look at the books and course description, at the very least, and place the level of the course. The fact that it contains graduate students should have clarified that for her. However, if the department didn't make anything clear or offer copies of syllabi from previous semesters, she's not getting the minimum support she needs to take over a course. What needed to change was the way the department carried out its business. Teacher evaluations won't change that unless the evals address the department itself.

Apparently, it's normal. It also has some sense of inappropriate. One of the conferences I'm sending out an abstract for clearly states that the person who submitted the paper must present the paper. no proxies allowed. Of course, your professor is invited, not submitting. If I were a running a conference and invited someone to speak because I thought that person would be a good speaker (for whatever reason), and I ended up with a grad student instead, how would I feel? I would suggest, before you pay any money out of your own pocket, that you find out if you'd be welcome to present or if you're going to show up to find someone staring blankly at you before asking where Dr. So and So will he be in in time to present his paper. In any event, universities offer travel grants for students heading off to conference. If your professor won't pay, and it appears that he has no interest in this issue, you should check with the department and the graduate school to find out how to go about applying for a grant and how much you can expect to receive.

I have a few problems with this overly bourgeois reading that doesn't quite match up to reality. Globalization put the college = good pay, secure career to bed. The dichotomy is now offshorable/can only be done locally. You can't offshore a plumber, but you can offshore a radiologist. Current recession trends do not reflect long term status. We aren't building a lot of new construction or doing a lot of new remodeling, so the trades are out of work. It's not because they need a college degree, it's because we haven't bounced back. Secondly, there's this sense of implied entitlement (though I think is the wrong word) in here. There's the idea that people need a college degree to get any kind of income that will support their families, and if they're having trouble in a course required for every degree, then it's incumbent on the teacher/school to make sure they pass the course so they can get the degree. Simply fact: not everyone can do college level work. Not everyone should. The standards should not be altered to give more people a chance to make it. It is incumbent on the student to meet the standard, not on the teacher to make sure the student passes. While I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole idea that too many people are going to college and dropouts are a good thing, I agree with the Lynx. (Golfer?) I do my best to make sure my students do as well as possible in class by being as fair and objective as I can be in grading and assignments, as well as transparent. This also means that some students earn Fs. I do not give grades; I assess and apply the grade I think the student earned. I welcome students that would like to sit with me and advocate for a better a grade on an assignment; I will teach them how to do so effectively. I am human and I make errors in both subjectivity and misreading, so I think this is fair. However, I do not assign or assess in any way that privileges a student's future over the academics in the course. I sympathize with the students I've had who have failed, and who have dropped out of school because the class was difficult for them, but to do alter my grading to help them is wrong. I will help them with office hours and emails, and with referrals to the various sources of help on campus (writing center, student learning accommodations, tutoring, remedial classes, counseling, and so on). But the standard exists. If they can't meet it, for whatever reason, it is up to them to work for the grade, and to get the help available. It is not up to me to make sure they do not get discouraged and drop out by altering grades. I am completely certain not intend to imply that this is what should be done. However, your post in the context of this thread does imply that teachers need to have some sympathy and encourage students not to drop out because it's a stark life out there. This is true. But there is a line. We can inflate grades or alter grading practices to encourage students to stay in school. Lynx was clear about the line in a different way, even if he came across a bit callous. He's right. Some people shouldn't be in college. He's also right that there are too many people going to college (which is why the problem you're discussing is a problem--why pay to put nursing through apprenticeship and OJT, pay to train them to be nurses, as it used to be done, when you can hire one that paid for their own training and has the degree pay for it?). The solution isn't to make sure everyone has a degree; the solution is to make sure there are jobs. That's a globalization issue, though, and so very Wallerstein.

Is your undergrad in a related science, like sociology, or an unrelated one, like physics? While your work experience is relevant, perhaps your scholarship isn't quite so much. I wouldn't ask them about the strength of your candidacy. This question is asking that they evaluate your qualifications to be admitted to their program, so that you can decide if you will apply to the program, when, upon application, they will evaluate your qualifications to be admitted to their program. Again. You can see how they might not want to encourage this sort of behavior in potential students. Evaluating materials is time-consuming; they don't want to do it twice. If you're concerned about your background, find out if they considered your degree and work experience enough to consider you, or if you need a degree in a more closely related field. If you don't have any theory or methodology for psychology and social work, or the math, asking if your specific degree and work experience is enough for you to enter the program is something the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) will find intelligent and worthwhile to answer. Most programs will accept students with academic deficiencies and have them take undergraduate courses to fill these deficiencies; but only to a certain extent. Asking about the strength of your application (your chances of getting in) is going to get you a form email that tells you to send in your application and they'll let you know after they've had a chance to look your materials over. Email the DGS, perhaps, to ask specifically about your degree and if it's related enough for them to consider you. I have a BA in underwater basket weaving from the University of Awesome and 12 yeas experience working at Specific Place. Is this degree related enough for the graduate program? Other than that, what pears said. Do they have compatible research interests?

The problem in your gap is that it shows a scholarship gap of 4 years. Hopefully, you've been doing something relevant to the field or scholarship, such as doing your own research, or that you can find some aspect of the work you have been doing that you can discuss. Some applications will ask you to explain gaps, some won't. Personally, I would not address it directly in the SOP; I would address it indirectly by discussing the research I'm interested in pursuing and mentioning specifics about current research and theory in the field surrounding your interest. If you can discuss it knowledgeably, it's clear you've keeping up with the scholarship and that will help you address the gap years directly if they ask questions, particularly on the application. But, I am not the one evaluating your application. You are not the only person who will, is, or has applied to a program with gaps. Others know more than me, that's beyond true. Probably the first thing you should do is articulate, in writing, what you've been doing in the gap years that shows you are prepared for current research in film studies. Don't lie and say you've been doing independent research unless you have. The truth always comes out in the most inconvenient way. If you can name drop someone who can (and will) back you up, do that. That doesn't mean you'll include it in any of your application materials, but it will give you some confidence when answering questions, particularly if they want to talk to you directly. The second thing, probably develop something new in terms of a writing sample rather than use something you wrote four years ago as is. Maybe take one of your old papers and rework it a bit, to make it relevant to the departments you're applying to and relevant to current discourse, to an extent. Your CV will, of course, include information on what you've been doing for four years, but this is one of those places where you want to show them you're a good candidate, not tell them. So, show you them what you can do and be prepared to tell them what you were doing, if they ask. This is my completely uneducated opinion.

Two things. 1) You can retake the test every 21 days, up to 5 times in one year. From ETS: You can take the GRE revised General Test once every 21 days, and up to five times within any continuous rolling 12-month period. This applies even if you canceled your scores on a test taken previously. If you take the paper-based GRE revised General Test, you can take it as often as it is offered. 2) Seats get taken fast. You don't have much time to work with. You will get numbers the same day if you take the computer based test, and can decide if you should retake or not before you get the official test results, but this is the time of year everyone wants to take the test and retake it if necessary so those seats get taken fast. Once you get those numbers on test day, register ASAP if you think you need to retake.

It was a process. Take stock of myself. What am into? What do I need from the full complement of faculty in a program? What do I need from faculty that would fill the role of advisers, mentors, etc.? What do I want to do with my scholarship? How much help do I need to get through the program? What things must a location offer for my spouse. Use that to make a list of minimum criteria that a school, its program, and its location must meet in order for me to get along there. (This is where I defined fit--based on minimum need, not want.) Read a lot critical articles in the areas I'm interested in and in areas related to my interests, and then compile a list of people to follow up on. I was not looking for a mentor-figure, but for people who were doing exciting scholarship and could handle what I want to do (since this requires a mixture of literature and sociology, I was looking for flexibility in thinking rather than someone working with the same theories or authors). I knew that not everyone on the list would be faculty or faculty involved in a PhD program, but it was my beginning. Find the schools that 1) employed these people and 2) had a PhD program in literature and a minimum of a master's program in sociology so (I need, at minimum, a methodology course). or the schools from which that these people got a PhD (lit and soc requirements, too). Look at school requirements to reject any that I didn't meet (weirdly, enough, none of them despite my less than stellar GPA); and to reject any that did not allow me to take a few courses in sociology. Look over dissertations by recent graduates to see the quality of scholarship coming out of the school. Dissertations are supposed to represent the best work of the student, so if the program is putting out junk, it's not a program I'm into. I didn't expect to find a lot of junk, and didn't. I did reject a few schools because the super-majority of dissertations were lighter on theory than I was comfortable with. And this was only because my interests are theory-heavy, not because the quantity of theory is a measure of quality scholarship. I did not use dissertations to gauge fit in any other way. Stalk faculty! This step is dual purpose. First, to find programs that had enough faculty that were doing things within my interests or related enough to my interests that I would have a range of people to work with. Second, to makes notes to tailor my SOP for each program. While I had (and still have) no idea which people read my application, I did hope that whoever read it would be able to connect my stuff with people in the department. Because I didn't have enough sense to do it during step 6, rank programs in order of the ones I was most interested in/most useful to me. Take list of schools and their locations to my spouse and have him veto the ones that were in locations he absolutely could not do, and asterisk ones that he could live with, but would prefer not to. He vetoed everything in New England except Yale because it was Yale and he'd rather suffer the fires of hell (which is apparently all of Connecticut) than have me give up an opportunity like Yale). I accidentally forgot to apply. Oops. I should note that I decided, in advance, that I would only rejected schools where it was clear that I couldn't get in due to GPA or GRE scores. The big names can't tell me yes if I don't give them the opportunity, right? Re-order the list because it did not occur to me that there would be a list with asterisks when I was doing step 7. First part/top of list list, I ranked the ones my guy was okay with in order of most interested (my preferred four schools were there anyway, which was very cool), to least. Bottom of the list, I ranked the asterisked schools. Found out application costs, including transcript costs. Figure out how many schools I could afford to apply to the first round, and apply to the ones at the top of my list. The list was put aside for next round, in case I didn't get in. After that, it was creating my application packet for each school and spending a lot of money on transcripts. I have credits piled up in several colleges. Ouch. I got into my top choice. College ranking guides played no part in my decision. The collective ability of their graduate students to demonstrate skills at the GRE was not something I found useful.

USNWR rankings are useless to the academy because they can't measure which school really is better at scholarship. How can that even be quantified accurately? For academics, it falls in that prestige thing. For administrators, it falls in the enrollment thing. The higher up on the list they are, the more high school seniors will apply, and the more alumni will donate. It's money. Have you looked at their methodology? It's ridiculous. They use GRE scores (as if that's a predictor of any use in academic success: http://www.fairtest.org/facts/gre.htm check the section about validity, as tested by Yale). They ask administrators in other schools to measure the program (while they have a decent idea of the scholarship of people in their field--faculty--how much can they accurately measure about the program itself? Do they read a representative sample of current graduate student work?). And finally, "output" statistics, like starting salaries for MBAs or bar exam statistics for JDs. For English, you're looking not at new information, but a combination of data collected in 2008 and 2012. And how do they even measure output statistics for English? These metrics make USNWR ranks useless to measure program quality. Standardized testing, which predicts success in college about 3% of the time, makes up a significant portion of the ranking metric. It's like using a social security number to decide which states are the best ones to get a job in. To make things worse, two-thirds of the metrics measure the benefits of prestige (Ivy Leagues et al have always and will continue to attract students with the best SAT scores, and have always and will continue to send their graduates out into higher paying jobs), not the quality of the program. If some Podunk U's English program hired the best of the PhDs from places like Harvard and developed one of the academically richest programs in the world, they still could not compete in the rankings with Harvard because Harvard attracts the people with better numbers regardless of program quality. Now, that's not to say the schools ranked at the top of USNWR aren't good schools with great programs. They are. What this is to say is that the rankings don't measure program quality or scholarship. At all. Most of the top scholars in Comp Rhet, for the past few decades, went to state schools. USNWR rankings can be useful, but without knowing what USNWR uses to measure quality, how do you know that they're measuring what you think makes a quality program? Does the amalgamation of GRE/LSAT/GMAT scores of students who wanted to apply to that school and beginning salaries for graduates tell you that one school is better than another? Here's The Atlantic with this year's Annual Dose of USNWR Rankings Reality: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/your-annual-reminder-to-ignore-the-us-news-world-report-college-rankings/279103/ which includes a link to a more useful ranking system with metrics that make sense: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/index.php If you want to get a real measure of a school's "rank", read the dissertations of last year's crop of graduates and find out where they're working now (not how much they're making). Of course, that means a lot of personal legwork, and you won't rank them the same way everyone else will, but the only way to measure the quality of a program's scholarship is to look at the program's scholarship. That's too time consuming and expensive for the ranking industry, so you get schools ranked with metrics that have no real value.

I go there; just started. The application process is entirely electronic and you'll find the relevant dates on the grad school's site and in the English department's site. Comp Lit is housed by the English department. Hunting through the websites suck, that's for sure. They never keep the necessary information in the same places, yanno? Anyway, they do take paper applications for comp lit, but prefer electronic. Which has me confused. Are you sure you're looking at the right U of A site? Comp Lit guy is pretty much one of those guys you don't get a hold of in a timely fashion. He publishes more a semester than half the academic world does in a career. I'm not doing comp lit, just got here, so I only know rumors. His office is next to mine and I've never seen him. Unless you've got specific comp lit questions, you'll get more timely responses from the DGS.

The military trained me to never leave an answer blank, so I get all weird about leaving things blank. This is an application, so the goal is to truthfully present yourself in the best light. You could leave it blank, but I imagine one of three things will happen. They don't particularly care about the answer, so it won't matter. They'll care about the answer and it will affect you negatively. Or, they'll ask you for the missing information. I don't see how an unanswered application question will affect you positively. Honestly? I think you should answer it. The aim of these questions isn't to find out what you did, but to find out how you've maintained your work and/or scholarship in the field. If you have been doing independent research, to stay in the game, you can mention it. For example: I have been independently researching effects of invasive pythons in the Mark Twain National Forest and participating in herptefauna cataloging with the State Herpetological Society while exploring employment options. If you haven't been doing research, don't say you are. The truth will out. If you haven't been working, go volunteer somewhere. If you haven't been maintaining your scholarship, start.

Begin as you mean to go on. For freshman, I teach them how to work the course schedule part of the syllabus and inform them that if they ever ask me what we did in class today, or when something is due, I will tell them to check the syllabus. I go over the parts of the syllabus they immediately need to know (no late work, how to contact me, what books will be used, the fact that there will be pop quizzes, attendance policy, and that they'll probably epic!fail the class if they think they can just read the books and skip class). I give them my plagiarism lecture (it's short and involves Piper High School and what the university defines as plagiarism). After that, I talk about myself and then segue into a discussion where I question my credibility and trustworthiness as a teacher. How do they know that I'm qualified to teach composition? How do they know that they can trust that what I'm teaching them is right? This leads into a discussion of ethos, particularly for people who aren't famous, and how non-famous people like me establish and maintain ethos. It naturally falls into a discussion of how they develop and maintain credibility as a writer. When my alarm goes off, I explain that it's my signal to wind up the class, not their signal to pack up and leave. People packing up to leave when the alarm goes off means that I quit setting it and that means classes tend to run over. Then I spend a minute explaining about the connection between credibility and a good writer rather than talent/pretty sentences and a good writer. A final reminder of how to check the syllabus and the homework, and off they go. I do the get-to-know you business when I do roll starting the next class period. My roster includes grade level and major. I have each student tell me their name, and then ask them about their major in some way, e.g. what emphasis are you doing, what interests do you have in the major, or if undeclared, what majors seem interesting. I don't do icebreakers or other get-to-know you activities.

That is the perfect quotation, telkanuru. Thanks everyone! I haven't gotten imposter syndrome as a student, but I get it as a teacher. For no good reason. While it's comforting to know that I'm not the only person who occasionally feels like the worst teacher ever, I wish no one else felt that way (unless they really are one of the worst, but let's not go there).

This is also a pedagogical issue. If you can, set aside some class time to address issues about studying. Don't pull out the textbook and explain how to use it to find an answer. Ask them what strategies can they think of to help study for an exam and how they use textbooks, notes taken in class, library, and internet sources. They're taking advantage of you because if you answer the question, they know what the correct answer on the exam would be. If they look it up, they don't have that same assurance. What I would like to send to my students some days: http://bit.ly/15X9wIn

To add to what Julliette has already said, there isn't legal recourse if a potential employer tells someone else that they're interested in hiring Person A, specifically, and thereby ruining that person's career. There is legal recourse if certain things, which are legally required to be confidential (FERPA, HIPPA, social security numbers, etc.) are released. There is legal recourse if Person A and the potential employer have a signed contract about confidentiality. There is no legal recourse otherwise, even if Person A asks the search committee to keep it confidential. I have no idea why applying for a job is a career ruiner. That seems very fishy. Where there is recourse is if a Person A were denied further candidacy in the program for accepting a job, unless the graduate school regulations make it clear, in writing, that applying for a job at another university will result in termination of candidacy, or whatever. If the rules of the school make it clear that Person A's employment during candidacy will affect Person A's candidacy, then why is Person A applying for a job? If the problem rests with the adviser, not the department or the graduate school, then if the job interview gets leaked to the adviser, who then begins to make trouble, Person A should speak to the director of graduate studies for the department (if that person is not the adviser) or speak to someone in the graduate school. Universities have a vested interest in having their students employed: employment figures are directly tied to prestige.

Perhaps a little late to the discussion, but you have two issues at play in assessment that involves plagiarism. First: plagiarism/academic integrity. This is a two-fold issue. The primary issue (in my pedagogical view) is how to make sure students leave the course understanding academic integrity, and how to make sure they papers they turn in conform to academic integrity conventions (aka, MLA, APA, CSE, etcl). If you can, find a way to take the class temperature on plagiarism and documentation styles (MLA, APA, etc.) How do they feel about it? Why do they think you're so picky about it? What does the university think about it? Do they know what plagiarism is? Many high school students, even ones with AP credits, believe that they don't have to cite anything from the internet, ever, or that if they paraphrase something enough, so their sentences don't look much like the original sentence, they don't have to cite and that's not plagiarism---they might have been taught that in high school. After pedagogical concerns (aka "teaching moments"), there's developing an objective standard/process for dealing with papers that have plagiarism issues. You should have a policy, one you've thought out and written down for yourself, that you can articulate to everyone in class as needed, that can be used for any assignment, and is in compliance with departmental and university policies on plagiarism. This is simply pre-planning for your own peace of mind, and something you can devise to support pedagogical aims. Like you, I believe that composition teachers bear a larger burden of responsibility for teaching students how not to plagiarize simply because we're teaching them how to write papers for college. The second issue is one of assessment. This is the downfall of many a composition teacher. We like our students. We want them to all get As and go on to have fabulously successful lives. But we especially want them to write fabulous papers and it's painful when something that seems so nitpicky (MLA, for example) is their downfall. My university requires that all suspected plagiarism be turned into the academic integrity people, and they will decide if it's plagiarism or not. That includes missing citations, even if it's just one. Anyway, back to assessment. When students turn papers in, we don't see just the paper, but the student, too. How much effort went into it? If someone toils on a paper with office hour visits and writing center visits, but the paper quality is C, we want to give them Bs because of effort. If we get a paper without citations, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, they didn't intend to plagiarize, they obviously wrote the paper, they just didn't do the MLA. Ethical, objective assessment can only grade the product. You can't grade effort or intent (you can't really judge intent, anyway). A grade is more than feedback for the quality of work, it's a certification. A C-level paper with a B on it certifies that this paper is B-quality, and that this student does this level of work. My long, rambly point: when you get a paper with missing citations, the dilemma isn't in the assessment, but in the teacher. We don't want to fail a well written paper for plagiarism because that means we're calling the student a cheater. But, we must assess ethically. This is were a clear, logical, and articulated policy works. We can apply objective criteria to an inherently subjective assessment. My policy, and this works for me and the department, is to simply reject the first paper a student turns in with citation-level plagiarism along with a specific due date to resubmit the work and requirement for an out of class conference within a time frame. I use that conference to teach citation and why it's important. And it's not because I'm picky. The very few times I've had to do this, I haven't had further problems. I follow department and university policy for turning in someone else's paper with their name on it. It's my job to make sure they know how to not make citation-level errors, so I should expect that mistakes are made. You can find this on JSTOR:Power, Lori G. "University Students' Perceptions of Plagiarism." The Journal of Higher Education , Vol. 80, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2009), pp. 643-662. It's a decent study of student attitudes toward plagiarism, and what they think it is. There's not much on how to handle specific cases (that's a policy matter), but there's a lot of pedagogy theory on the hows, whys, and wherefores of plagiarism, particularly with assessment. The research going on about plagiarism seems to come from the idea that if we can understand student thinking on plagiarism (from lack of motivation to use MLA correctly all the way to buying an essay from a paper mill), we can apply that to classroom teaching to reduce plagiarism (both intentional and unintentional). This is the move-beyond-assessment thing. How do composition teachers discuss plagiarism and academic integrity in the classroom? How do students understand it? That kind of thing. For my purposes, I think about how to incorporate discussion on academic and research integrity in the course itself so that students can understand why academia cites the way it does, and looks at intellectual property the way it does, and then make good decisions from that base of knowledge. I have no clue if I'm successful.

I know I'm not the worst teacher ever. I have empirical proof that I'm good enough at it to justify my place as a teacher: students haven't swapped to other sections en masse, most of them are clearly paying attention, they ask intelligent questions, negative responses on course evaluations focus on my personality defects (apparently, I'm not as funny as I think I am), and a few terribly deluded souls have told me that I was one of their favorite teachers. But every once in a while, I still feel like the Worst Teacher Ever!!! I pity my students because they're stuck with me. Neither the students nor anyone in the department do anything to start me down a path toward this kind of conclusion; it's entirely self-generated. I know I'm not the best out there, but I generally believe I'm sufficient. At least until I get this crisis of confidence and just want to curl up in my closet and pretend I don't exist. Anyone else ever feel this way? What do you do to deal with it? I hate pity parties; I especially hate the ones I throw for myself.

Like everyone else has said, don't switch. At this point, it's reactionary and isn't going to save you from office politics because office politics are a way of life. The reason to switch is that the adviser won't be able to help you the way a different one will, and you would then discuss it with your adviser first, along with your reasoning. Sometimes, it's not that an adviser can't help, so much as there is miscommunication. In addition, to what rising_star has said, I'd suggest coming up with a few handy lines to delicately shift the topic back into your comfort zone. If she starts moving down the gossip road, you could say something like: I noticed he doesn't have any gender material in the course and I feel that I could benefit from looking at gender; we discussed this text/event/person last Tuesday, and it seemed that a feminist perspective might include such-and-such thing. What do you think? Sincere questions are a great way to shift the conversation tactfully because they allow both of you to talk about what interests you, and you can leave their personal issues out of it. You can also shift from him to the material he's covering. He's not discussing feminist perspectives, then discuss feminist perspective of the material he's covering in class with her. As fuzzy suggests, she may be trying to protect you from him as much as she can, so you can tell her that you'll remember what she said and that you'll pay attention. If she persists in treating you as bitchy-buddy, you can take it up a notch. You can tell her that, as a grad student trying your best in the program, you don't feel comfortable discussing this professor in more than an academic way; that you value her take on him and his approach to the material so you'll pay attention and will come to her for broader input on the material. You know yourself, your situation, and your adviser, so you can pre-plan ways to shift conversation. If she rants, you might have to wait until she's done and then looks to you for a response. Definitely tell her that you know that your work will benefit from feminist scholarship, which is why she's important to you. Since nothing disseminates information better than a rumor mill, you might consider what you might say to him if you think he's putting you into a category with her as "the enemy" or if he outright asks you. It's one of those situations that must be managed so that you keep true to yourself, you negotiate a peace with your adviser that's true rather than ego-pandering, and in such a way that neither of these two have reason to think of you negatively. Hopefully you can stay out of the office politics.

There are two kinds of GPA, overall and in your major. Like Eigen and rising said, the graduate school itself will usually have a minimum GPA they'll accept. If you don't meet that GPA, you may have to fix it somehow. If you have to increase your GPA to get where you want, you should go speak to your current adviser first to find out your options. If you're close enough to the minimum GPA at the schools you're looking at, it might behoove you to double major and take another couple of semesters as an undergrad to bring your GPA up. That would also give you the opportunity to retake some of the chemistry courses for a better grade, as well. You might want to stick around for another semester and retake those chemistry courses without adding another major. You do have options. That might be a waste of time and.or money for you. I don't know your circumstances or what you need to do to do better in chemsitry. I do know that once you graduate, you can't retake classes to improve a grade, even if you return for a second bachelor's. I had to eat a D in a literature course because I assumed I could just retake the class when I went for my second BA in English after I'd already graduated with a BA in sociology (English was my minor). That tanked my GPA in both overall and in major. I squeaked into my MA program, and got my GPA up enough to get into my dream PhD program. So, the point is to find out all of your options, including what you can do to improve your GPA now, before you graduate, It might mean putting grad school off for a year. I also think that you should talk to your adviser about the chemistry thing and how it might affect you as a grad student. I'm not a biologist, so I have no idea how much chemistry factors into your field, other than the fact that it does and that it factors more in some emphases than it does in others. Your adviser has been through the PhD process in your field, so he/she could give you a more realistic idea of how weak chemistry skills will affect your ability to succeed in graduate school. Some of the people here could answer that. It might not mean anything, but, logically speaking, if you're required to take chem as part of a biology curriculum, then chem is probably necessary in some way. Every undergraduate biology program I've looked at requires at least organic chem (my kid just started a biology program, so I've looked at a few).

I don't use equations for my research (just fun and my use of the quadratic probably has nothing to offer you), but it seems to me that the problem is one of organization. The only difference between scratch paper and a tablet is that instead of scattered paper, you have stuff scattered in the tablet's memory (or on the Cloud, depending). The tablet can help. I use a Windows 8 pro (took some getting used to) that has a stylus and a pretty solid math interface for people just like you. I use OneNote (yeah, MS drone here). I can write directly in OneNote with the stylus, and I can use OneNote to maintain organization so that I can find my notes when I need them. I may not work with equations, but I have to track a gajillion things from multiple writers, critics, and so on. I did reject the iPad because of the way I use the tablet; iPads don't have the hardware (external storage on SD cards, usb ports, HDMI ports, and so on). I prefer Android, but didn't get it because of the hardware constraints (the manufacturers that did have the external stuff were iffy, and Samsung is an iPad on Android). Oh yeah, should mention, my tablet has gorilla glass. That was a major selling factor 'cuz I could be nicer to my personal electronics, but I'm not. I haven't had any trouble with my OneNote/stylus set up. I picked up the entire Office 365 University suite for 80 bucks on a 4 year subscription. I hate that and the last thing I ever wanted to do was encourage Microsoft in this subscription ripoff (but 80 bucks for 4 years with all Office programs?). I hate SkyDrive and the whole sign in thing. I used my gmail account to sign in, actually, so I didn't have to get yet *another* email account. I have an HTC evo smartphone, not stylus friendly, but I do note that there's a difference in the way the touch screens work. I have a screen protector on the phone, but none on the tablet (gorilla glass yay!), and protector-free screen works best. When I write with the stylus, there are no missing pixels (like you get when you sign on screens for UPS deliveries or credit card slips). I write in what might as well be 8 point Arial font, and I can read it clearly without having to expand the screen. I would think that pixel-gaps in writing would be particularly important with math. I could puzzle it out, it's words, but math? Yeah, not a good thing to missing pixels that would change the entire equation. I do find the tablet useful. I work with so much information, that it saves me some time. I still have a lot of paper notes that I have to sort through from the past. Still, I'm starting a new research project and most of my notes are on the tablet. It works well. Since I use OneNote and the stuff is on the SkyDrive, I don't have to have the tablet with me to work with my notes, or add to it. I have a laptop at home that I used to tote with me, but it's huge and difficult to manage in a backback with my books, and it's 2 hour battery life. I can move back and forth from my tablet (highly portable), my laptop, and lab computers on campus or other places. If I understood the hype correctly, I'm supposed to able to use Office 365 on any compatible machine, whether it's downloaded or not. I haven't tested it. I'm working with the idea of transferring my paper notes from relevant, past courses to OneNote in between semesters. I'll probably also scan particularly relevant marginalia into OneNote. I haven't checked to see if the handwriting is searchable (I should do that), but I can search OneNote as it stands. I do take paper notes, still. Mostly because I haven't worked out how to fit the tablet into my long-established study habits. My brain automatically associates devices with drafting papers, email, surfing, and whatnot. I have to train my brain to not check email, or to not try to take notes the way I would write a paper. I'm all ADHD that way, though, and an old fart. I don't think most people, particularly the more computer savvy, have this problem. I do prefer paper and pen for certain things, such as developing the structure of a paper, or writing poetry (yeah, I go there), or developing assignments for a course, or the syllabus. Writing makes me think differently because it's much slower. Writing on a tablet is ostensibly the same, but the page is smaller and I can't spread pages out side by side or reorganize them as organically. Still, the tablet will improve my productivity simply because it improves my ability to manage information. Anyway. So. Organization. I would suggest that you solve that first, and then pick a tablet that suits you best. The reasoning is pretty simple: you have to know what you need before you can pick the best device, O/S, and/or note taking utility app for you. Hit a Best Buy, the mobile phone stores, or a similar and try them out. They should have demo models with a stylus available. If you can find an art student or professor with a tablet, you'd find someone who knows a lot about using a stylus to input information directly into software. I do know that some applications take data from a stylus better than others. I have no idea which ones, though. I suppose it comes down to which combination of hardware and software works best for you. It doesn't really matter what tablet I fangirl, 'cause there ya go. Frankly, I fangirl my Windows tablet because it works best for me, a Kindle and Android smartphone pairing for my guy, and an iPad for my mother-in-law. She fangirls cheap, so she's wrestling with an 80 dollar Android tablet and losing. Oh, one more thing. I'm new to the tablet notetaking thing, I'm used to writing on paper. When I write on the tablet, my hand is pressed pretty firmly to the screen. In OneNote, my hand leaves no marks. In the sketching app I have, my hand leaves a faint mark every once in a while. I can also configure the stylus that I have to use the top as an eraser (where an eraser is on a pencil), so the stylus works just like a pencil on paper. (Replies me, months after you asked).

Significant? That isn't an issue. Anything can be significant. What might be an issue is repetition. For example, I once had a great idea for a paper. I had my argument, and what I wanted to discuss planned. I spoke with the professor about it, and he liked it. Then I went out and did some research for the theoretical background. And found out that 8 other people had already written that paper. They were all different, but the arguments were the same and so were the points. The topic itself was very narrow, so there are very limited ways to talk about it, and those ways had been done several times. I would not have added anything knew to the topic. I wrote a different paper on a different topic. Right now, there is a lot of academic discussion (in the form of papers and theses) about the use of social media in the revolutions that have taken place in the Middle East. Many people are writing about the same thing, but in different ways. It's a broad topic with a lot of ways of looking at the same thing. Unlike my paper, which had a topic too narrow to not repeat someone else's argument completely, social media in the Middle East is very broad, and there are many view points that can add to the topic. When you choose something to study, it doesn't matter if other people think it's important enough to study or not. When Isaac Newton noticed that an apple hits the ground when it falls from a tree, many people would have thought this insignificant and not worth study. It happens all the time, right? But he studied it anyway. If it's important to you, it's important enough to study. The question then becomes, can you add something new to the discussion on your topic? Even if it may not seem like it immediately, it's almost always possible. Very few topics are so narrow that they've been done to death. People have been writing papers about certain topics for thousands of years. The Talmud, the Hadith, and so on. Adding to the discussion does not mean doing something no one has done before, but looking at it in a different way. pears is correct. The topic you're looking at, cyberspace in your homeland, is huge. The problem with cyberspace in a single country is that there are many, many, many things to study. pears is advising you to focus on one thing about cyberspace. Pick a few things about cyberspace and your homeland that interest you. For each thing, write an argument, that is, write a single sentence that tells your opinion of the thing. For example, if my topic were about video games in my culture, I might focus on things like: how online game environments change the way players define friendship, or how some game players emulate the personality of their favorite video game character. I could then write a sentence (argument) like so: Online game environments, like Call of Duty or Halo, change the way game players define friendship because game friends are also allies in a war simulation, and these allies are people that game players must trust to work with them to accomplish the game's objective. Take the sentences (arguments) that you are most interested in to your adviser. If you cannot express your argument in one sentence, the topic should be narrowed down so that your thesis will have a strong focus.

Slightly silly, but don't forget to ask for student discounts at local stores and restaurants. Some do, some don't, but you don't always know if you don't ask!

Will someone save us from this fell beast? If the department didn't require that I use blackboard for these assignments, I would so switch to google docs.

I grade as they come in or all at once, depending on my schedule and the assignment. Almost everything is turned in online and stuff starts trickling in several days before it's due. In-class, graded writing/work is an all-at-once thing. I have to comment on essays many times throughout a semester. Oh for an answer key! Can't they learn composition with multiple choice?! Any graduate program will tell you that you're a student first and teacher second. I do what fuzzy & rising_star do. I have specific amounts of time set aside for all grading activities and don't do grading outside of that time without a good reason. I don't set a specific schedule, because I do not grade papers when I'm either upset or really happy (the assessment tools I must use are almost entirely subjective); but I do set a specific amount of time aside per week. Since I make the assignment schedule, I can plan clearly. I also use a timer (for the papers that I inevitably want to spend a lot of time with) and I have a place where I do nothing but grade and a specific ritual that I do to start grading (computer there, assignment instructions taped to the wall here, a hand-written list of the very specific things I'm looking for in the assignment on sticky notes on the right side of the monitor, and their reference book open so I can quickly refer them to specific pages) because I'm all ADHD like that and these kinds of things help me maintain my attention on grading rather than on minesweeper or (as my current frustration levels with Blackboard dictate) hanging out on the internet. One thing to note: students rarely look at everything you mark on their work; some won't look past the grade. The more you write, the less of it they'll read. Write less on the papers in terms of pointing them back toward the right track during future study and review sessions. Use questions, rather than statements. Don't write in complete sentences. Have a few specifics in mind about what you want them to understand from the work (the big picture stuff) so you've already got a framework to make quick decisions about what to annotate on their work and what to just mark incorrect. You're an intelligent, thoughtful, and organized person, so you've got your own way set, no doubt. To save myself some commenting time, I'll sometimes bring up the most worrying trend in the errors. Sometimes many students make the error, sometimes it's a few.

Since you've essentially got what amounts to an explanation of what other people think on the topic, (an explanatory synthesis); your next step is to take a position. Take a stand. What is your opinion on the subject? That's kind of the next step, in a way. Moving from the explanatory synthesis (an explanation of the current discourse on the subject, aka, review of the literature) to an argumentative synthesis (google that, too). However, the bigger problem you have is one of invention (the first of Aristotle's Five Rhetorical Canons). You went into your thesis without an argument, also known as a claim, or a purpose for the research. In the English field, you're not testing hypotheses, but you are making a claim that you will support with supporting argument and supporting evidence, all backed by one or more theoretical perspectives. So, go back to invention. You've read the critical literature on your topic, now brainstorm, or free write, or loop, or cluster, or whatever it is that you do to generate ideas, and figure out your opinion on the subject. Many people find it helpful to start with questions. Examples: Is Shakespeare really the most important British writer? Is the Oxford comma proper grammar? Should college students in a composition course choose their own topics to write about for major papers or should those topics be assigned? Is it pronounced new-kew-ler or new-clee-er? Answers to controversial questions that you're interested in (Yes, it is grammatically correct to say "to boldly go where no one has gone before"! Thtpthpt on you Byron!) tend to present arguments that you'll want to defend. Take your stand and defend it. A college student is supposed to be able to go out and do research on a topic, collect a variety of information from a variety of sources, organize the information, evaluate the information, and generate a position (stance, hypothesis, argument) that they can successfully argue in concise, academic language. There are how to manuals on writing argumentative papers (a thesis is just a large argumentative paper) that you can get from the library or purchase. You can hit the OWL at Purdue (owl.english.purdue.edu) and find all kinds of help on writing.