danieleWrites

I'm older and my major is chock full of non-heteronormative folks. Even the hetero ones. However, I'm married to what amounts to a Republican and I'm in a field full of heavy-duty liberals. It is so not okay to hold conservative views in my field. Bringing my guy to department social events is kind of like putting Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz in a room together and expecting the small talk to go well. Or a Capulet and a Montegue. So, my opinion on the whole thing? You are completely normal so act like it. Why should you come out? You have nothing to come out of. There is nothing for you to hide because you're normal. My advice is to talk with your boyfriend first and find out how he feels about your situation. Go stag to a department social event (one that seems professionalish rather than a casual get-together) and see how your cohort acts. Some of them may not bring their SOs with them. Go stag to a few casual department social events and see how these things go. Test the waters, so to speak. Get a feel for the social scene in the program before making your boyfriend put up with your colleagues. I get to know my cohort and faculty well enough to tell him who he would likely find interesting so I can make a point of introducing them. I don't come out as straight so why should you come out as gay? Act with your cohort the same way your straight cohort acts with you. If your labmates are chatting about their SOs, bring yours up. If Mary complains that Gary always drinks out of the carton and it's gross, share how annoying it is that your guy eats out of the peanut butter jar. If/when someone says that they didn't know you were gay, just shrug and tell them how long you've been in your relationship or how you met. This kind of sidestep helps you acknowledge the comment without focusing on the unimportant part (your spot on the Kinsey scale) while bringing thing back to the important part (your relationship). Like others have said, act like you're perfectly normal (not just because you are perfectly normal) but because it will keep everyone else from making a big deal out of something that is not a big deal. The haters gonna hate and they're going to make a big deal out of it, but the average person will get over it and move on.

You've already talked with your parents so you know that they're keeping the card and not telling you anything. If they aren't already forthcoming, you can tell them, quite plainly, that either they send you the card and all documents (contract, statements, etc.) for the account that they might have within 10 days or you will contact Citibank and get it all from them, instead, when you report the card lost. The laws regarding credit are different in different countries. Checking your US credit report is a good idea (if you're in the US), but it might not show what Citibank has on you. You signed a contract with the bank that you clearly did not understand and you don't have any way of understanding. You don't mention if your parents signed it, as well. You may have a joint account with them, or they may just have kept your card/account and are using it. Citibank totally offers joint accounts. Pretty much every bank does. Many banks won't offer first-time accounts to teenagers without a parent. I suspect that it's a revolving credit (credit card) account because the bank gave you money. Checking/savings accounts don't do that. It is illegal for banks in the US to offer credit cards to people under the age of 21, which is likely why they took you to China to do it. Contact Citibank immediately. Explain to the customer service representative that your parents had you open the account in China (I'm assuming, since it was in Chinese) when you were 19, but you've never received the debit/credit card nor used the account, and that didn't know anything about banking and are just now learning. Explain that you want to deal with it here because you do not read Chinese and you don't even know what kind of an account it is. You want to verify that the account is inactive or closed. If it is not, then you want to report the card stolen and have all account numbers changed to prevent further fraud or theft. You should also make sure that there are no authorized users on the account except for you. If there are, you should ask that either they be removed from the account, or that you be removed from it. If there has been no activity on the account, close it. If there has been activity, you likely won't be able to close it. Make sure to give the customer service person your corrected address and to have any online access IDs and passwords changed. If the account has had activity, request that they send you statements for the life of the account, in English, since you don't read Chinese. This way, you can see what has been going on with the account. If your parents won't give you access to your account and all of the information involved with it, the bank will. If you can, go to a Citibank branch in person. Because of the nature of your problem, an in-person discussion will likely work out much better for you than otherwise. I would strongly suggest that you contact a lawyer that specializes in international identity theft and fraud. If your parents have used the card with your name on it in any way, then yes, your parents have committed fraud and, depending on the laws involved, possibly identity theft. If you're attending a university that has a law school attached, they often have free or cheap legal counseling their law students do. This won't really help you personally, but you can get a referral to a professor who can help you or to a practicing lawyer that can help you. Since you were an adult who signed for the account and you know that your parents have access to the account and to the card, there's likely not much identity theft laws can do for you. However, you should find out if they have used your name to open other accounts. In some cases, all it takes is the debit card/credit card to do it. Since your credit is important to living (you can't rent an apartment without one these days, it seems, and various insurances figure your credit score into your rates, and so on), it's very important that you keep on top it. In any event, I would also strongly suggest that you find a way to educate yourself on financial matters, including budgeting, financial planning, retirement, insurance, banking, credit, and so on. Most cities have adult education classes, some universities have extensions that do the same thing (often free), then there are more books than you shake a rubber chicken at, available at the library. Before you go randomly selecting books (because there are about as many books on taking care of your finances as there are books on how to lose weight), sit down and figure out your goals. Do you want to own a home? Where? What kind of job do you foresee? Travel? When do you want to retire? Where? Think about what kind of money person you are. Do you save? Spend? Do you have loans? A lot? Do you run out of money before your next paycheck comes in? If an emergency came up, say you had to fly to another city in order to be with a sick family member, do you have the money to pay for a ticket? Knowing more about yourself as a money person can help you find a financial education program that fits you best. Lastly, I would also suggest that you speak with the campus counselor to help you work through how to deal with your parents now that you've left the nest and have become an adult on your own terms.

Your university has a financial aid office staffed with people who are paid to answer any questions you might have. I would suggest you call them directly.

My freshman year was, well, in Korean. Grammar was king. Well, actually, following the UCMJ was king, but grammar was up there.

What you can safely demand from a potential and/or current landlord/property manager varies from state to state. By safely, I mean without getting ignored or not considered. It's all about what the laws say. Contrary to popular belief, the balance of power in the landlord/tenant relationship is usually more on the side of the landlord. Sure, they want a tenant, but they want the right kind of tenant (college students are usually at the bottom of the list, unless they provide a cosigner name Mom or Dad). For every decent property, there's dozens of people who want it. I got my place without credit checks, references, the application others had to submit, or first and last months rent, just a small security deposit, because I'm older and my guy and I showed up in khakis and polos with a country club logo on them. I'm not going to have kids, I'm not likely to party, the cops aren't going to be called, the neighbors aren't going to complain, and there isn't going to be a lot of damage to the place, or so the probabilities go. You want pix from the property manager and she doesn't care? She seems rude or uncaring? That means that you aren't the only college student who wants the place, but she's probably holding out for a solid prospect. So, what to property managers want from tenants? No hassles, the rent paid on time, the rent paid for the entire year (they have to pay for the property all year, 9-month tenants are far less desirable than 12-month tenants), and the property treated with respect. You want her to want you more than others, so how can you show her that you're the more desirable applicant? I imagine that your problem stems from a single thing: she hasn't processed all of the applications and has no intention of doing any extra work for people she hasn't decided to offer a lease. I would, personally, email her every few days about the application until she tells you if your application is approved or rejected. Once you know if your application is approved, then tell her that you are prepared to send her all required deposits and rents, but only once you have seen pictures of the actual apartment you would be renting and have approved of it. It's also possible that the place is not yet vacant, or, if vacant, not yet prepared for the next tenant. Before you sign the lease, make sure you know your tenancy rights! If she sends you pictures of a model apartment, rather than the actual apartment, are you stuck with the lease? Because you can't see the apartment yourself, you can't be completely sure that she sent you pictures of the actual apartment. In some states, yes, you are. Here's some helpful links: The first is to the US federal government's Housing and Urban Development website on tenancy in the state of New York. HUD is the federal overseer of housing in the US. http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/states/new_york/renting/tenantrights The second is to the state of New York's attorney general website on housing issue, which includes tenant rights: http://www.ag.ny.gov/consumer-frauds/housing-issues The final is to the county of Onondaga's commission on housing site, which includes tenant rights: http://www.ongov.net/humanrights/renting.html If the city of Syracuse has different rules than the county, I couldn't find it. In the US, the way it works it to start with local laws, then state laws, then federal laws. The local laws generally already comply with state and federal laws, but have more specific and important laws that apply to individual situations.

You might find this article interesting: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/ It's the story of a guy who sells papers. It happens. A lot. Students get upset when I make them write thesis statements and outlines in class, in handwriting (rule 1: if I can't read it, it's wrong), on paper, and turn them in, and then get more upset when they submit a draft that has nothing to do with what they turned in during class and can't get any credit for it. I tell them the story of Piper High School and the fallout the non-cheaters have faced from it. That cheating, even if they didn't do it, devalues the credibility of everyone's degree. Not that they care that much, but there ya go.

"I'm in college. Someday I hope to be a professor." When asked what I'm studying, I will add: "I've been in English long enough to learn that proper grammar is decided by the dialect a person speaks, not by a book. I've totally retired my grammar vigilante cape and tights." I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of my education, but the whole English Teacher Horror Show gets old and as much as I would love to hold forth on my dissertation plans, no one really wants to hear it, except people who are also in graduate school and who find the distinction between phd, masters, and undergrad an important one. To them, I tell them I'm in a PhD program.

Two words: Garage Sale. You can get some decent stuff at cut-rate prices. You just need some sort of truck to move things. You can rent those, like the small U Haul kind. Protip: never buy a used mattress. Ever. Protip 2: sofas can carry bedbugs, too. Also, those rent-to-own places = massive ripoff. If you do without for a while and put the "payment" you'd be making aside, you'd be able to outright pay for the furniture, or better, much cheaper in a relatively short amount of time with no payments. As for how much furniture you'll need? That depends on the place you end up getting and what you need for comfort. Your home should have something that helps you destress.

University of Arkansas has a rhet/comp program and a tech writing program. If you are not offered an assistanceship, do not accept the offer. Rhet comp isn't just research, it's teaching! I would suggest that you look at the rhet-comp faculty in the schools of interest, log onto JSTOR, and read their publications for the past few years. I would also suggest that you get in contact with these programs, if the information isn't in the graduate school catalog, and look at what the program requires and offers in terms of classes.

I don't know about anyone else, but my "pay" is a stipend plus tuition. While I don't have to declare the payment of tuition as income on taxes (um. gonna go panic and make a screaming phone call in the morning to an accountant now), it is part of my "pay" package. So, I make about entry level or more per yer in my field. I don't have a fellowship, but I am an older person with a significant retirement income from my days in the military. Frankly, I make more money per year than the chair. I have been told, to my face, that I should be ashamed of taking a TA spot from someone who needed the money and that I should not go after grants and fellowships because I don't need the money like people starting out do. One person has even spread it around that I shouldn't be in grad school, taking up the space from someone else, or potentially taking a job from someone else, because I have resources to fall back on. I, and you, we're not "taking" from anyone. These things are earned based on merit. I do not justify my choices to my cohort and neither should you. The only thing I've ever said to these people, when I bothered with it: be honest with yourself, if you were in my shoes, you wouldn't give up grad school, the assistanceship, or a job either. These people are not worth arguing with, nor are they worth extending the kind of help one would to a friend. Civility, yes; friendship, no. You earned your assistancehip, your fellowship, and any grants that come your way. Nothing stopped your office mates from applying for these things; the fact that they're awarded on merit, not need, is not your problem.

Orientation was mandatory for my TAship. It's not actually "preservice" so much as it is getting required stuff out of the way, such as mandatory sexual harassment training. The best person to ask would be the graduate school itself, and likely the department.

I annotate my books, but only the ones I plan to keep. Of course, most of it is literature, so there ya go.

Student loans are still loans. When you "consolidate" a loan, what you are doing is taking out a new loan that pays off the other loans. The interest rates don't "consolidate". You get an interest rate that's set at what the new loan is. Consolidation is good if you will get better interest overall. This can be hard to figure out if you've got a handful of loans at several interest rates. There are two important words to consider before you go after consolidation: subsidized and unsubsidized. If you have subsidized loans, leave them be! A subsidized loan means that the government pays your student loan interest while your loan is in deferment. If you have unsubsidized loans, you are being charged interest every single month you have that loan. This happens while you're in school, while your loan is in deferment, and even during grace periods. It does not stop until the loan is paid off. Period. At periods specified by your loan contract, the interest is capitalized. This means that the interest you've accumulated since the previous capitalization will be stuck onto the principle and you will pay interest on it, as well. Many a student has thought, gee, I only have 20 grand in student loans! And then the grace period ends and the number suddenly looks more like 26 grand. WTF face is not a fun face to have when you're looking at student loan bills. You can pay on any loan, even if its in deferment, whether you've consolidated the loans or not, unless you have a loan contract that specifically says you can't. Most financial advisers will tell you to pay your student loan interest every month whether you're in deferment or not. Unless you have subsidized loans, then there's no interest to pay.

I'm in a unique position. More than half of the people in the grad school at my university have celebrated fewer birthdays than I've celebrated wedding anniversaries (we're a one-anniversary-a-year couple, no first this or first that. wedding only). My spouse has a crap-ton of education, but very little of it is collegiate. Come zombie apocalypse time, I'm hiding behind him. I'm an introvert, which makes a difference in how understand the concept of "friend". I find them disposable, as well, even though I really miss certain people and the good times we used to have. I'm sufficiently weird, even to my cohort, in my interests and knowledge base. It's kind of creepy to exchange conversation with people who think Phantom Menace is the first movie. As if. I was there, in 1979, for the first movie. The people putting together tenure packets these days are my age. Anyway. I have grad-school buddies. I call them friendquaintances because they're more than acquaintances but a bit less than friends. I have had no time for non-grad-school friends during my first year. I had a Paper that Ate My Life to get over. Anyway. Getting non-grad-school friends isn't that difficult, even for dedicated introverts (of the world unite! separately, in our own homes). I like to golf. So I joined a women's golf league and made some pals. I have a buddy who is a knitter, joined a knitting group. I've joined a book club (but there was a bitter feud of Earl Grey and the definition of socialism so I sneered like Stewie and went my own way). Be a joiner. Most grad schools have a grad school-wide groups and programs that you can get involved in. I have an ethnic grad and faculty group that I joined that does work in the community. I have a skeptics group that I'm skeptical of joining. I joined professional associations.

Take it! While it's two jobs, it's two 10-hour(ish) jobs, which is about what most GA/TAs do anyway. If nothing else, it's a foot in the TA/GA door! I have two jobs now (20 hours TAing and 20-25 hours elsewhere) and it sucks because I love sleeping and I don't get to do much of it. The key is to organize yourself and your time. It helps to know your specific hours in advance and I'm sure RAs around here and elsewhere have a lot of advice to give on managing their RA work.

Last May when I was accepted into a PhD program, one of my fellow soon-to-be-cohort asked the DGS for the email addresses of the new people in the program and sent out an invite to friend her on Facebook. We all took her up on it and started chatting a bit well before we ever got to town. Well, some of us chatted more than others, and MA students weren't involved. Now that I've been there for a year, I'm not sure why the DGS didn't hand that list out to the requesting cohort buddy, but there ya go. If you're intrepid that way, you can see if your DGS might either send out a meet-n-greet email for you or give you a list to send one out yourself. Other than that? Breathe. As far as non-cohort people, surely you have hobbies and interests outside of school. Find out what kinds of clubs/groups they have out near Brown. Anime fan? Book clubs? Disc golf? Regular golf? 4H? Scouting? Kayaking? There's always something! If you're religious, you can get into contact with the age-appropriate minister/clergyperson in your denomination of your religion. These people are usually really good ambassadors for a local area. The Harley Owners Group can totally rock. And so on.

Nearly every semester some student has approached me to suddenly go back and do enough of the work (including quizzes) in order to get a better grade. One of the methods of approach is to work the unawareness angle. Oh, I didn't know the reading responses were worth points. I did the reading, though. Can I do them and get credit? My answer is no. Students who claim they weren't aware of something that is clearly listed on the syllabus have no one to blame for this but themselves. Something one of my comp/rhet profs said that makes too much sense: you can't grade intent. You don't know what the student's intentions were; you can try to guess, but there is no realistic way to measure intention. You can only grade what there is before you. I think this idea applies to the student or two that wanders into office hours or the email inbox near the end of the semester wondering if they can make up work they did not do when it was due and have no means of providing proof of a reasonable excuse for not doing and/or turning the work in. I only know what they tell me (and students often lie, but not always) and I can only measure their truthiness by what is there. I know teachers who make exceptions and I know teachers who don't. This is what I do know: you can only do what you think is most fair to everyone in the class, and that will usually be the right thing to do.

I agree/disagree. I wouldn't recommend that people just trot up to a professor/chair and gossip. I would do it, but that's me. I have a position of privilege that the average grad student will never have. However, using the department gossip mill to find out if Mr. Smith is still around? It's not that difficult or dangerous. I disagree that they should go right away to any authority over the issue. This is actually more of a stick your neck into the guillotine thing than doing a Get Smart routine in the department hallways. That's accusing the department of violating academic honor codes because a grad student who was not a part of the issue did not approve of how the issue was handled, even though it was clear that something was done about it. Sure, this can be done anonymously. But how many recitation sections for this particular course with this particular professor can there be? Eliminate Mr. Smith, and there are a handful of grad students suddenly under the microscope of suspicion. It's not that difficult to get the average person to confess; all it takes is being nice, polite, and authoritative in a personal interview. The only reason the OP thinks that people got away with cheating is because students in the section didn't fail the course even though the OP has not indicated that there's a reason to believe the students themselves knowingly colluded in the cheating, rather than the TA. The students not failing is not reason enough to assume ethical violations on the part of the professor. The TA not getting in trouble is. If the OP can't substantiate anything, or even give a reason to be suspicious, of the professor bending the rules for the TA then what ethical violations has the OP witnessed?

A few critiques. 1. Responsive design. Open up Firefox, click tools, click web developer, click responsive design and you can have an approximation as to what your site will look like on something other than a computer monitor. Approximate because it's still Firefox reading the code. Wordpress offers mobile optimization (responsive design) tools in site building; these are also built into some wordpress themes. Weebly offers mobile website building tools, you should use them to build the site. Don't make your site app-dependent. 2. The pictures need credit. If you took them from the internet, make sure they have an open license and make sure you credit them to the owners of the license. If you made them yourself (took the pictures and then used photoshop), you should still have photo credits and date. Academic integrity should show up on your website. If you do not have permission to use the image, don't use the image. 3. The resume should be a curriculum vitae, in my opinion. You're creating a research focused site, not a "hire me" site. There is a difference between the two that will be far more impressive, even to potential employers. Instead of expanding on irrelevant work history, you'll be able to expand on your academic and research history. Also, the colors in your resume don't mix well with the colors in the image above it. I agree that you should have an easy .pdf for download. 4. The picture of you is a good picture. It works well to show who you are and it matches the site. 5. Get rid of the word "amateur" in the cover image. Pick a different word that gets at your humor and personality. I would recommend against "self-proclaimed," as well. Neuro-nerd is fine. Probably. I'm not sure about the sensibilities of the discipline, but I do know the discipline gets a lot of grant money for research, which indicates a sense of professionalism. We in literature are sublimely jealous, FYI. Showing a sense of humor is good, but not irreverence or self-deprecation. Amateur is not generally self-deprecating, but in this context you're saying that you aren't actually a real neuro-scientist. This is not true. You are. You have a have masters of science degree in neuroscience. Don't contradict your qualifications!

The problem is how to be fair to students. Certainly, we should expect them to realize that getting help during an exam and seeing questions beforehand is cheating. The problem is that the person doing the cheating was a teacher who apparently presented some of this cheating as part of the class itself. Did they earn the A the way that other students in other recitation sections did? No. Should they be punished for the cheating the teacher did? Did the teacher tell them this was cheating? Or did they expect this to be his teaching style? Whether anything happened to the students is likely a decision made based on whether or not the students were, themselves, involved in the cheating, or if the TA was cheating and the students merely benefited. If a teacher does a review for a test and the questions on the test along with the correct answers are part of the review, can you reasonably expect students to know this is cheating? If the teacher instructs students to raise their hands for silent help during an exam, can you reasonably expect students to know this is cheating? While the answer to this might be yes (obviously, the teacher shouldn't point out the correct answers on exam day), the fact that it's the teacher doing it means that students should be given the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not they knew this behavior was unauthorized assistance. Before you take this up to the chair or dean or provost or ombudsman, the question to examine isn't the student grades, but what happened to the cheating teacher. Was the teacher sanctioned in some way that is in line with the university's academic honor code? Does the teacher still have the assistanceship? Is the teacher still teaching? If the teacher was penalized in some way, then I believe (from what you've told us here) that the professor met his/her obligations regardless of what happened to the students. If the gossip mill isn't clear on it, I'm brazen enough to go to the professor up for tenure and outright ask what happens to TAs that violate academic integrity for their students. I might even speak with the chair or some other prof who would be in the know that I was buddy-buddy with.

So, everything is done. All work completed and turned in, all student papers graded, grades calculated, and grades reported to the university as required. Office is cleaned out as requested. Library books returned. I am still 100% absolutely certain that I forgot to write a 30 page paper that was due sometime last week and now I'm going to fail, and I'm going to get the disappointed face from my favorite profs, and my adviser is going to call me into his office and tell me that he had such high hopes for me, but he's gonna have to recommend that I see Starbucks for that barista job, even though I can't really see over the counter that well. I had the most horrific nightmare that I'd forgotten to give my students the final exam and they had to call me to find out why my students were asking where I was. And since the grades were already turned in.... Argh! I hate detoxing from the semester; I feel like a walking, talking anxiety disorder. My plan is to hide under a blanket near the air-conditioner and read bad fanfiction until I don't feel guilty about reading fanfiction instead of textbooks or journal articles.

"Hooks" are personal, so you find your hook in your personal story. Everyone has a story about how much the love to read, and how Moby Dick changed their lives, so they want to be a literature professor now. Not a good hook cause it's cliche. Probably true (at least for literature majors with an unhealthy obsession with Moby Dick), but still banal. I'd suggest doing some free writing. We call it writing as discovery sometimes. Just sit down and write or type anything that comes to mind about why you're into the field, into your research, into the possible career you're looking at, into school, into the subject you're most into (as in, not I love math because it's better than a Xanax for my OCD, but rather I love linear algebra because Susskind used it to turn the world on its ear in his attic), anything that comes to mind at all. Even if it's I don't really know why I'm doing this. Help!!! Call it a personal inventory. Once you've got some ideas to work with, then it's a matter of figuring out what question to answer. I went with the "why is graduate school right for me?" Moby Dick may have [not] changed my life, but it doesn't explain why I can't get a BA in literature and trot off to work in the field while reading Moby Dick every day. The hook should answer the same question that your SOP answers: why should you (you lovely adcomm folks) pick me to offer admission and funding to? You're a huge risk in time, reputation, and money, even if you pay for it yourself. We all are. Your hook is a good place to explain your personal investment in the process, aside from the exact same investment everyone else in every discipline has made to get to the grad school point (time and money and it's-always-been-my-dream). I would also suggest that you look over the research that you've done on the faculty in each program and consider what the program seems to be interested in. For example, a faded cliche in sociology is that Harvard is a macro-theory school and Chicago is a micro-theory school. It's true, to an extent, since these schools have very serious history as foundational schools in American sociology. I would not wax poetic about my love of Talcott Parsons (he's my creative muse and I hate him for it) to the Chicago school because the odds are that the people in Chicago would be more interested in my BFF feelings for Herbert Blumer. Of course, I wouldn't apply to the Chicago school to begin with because I wouldn't fit so much, but there's the example for you. Disclaimer: I'm a rhetoric-oriented person who has never been on an adcomm and can't begin to anticipate what the adcomms you're looking at are looking for.

With my two BAs and my MA it took 4 to 6 weeks for the diploma to get mailed, but the day after grades were posted (usually the Tuesday after finals week), transcripts were available. That particular university had a degree checking department that everyone who applied to graduate had to pass through. Degree checking verified that all requirements for graduation had been met and nothing go accidentally skipped because someone assumed that creative writing filled the composition requirement (or something). No degrees were finalized until the degree requirements had been checked and the departments had no pull in making that process go faster. Diplomas were made in batch, so no actual diploma until all degrees had been checked. The degree awarded did not appear on the transcript until the degree had been checked. But that's one university. Check with the graduate school.

Way back when you had to have printers make up cards for you, I'd say no. Nowadays, you can buy decent cardstock with a decent price at an office supply store and print your own business cards. I would print up a few business cards, even as an MA student, for conferences and any occasion where I might network with people in the field or who might be potential employers or PhD program adcomms. I would make the business card was rhetorically appropriate. Katzenmusick's template is an excellent one because it gives the information that someone asking for your contact details would need without giving a sense that you're inflating your importance. The only thing I would add to that would be to make sure there's enough room to write down key words about the conversation you just had so the person can place who you are. If you get business cards print professionally, don't go with a design that seems professorial. Go a bit plainer as suits your MA student status. That would be for academic contacts! Business people have a different set of expectations about how you should sell yourself. If I were an MA student in English heading off to comic-con, where I might potentially meet people who need writers or editors, or who might know someone who does, I would have business cards that look like a professional in the field, not like a grad student doing academic networking. Nothing wrong with a card, just make it appropriate for the situation.