danieleWrites

1. Start reading the journals. Read whatever is in your research interests and whatever is related to your research interests. 2. Make lists of people who are publishing things that you find exciting and useful for your research interests. Make the list long and somewhat sorted (really want to work with, want to work with, would be interesting to work with, don't want to work with unless there's no choice). Take notes on these people and what they've written, save these notes. 3. Locate the programs that employ these people as faculty. 4. Look through the programs (website, ASA publishes a book on graduate programs in the US, and so on) to see what they offer in terms of emphases, variety of faculty, funding, and so on. Take notes on these programs, save these notes. Use some form of calendar to track deadlines, costs, etc. so you know when you have to do whatever it is you have to do. 5. Pick the programs that fit you and start reading everything the faculty has published in the past two or so years. Read the dissertations graduate students have published in the the last couple of years. Use this data to weed out programs. Take notes on the faculty, save these notes. 6. Rank the programs in order of interest. Contact the professors you're interested in. Arrange to visit your top picks. 7. Forget the concept of safety school (no such thing exits; you are never, ever going to find a school that has so few applicants that you're practically guaranteed to get into it). Forget rankings. Forget tier. 8. Assess yourself: what research do you plan to pursue? What kinds of theoretical and methodological things do you need to accomplish this? what professors are you most interested in? What do you want to do with your degree? What options, other than academia, can you pursue with your degree ('cuz crosstraining is helpful!)? What are your deal-breakers? Are the locations that you can't live in? Do you need courses in other disciplines? 9. Use the notes you've taken on the programs and what you've read and on yourself to develop your application materials. Create a dossier of yourself for your reference letter writers to refer to. Generate SOPs for each program. Shore up your weaknesses (never got around to reading the symbolic interactionists? weak in statistics? need foreign language proficiency and it's been years since you took Spanish?). That was my process. It's all about methodology.

I am having an incredible amount of trouble feeling the slightest bit of anything other than some schadenfreude here. Do you even know what accredited means? You claim you got into a PhD program that's at a school, "but it's really not an accredited university". (Accreditation is like being pregnant. It's either accredited or it's not. There's no "really" involved.) Then you tell us that you got into the George Washington University, which is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools regional accrediting agency (a group that also accredited Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Rutgers, Montclair, Loyola, Carnegie Mellon, and Temple). Second, "respect" does notcome from the school by itself. What have you ever done to earn respect, other than graduate from Northwestern? Here's what the US News rankings really mean when it comes to getting a job or getting into school: no one cares. I have no idea if you think that you're somehow entitled to a top tier program followed by a top tier job because you went to Northwestern, of if you're just that naive that you think the only thing that matters is prestige. This is what I do know: the only thing you discussed was the name of the school you went to and how special you felt doing so, and how anything not top tier, particularly Northwestern, isn't worthwhile (or, apparently, accredited). You make no mention of what's so special about the schools you're interested in (aside from US News' so-called "rankings"). Third, there is absolutely nothing wrong, or to be ashamed of, for wanting into schools that have attached prestige. Prestige does have value. There is nothing wrong with being disappointed in not getting your dream school. However, there is nothing wrong with going to what US News thinks is a mid-tier school, or a bottom-tier school, or an unranked school. Harvard is not better than Podunk U in BFE, America because it's in the top tier. Harvard is better than Podunk U because enough people like you carry that perception, which means that Podunk U gets applications from people who figure that, because it's at the bottom of the scholastic barrel, they have at least one guaranteed acceptance in the bag, in case the "better" schools turn them down. The relevance of this: 1/3 of the ranking number is based on the collective ability of enrolled students to pass the GRE, which means that the tiers skew entirely based on the students' perception of value. Anyone with a modicum of statistical knowledge and understanding of logical fallacies can see the problem: Harvard is better because it's Harvard; Podunk is worse because it's Podunk. Why do think schools are getting on board with opting out of US News rankings? Seriously. Cornell is listed as third in literary theory and criticism even though they have Jonathan Culler and Duke is #1, even though it's way overloaded with critical theorists (the 1990s critical theory, not theories of criticism). Sure, Cynthia Current, but Culler! US News rankings are a seething black hole of useless. While I'm not a Gladwell fan, he does a great job explaining the black hole of useless here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_gladwell The fact that you care so much about what US News thinks that you find acceptance into George Washington to be "disappointing" is really depressing. GW has Marshall Alcorn, Jennifer James, Chris Sten, and Kavita Daiya! And that's just American Literature. Seriously, Alexa Huang! Have you thought about the Peace Corps?

The difference between "grown up" and "not grown up" isn't an easy one. There's the difference between professional and not-professional, but when it comes to backpacks, that gets weird because suits and backpacks don't usually go together no matter how professional they are. We associate backpack with leisure. I wouldn't worry too much about the idea of grownup so much as finding a pack that fits, supports you, and has the types of pockets you need. If you can find a pack with a frame (or something that works like a frame) that's always a plus. Other than that, I think it's more along the lines of finding a pack that will work with your clothes. If you intend to wear pastels, day-glo colored packs are probably not a good idea. All black packs might go with most everything, but they also suck in heat, so not a good plan if you're going to carry electronics in it during sunny weather. My next pack will likely be Northface's Women's Surge II in that light grey they have (it has a stowable hip-belt and holds a 17" laptop). I'm looking into Kelty, Deuter, Timbuk2, and other brands that focus on packs for carrying loads rather than packs for fashion.

I love my spine. It's the only spine I will have and it cannot ever be replaced. I have backpacks. If I'm carrying a light load (tablet, keyboard, no more than 2 trade paperback sized books, one legal pad, and assorted daily life accoutrement, then I'll use my backpack purse (no support in it). For daily use, I use a backpack that has a rigid "frame" built into the back and has straps that help me support the load with my hips, though it doesn't have a waist strap like a hiking backpack. It's not an actual frame, internal or external, but there is some rigidity there. On days when I have to tote a lot, I dork-out and use a pull-behind bag/carrier. I'm old (for the average person here) and many women my age are starting to have to cover up things like hammer toes and varicose veins. If you wonder why older women wear pants and closed toed sandals to the beach, look at their daily wear. I may not be rocking the fashion scene, but unlike too many of my peer group, my feet still look fabulous naked. If it's about looking professional, buy an understated bag.

First, there is no such thing as a safety school. Safety schools are just as likely to reject you as any other school. There is no school you can apply to that you're practically guaranteed admission to. In fact, skip US News & World report entirely. Second, hop onto the Literature Research Center, MLA international bibliography, JSTOR, whatever, and find out who is doing work in what you're interested in (within the last two years!), and read their publications. Find out where they teach at and you have the beginnings of your list of schools. Once you have a list of schools, start looking at the dissertations of their recent graduates, particularly those in your field of interest. This will give you an idea of the quality of work the program puts out (this is better measure of top tier, mid tier, and bottom tier than anything else). It will also give you a very basic idea of how their culture works and how you might fit into it. Look at the programs and schools to see which ones you like better and which ones you don't. Next, start going through faculty publications. Read their books (or at least the blurbs on book store sites and interlibrary loan the good ones). Read their articles. Don't just look at the ones that work with the theories you're interested in, look at related theory. Feminist theory can also consider deconstruction, post-modernism, Marxism, and so on. You never know who might be a better fit, committee-wise, if your focus is too narrow. That's what I did. My top pick ended up being what other people have stuck in the "in case I don't get in elsewhere" school. I got into it and couldn't be more pleased.

Like White Gummy, I pick a medium based on my use for the book. I'm in English, so I not only have the option of getting books at the used book store, I can pick up about half of my texts on servers like Project Gutenberg. Why pay for a paper copy when I can get it online free? Right? For books I'll use again, or will maintain as a reference in either my grad career or my job, paper! For books that have annual editions, I rented them, but that was back in the day when I had "readers" for survey type courses. All theory and methodology books are on paper, though I have scanned a chapter or two that I would refer to regularly during the semester so I wouldn't have to carry the book with me (I can do pdfs on my phone, score!).

Each state is different, so you would have to go to the individual state's department of revenue, but the federal taxation issues for international students can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Foreign-Students-and-Scholars If you are exempt from taxation but your taxes are withheld anyway, you should speak with the university department that is in charge of maintaining all employee W4 or W9 forms. You can find that by looking through the human resources portion of the university website. Exemption for paying taxes in the US doesn't automatically translate into taxes not being withheld from the paycheck. Instead, tax returns are filed (due April 15) and all money withheld is returned. You should speak with someone in the university's international student office. If they don't know the answer, they should be able to direct you to someone who does know the answer. For the OP, NCSU has a very helpful page for you: http://www.ncsu.edu/human_resources/payroll/fnannualtaxfiling_000.php As far as what a TA does? I took computer science classes many years ago (flip phone were the in thing) and we had TAs. They graded papers (code). In my math classes, they had what the university called a recitation section (the professor lectured to everyone twice a week, the TA expanded the lecture to a section of students on two different days of the week, which included grading homework). In the English department, I am the sole person involved in the two sections I teach (I do all the grading, lecturing, assigning, etc.). In my current university, I draft a syllabus, but it's based on the choices and guidelines the program sets down for the course. They create the assignments, I put them in my own language, and students grumble about everything. In my previous institution, I chose books, readings, assignments, and so on. I developed the course however I chose. I would recommend that you contact either the department or the international student office and ask. You can, likely, find out which course you'll be expected to TA in for the first semester, and perhaps find a departmental TA that would be willing to help you. Some programs have a graduate student association of some sort that can give you a lot of help.

It's unlikely that the school will lose the funding and cannot offer it to others. They have already had that funding allocated to the department, who in turn has already allocated that funding to certain number of incoming graduate students. When someone turns it down, they offer it to a wait-listed person. There are likely some schools that don't do that, but bureaucracy is bureaucracy. Accepting an offer isn't the same as being registered. Personally, I think it's stupid to pay for grad school if you absolutely don't have to. I'm sure there is something about University B that makes it much better for you, scholastically, but keep in mind that grad school is about you learning to be an independent scholar, not about you acquiring new knowledge (though both are important). That old, and very true, saying "you get out of it what you get into it" goes more so for grad school. Your thesis is what it's all about. A student with an exemplary thesis from Podunk U will go further than a student with a meh thesis from Super Prestigious U. In general. Some degrees are different! In general, that's when the job is almost entirely about who you know, now what you know. If you want to captain industry, your MBA from an Ivy will parley into a better position than an MBA from nowheresville. Prestige is important (as are good looks and money), but it isn't as important as important as US News college rankings would have you believe. But, then it comes down to what is best for you, not what we think. Before you choose to foot the bill for at least the first year, check these calculators out: http://www.finaid.org/calculators/ The student loan adviser calculators will be particularly helpful in your cost-benefit analysis. When running the numbers, keep in mind that the university's financial aid department will decide how much to offer you in student loans and grants that you can get from FAFSA. You may not get enough in student loans to cover tuition, let alone fees, books, and living expenses. It doesn't always happen, but it does happen often enough to make it a consideration. University B's financial aid webpage should have either a calculator or some way for you to get a strong estimate as to how much your semester will cost you, tuition, books, fees, living expenses, so you can make a good choice for yourself. Don't forget to check into scholarships, fellowships, and grant opportunities (not FAFSA grants, either) that might be available to you. If you have to depend on a scholarship to pay, that's kind of like depending on the lottery to be your retirement plan.

You may find this vaguely helpful: http://studentaid.ed.gov/redirects/college-gov (used to be college.gov) finaid.org has great information about financing college, undergrad through doctoral. The calculators are particularly helpful when you have to face a tough decision about funding your grad program yourself or not going to school. http://www.finaid.org/calculators/ Private loans are possible, and some people have good experiences with them, but the interests rates aren't pretty. The student loan adviser calculator is eye-opening. The education-debt-to-income ratio is the percentage you can afford to pay in student loan payments when you have a job. As for finding private loans, type student loan into google. You can check with your bank.

Credit cards aren't the only way to build credit. You can get a small loan from your bank, secured or unsecured, and put the money in the bank to pay the loan back with. Credit cards are problematic in many, many ways, but they're also good in a variety of ways. If you have student loans, you have credit, even if you haven't paid on them yet. You may pay student loans, even if they are in deferment. If you don't have a student loan, you can get one to build credit with. They're generally very low interest (compared to credit cards) and you do not have to take the full amount offered to you. They are deferred while you're in school full-time, but, again, you don't have to not pay them while they're deferred. The interest rates on these loans runs in the single digits. Most credit cards will charge you in the double digits. If you're interested in a card, and you have student loans or want to contribute to a 529K account (for yourself or your future children or a relative's child), Sallie Mae has has this thing called UPromise, which offers a credit card at a generally low rate for students. 1% of purchases goes toward the loan or a 529k. The reward is nice, but the interest rate is much friendlier. Shop around. People with little credit rarely get good rates, though. Finally, if you have enough income, start an IRA or other retirement planning now. Even if you can only stick 50 bucks in a month, you're building something. 50 a month is 600 a year, plus whatever interest it earns. If you wait until you have a solid job to contribute, you're going to lose quite a bit.

Doctoral students are students. Of course, whether or not they qualify for a student credit card depends entirely on the policies of the card issuer.

My snakes are getting enough sleep. I'm not, but my snakes are. *sigh*

It is a seminar class and seminar classes are generally discussion based. You would also like to work with this professor again in the future. This tells me that it would likely be in your interests to speak with the professor. That's where things get iffy because this is about something very private for you, something that is traumatic due to discussion content, rather than stress, shyness, fear of public speaking, and so on. I would recommend that you speak with the professor about this issue because you do want to make a good impression and your silence must frustrate him. Since you are getting help for your issue, I'd recommend that you dedicate part or all of one of your sessions to resolving this problem. Discuss how much information the professor needs to have and how that information should be delivered. Everyone has a different comfort level with revealing information about their private lives. Roleplay the conversation, particularly ways of re-directing the conversation should the professor ask questions that lead you to uncomfortable territory. Mental health is HIPPA-related. For example, you can drop by office hours about five minutes before they're over and say hi, just wanted to to let you know that I'm not usually so quiet in class discussion. I've had some traumatic experiences and the content of the course strikes pretty close to home. I'm dealing with the course's content just fine, but, for some reason, I've found it extremely difficult to speak up, even though I am interested in the discussions and find the class fascinating. I feel like I'm letting the class down by not saying anything, but I am trying to be a receptive listener. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing the work and that I am participating as much as I can.

Not going to sleep until after noon? Theoretically, people can change their habits if they put some effort into it. Writer's block is less about being blocked than about outside stresses interfering with one's writing. I have ADHD. Habit is pretty much the shiny key to control city. The first step is to create a space that is for writing only. No web surfing, no reading, no noshing, no music, no TV. Yeah, a lot of people write to music and other stuff, but this isn't about productivity, but about altering a mental habit. Get the hind-brain to recognize that this is writing space and writing space only. It does help ward off the squirmies and the can't-writes. It's like an insomniac doing nothing in bed but sleeping helps them learn to sleep. The next step is to create a pre-writing routine. Before writing, I make myself a cup of herbal tea in a particular cup, do a couple salutation to the sun cycles, put on my writing clothes, enter my writing space, shut the door, and prepare the desk. Paper for notes here, pen there, cup of tea over there, pull the two or three books I will be immediately working with there, open my research-only browser (I have browsers for various tasks) and open the most likely document or database that I would be working with, turn on the fan, open the word processor, and review my previous paragraphs or outline. The next step is to write. If I were changing my writing stuff up (I'm not dependent on time, so it would be about changing my space or routine), I would start with an academic journal. I would write for a minimum amount of time about whatever came into my head regarding my current academic situation. I've written three pages that started with I am currently taking British Literature. I don't know why. And then a lengthy discussion about how I signed up for the course (a sort of step-by-step process with a review of my discussion with my adviser), and ending with what I'm going to try to get out of the course. Some days I write poetry. I have many limericks discussing quizzes. They're horrible limericks. I've got an attempt at turning Beowulf into a limerick cycle. It is not pretty. Anyway, the point is to write, not to try to write for courses or other things that will be seen by others, other than a blog or something. Because I have ADHD, I separate my creative and my academic writing, otherwise, I'd never get my academic writing done. Anyway, establishing a very specific, ordered habit can get you into a headspace where you can write whenever you choose. It's just a matter of getting the body to recognize what you want it to do so it can go along with you. Right now, the body recognizes the morning routine and rebels against changing it. So, yeah. I learned this from Hank Haney, golf guru to the stars. Well, more like watching Hank Haney try to fix Charles Barkley's golf swing. So much fail.

I'm pretty much against the idea of grades as a carrot or a stick. Grades aren't just feedback to the student on how the student is doing in the course. Grades are also, and very importantly, a certification of the students' ability to do the work in the course. If I put an A on a student's transcript in a composition course, then I'm certifying to everyone that has access to that transcript in the future (for whatever purpose) that the student's ability at composition exceeds expectations. Using grades as a motivator does not support that ethic. Now, I do use grades to motivate, in a sense. I assign readings throughout the semester and those readings are worth points. I used to do quizzes, which have no pedagogical purpose other than to motivate students to do the readings, but switched over to a reading journal that has the student answer a few questions that mirror the questions that ought to be answered when they reflexively read scholarly articles (what was the argument/purpose, what issues were addressed, what problems, what solutions, how does it impact you). They get points for that work. I think there is powerful motivation for performance through recognition, not through negative sanctions. I think that there are studies/research that backs this conclusion up, though it's been a few years since I've read any and I don't remember enough of the particulars to hunt them down.

Are you planning on getting a job or going after a PhD? My MA cohort in the literature field had a thesis option that they were discouraged from following (faculty very much enjoyed not having to deal with theses). Several of those who applied to PhD programs regretted not doing so. So, in addition to all of the great advice everyone else had, I'd suggest that you check into the relevance of thesis for your future plans, if at all possible. It's spring, so your (if you're still there) your undergrad U ought to be having career fairs. You can talk with some of the people hiring in your field. Pull some PhD universities out of a hat and browse their sites. Contact one of your undergrad profs or the PI at your grad school and ask.

Have you considered visiting the campus counseling center? I don't mean to imply that you're completely messed up in the head and need serious couch time. I also don't mean to imply that you should find an off-campus counseling center. Campus counseling centers have a lot of information and knowledge about dealing with academic based problems and you have a problem with your department's professorate. You may or may not be part of the problem (I have no idea), but in terms of odds, there is likely something about how you're communicating with these people that they're reacting to in a negative fashion. I couldn't tell you. The campus counseling folks can, though. A visit or two can help you iron out basic communication issues that you might be having. If any type of relationship is in dire need of couples counseling, it's the grad-professor relationship. I think it should be mandatory or something. Anyway. That's one avenue that you might find personally helpful.

Two things: 1. Start reading scholarly journals in your field. American Journal of Psychology, not Psychology Today! 2. Write. A lot. If you can, find an online forum where you can hold written conversations with people advanced in the field. I like to hang around sociology blogs written by sociologists. Well, three: 3. There are some basic composition books that can guide you, like William Zinnser's On Writing Well or Joseph Williams' Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. The big thing is that writing is like speaking and walking and country line dancing. The more you do it, the better you get at it. The less you do it, the worse you get at it. And, like country line dancing, doing writing (or dancing) in a different field (or style, say, a the tango) will help your writing (or dancing) ability overall, but it won't necessarily improve writing in your discipline (dancing the country line dance) since you still have to learn the conventions and expectations (the dance steps) involved in your discipline's writing (country line dancing). I think the metaphor ran a bit long.

The very Podunk U I did my undergrad and MA has a name very similar to a major R1 university. An international student accidentally enrolled there, thinking that had been at the major university. Imagine the disappointment. The school paper and website had student's beaming face for a while, telling the world about the happy accident that brought our international friend to the fold. Surprising to no one (but the administration, apparently), the international student enrolled elsewhere the next semester. My department chair told us about an episode with the Library of Congress, that gave her keys and privileges because they thought she'd come from the R1; until she signed a book out and they discovered that while these universities sound the same, they aren't. They were very kind, but when she came back the next do to continue her research, suddenly she wasn't allowed to do what she'd been doing. Those tales could have intimidated me when it comes to rankings. But, a very long time ago, before most of the students I teach were born, my guy was a PFC in the US Army doing some temporary duty with the big wigs in his battalion down in Fort Hood. He had the exquisite pleasure of dining in some new addition with the commanding general, who was something of a good ol' boy in the Texas fashion, not the rich and powerful fashion. The general (two stars, if I recall correctly), liked to talk with the bottom of the food chain of visiting brass because he got a better feel for who the brass were as commanders and as people. So, he asked my guy what he thought about Fort Hood. My guy said, "It's a great post, sir, except that it's in Texas." The general told my guy how everyone in his family had been from Texas, his wife was from Texas, he'd sent his wife home to Texas so their kids could be born in Texas, and then asked my guy, my PFC guy, what he thought about Fort Hood. My guy's entire chain of command, the ones standing where the general couldn't see them, were all looking terrified and waving their hands in the whole don't-do-it fashion. My guy said, "Like I said, sir, it's a great post. Except that it's in Texas." The general laughed and said the Army version of liking my guy's guts. Even said that my guy was good enough to be a Texan. Later, when he was getting yelled at by the colonel, and eventually asked what the heck he was thinking, my guy said, "What is going to do? Bend my dog tags and send me to Saudi?" (This was around Desert Storm time.) The lesson that I very much took to heart: there exists inequity in social class, prestige, rank, economics, power, knowledge, and all of those things; but those inequities only have the power to affect a person's individual worth when that person believes they exist. Sure, Cooley's idea of the Looking Glass Self is right on, and, sure, just because I think I'm as worthwhile as the spawn of our nation's version of royalty doesn't mean that anyone else will, or has to. But, I know that just because they might have the better end of the inequity stick, that doesn't make them better than me in any other way. In fact, I'm full of myself enough to believe that the person carrying around the short end of the inequity stick in the more prestigious places is better than those who've had that prestige all along. The dues they paid to get there were cheap and easy. The dues I paid weren't. So, to answer your question, yes. You are going to feel like an imposter and you are going feel like a duck out of water, like someone behind your cohort, and so on. Another thing I learned from my guy: the fight is won before the first swing is every taken. When you size up your future battlefield (and grad school is its own version of battle), and you question your own competence for that battle, you will turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The good news is that everyone else is doing exactly what you're doing, except for the undergraduate star at that university that has moved into the grad program at that university. They're used to being coddled and told how fabbo they are in that context, so they're already convinced of their own superiority. But I don't think I'm saying anything that everyone here hasn't already learned on their own.

My guy isn't in school, but when I applied to programs, I ignored programs in the parts of the country that wouldn't be good for him and, once I picked out a list of programs, I gave him the list to veto. He crossed off one program that I was ecstatically interested in. I never think about the what-if of it all and when the thought begins to the get the merest glimmer of considering the merest possibility of crossing my mind, I firmly reflect on the good stuff I got now. (Shout out to my boy Douglas Adams!) Of course, all of my dark clouds have three or four silver linings. I'm relentlessly bright-side. If I wasn't also mean, I would be insufferable. The point here, I have good stuff in the program to dwell on and always will (it's just my personality). Seriously, I sprained my ankle in boot camp, where I spent weeks getting about 5 hours of sleep and doing over 100 pushups a day (no sense of humor there, whatsoever), and living in one gigantic room with a dwindling number of women that were better suited, personality wise, to the Real Housewives of New Jersey than to the Navy, and the only thing I could think was, yay! Instead of pushups, I'll get to do crunches! Anyway. The point is kind of that it's about what's inside of you. You applied to this lesser program that you got into, so I'm assuming you found it redeeming in some fashion, that it fit you in some way. Hopefully you didn't just apply because it was in your field and close to your SO's choice. LDRs can also work out well. It's one of those things where you have to make a choice and no matter what choice you make, you're going to have an "if only" to hang all of your regrets on when things aren't going as well as you wished they would. I doesn't matter which place you pick, you will have those moments of bad where you can resent something or someone. Your girl has a choice she can make, too. She can skip her own grad school and go with you to the one you choose and apply to the one your prefer, or nearby, next cycle and hope she gets in, or she can go to the one that accepted her and live with the choice you have to make (the nearby school or an LDR). She can resent when the "if onlys" roll around just as easily as you can. Only you know what you're like inside. You know which choice is the one you can live with most, and how easily you resent and regret. There are steps you can take to reduce opportunity for resentment, whatever choice is made. Semi-regular sessions with a campus counselor when stress is getting to you or you're noticing a downward trend in your emotional state. Skype, with an LDR, and body pillow swaps (my guy was in the military; I found it very comfortable to sleep on his pillow when he was gone, until his scent was smooshed out, at least), and so on. I think that what it boils down to is that whatever choices you and your SO make, self-awareness, maturity, and asking for help when needed can make a big difference.

I'm willing to bet that there is one massive difference between your dissertation research and the dissertation research your friends in science are conducting. You're on your own. You meet with your adviser/committee, and you do all of your research at home or in the library, maybe in your office, if you have one or have room or have the quiet. Your science-based friends do their research in a lab. It's not like they can cart the equipment home and do it. Labs can be solitary places, but they likely have to share lab space with others, and they have to talk about their research with people who aren't advisers, if for no other reason than to figure out who gets to use the microscope when. Literature can become a very solitary research endeavor. I'm still doing coursework, so I still have regularly scheduled class meetings where I am involved in lengthy, mediated discussions about literature. It's exciting and its energizing. The discussions allow me to argue with my peers, debate points, introduce theories, and so on and so forth. Once I'm ABD, that dynamic that makes literature so exciting is going to be gone. I'm not ABD, I'm not even in my reading hours, when I might as well be ABD. I have that dynamic, that interaction with my peers that's specifically about literature that I'm interested in. I find that class discussion is a major motivator for me when it comes to writing papers and making presentations (in class). There's an energy there, you know? My university doesn't have reading groups in the English department, though it does offer a faculty sponsored discussion group (they call it a symposium) where anyone who wants to can read a critical article on a piece of literature, then sit around a bar and argue with each other. This discussion happens twice a semester. I'm planning on starting a reading group for American literature, somehow, once I get the logistics worked out. There are people interested in the idea already, and I have discussed it with them enough to know about time commitment issues and to try to figure out how to work within that. It's one thing to read a book a week, plus critical articles and theory, for a class; it's quite another to do it for an extra-curricular group. Anyway. It's my hope that a strong reading group can provide that energy for me once I'm done with coursework and I've moved into reading and dissertation. It's like making sure that I have a place to brainstorm and discuss literature with people who are looking for the same kind of thing. I don't know if that will work, 'cause I don't have a group available and I'm not out of coursework, but I hope it dows.

You will find this singularly unhelpful: your question is one that the composition and rhetoric field has been wrestling with for decades. Are undergrads prepared for writing once they graduate? How can a comp program prepare them? And on. And on. Writing is such a broad thing to discuss that your question can't be answered simply. What do you mean by writing? What part of writing? I find that the average undergraduate in a comp class doesn't learn much about writing that they don't already know from high school. They know how to put together an essay. They know about as much about spelling and grammar as they're going to know without a concerted effort on their part. This has less to do with teaching writing than the way written language is learned. Students that do not read and write regularly do not progress as well as students that do. You learn to write the way you learn to speak; not in a course, but by doing it and absorbing language patterns. Even when you get your bachelor's degree, the vast, vast majority of the academic writing you will have done will have been in subjects other than psychology. Half of your credits are gen ed, few high schools offer more than on psychology course. Most of your reading in psychology will have been textbooks, not journal articles. So, how can you absorb the language of psychology academics when you don't participate in it as much? The point is that your courses have prepared you for graduate writing, but they've also not prepared you for it. For example, your English class has (most likely) told you to write a paper about writing in the psychology field, but the paper is to be done in MLA. It is also going to be commented on and evaluated by a person who doesn't know very much about writing in the psychology field. As a person that writes sociological papers for English classes, this is not a recipe for writing success. Not because "writing" is taught wrong in composition courses, but because "writing" is no different than "speaking." Put an Australian, a Texan, and a Brit in a room and ask them to evaluate the quality of the spoken language in a dubbed Jackie Chan film and you're not going to get terribly consistent results. Add into this whole thing the simple fact that faculty outside of the composition department don't consider the teaching of writing part of their job description. It's why we have composition classes, right? So why should they do it. Send students to the writing center and writing nasty emails to the head of the composition program when a particularly clueless batch of students rolls through. Composition teaches important things, but it can't really teach field-specific things, and writing isn't a class that you take once and you've either learned it or not. Writing is one of those things that requires continual maintenance. Most of us had to take a foreign language course in high school. How much of it do people remember a couple of years later? Even the ones that got As? Unless it's in daily use, it's lost. So the key here isn't to worry so much about how much your classes are teaching you about writing in psychology as an undergrad or as a grad student, or as a graduate with a job. The key is to figure out how you expand your ability to learn how the field uses written language. There's only two ways to do that: read current publications where people in the field discuss the things in their field (your textbook does not qualify), and two, write the way people in the field write. Use APA, for example, in any gen ed classes that don't specify a style. Most of them expect students to use MLA because comp teachers usually require it. Write your essays psychology style, even when you're not in psychology classes. Get creative when you're assigned a research paper. If your US Politics class asks for a paper on the 2008 election, write about the psychology theory that informed the advertising choices the candidates made and use the politics to support yourself. You are prepared to write for psychology. You know the basics about using written language. You've been taught how to develop a paper. You've learned how to incorporate research into your papers. You aren't prepared because you don't write many psychology papers. Most likely, however, you don't feel prepare because you haven't learned the language yet. Undergrad psychology students tend to use "emotion" rather than "affect," for example. Papers written by people named doctor talking to other people named doctor are intimidating. The key is to push that aside and learn what you can from those readings, instead. It's a good idea to read and write a little every day. It's also a good idea to read a journal article every week or so. You will find them easier to read the more you read them.

My first two sentences (50 words) answered a bunch of questions I thought relevant to the adcomm's interests. My transcript reads like a community college's course offerings. I'm a single course shy of 200 undergrad credits, basically. I, personally, had to address why I couldn't seem to make a decision and stick with it. I had to address why I suddenly knew what to do, particularly since my MA was in a totally different emphasis. Why should a literature and comp/rhet program spend a lick of time on someone with an MA in writing poetry? Why should they think I'd be successful in my pursuit of a PhD when my transcript and my collected degrees and publications clearly show that I flit from field to field and emphasis to emphasis? Seriously. The last honors society I was inducted into was the math one. Sheesh. I couldn't come out and say, yeah, I'm all ADHD when it comes to coursework. And you'll probably have to have people from three disciplines on my diss committee, but we can have fun! So, my first two sentences were a personal story. Well, I read these two books, had an epiphany, and it was a literary-theory connection that got me all excited, like a labrador puppy with a tennis ball. The story explained how my two disciplines complemented each other in my scholarship. It explained how my two disciplines were actually interdisciplinary. It explained why I went up the literature road, rather than the sociology road. It explained why I got an MA in creative writing, but changed to literature. It explained why my writing sample was written in a way the average literature professor would consider backward. It explained why I preferred American Lit, even though my writing sample was about Brit lit. It showed that had clear understanding of theory, the context of the literature and the theorist, and how these things work together, both in the expected way (interpreting literature) and the unexpected way (where creative writing comes into it). I wouldn't recommend that anyone else have these two sentences that do all of that unless they're me. I would recommend that anyone starting an SOP forget the idea that there's a standard way of starting the thing. It has an introduction, but what the content of that introduction should be is as varied as the content of any essay's introduction. I would recommend that people start the SOP in a way that answers questions the adcomm might have, like, why you and not some other applicant. The more work a sentence can accomplish, the better.