danieleWrites

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.

From personal experience, if you don't have to have a job, don't have a job. What constitutes the criteria for "have to" depends entirely on individual circumstances. I know someone who "had to" have a part time job in high school because he "had to" have more access to the Gap than his allowance permitted. Back then, I judged harshly. These days? Who am I to pass judgment on anyone's necessities, beyond the universal ones. The only things I need are food, water, and shelter. Everything else is "want". I'm tangenting unnecessarily.

Anyway. I recommend against a job simply because they take away hours that can be otherwise engaged in scholarship. Employers (aside from GTA employers) think that everything else in your life is secondary to the job. For those of us who TA, our departments usually tell us that our own education comes first, and our teaching responsibilities second. TAs have a habit of sacrificing their time for students. Employers don't expect people to focus on their work outside of work hours, but when there's a work-school conflict? Or a choice between sleeping and fulfilling an obligation? Employers don't think you can call in sick when you've been up doing school work for two days. They expect you to put the school stuff aside and get rest.

It comes down to this, in my opinion, there are only 24 hours in a day. The more of those hours you can free up to do your scholarship, the greater the quality of scholarship. I consider a solid 12 hour chunk of that 24 hours to be un-freeable, in general. 8 hours of sleep, commute time, personal care and other chores, personal time (it's important to give one's self time to do leisure, even if that's just watching re-runs on Netflix). That means the other 12 hours are free for school and work. Time is a commodity that has to be factored into any cost-benefit analysis.

The feasibility of working (not assistanceships, to be clear) comes right down to a cost-benefit analysis and nothing else. What will it cost you to work? What benefits will you have from it? Are those benefits worth the cost? And one question, because it's school, if your cost-benefit analysis makes it clear that work would be beneficial, but you discover, after trying to work a job and do school, that you actually can't do it, what would happen if you couldn't have that income?

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.

I have ADHD. I made it through two BAs with honors before I was diagnosed. I was not diagnosed until I was an adult and my kid got the diagnosis.

Your undergrad counselor was sticking to the letter of the DSM methodology of diagnosing disorders. According the DSM, having the traits/symptoms of a disorder is not enough. The traits/symptoms must impair daily life. A person with a high GPA is not obviously impaired by ADHD, or so your counselor thought. Your counselor is quite obviously not an ADHD specialist.

Get re-evaluated by someone that specializes in ADHD, or barring that, learning disorders. The problem with adults that weren't diagnosed as children is that with maturity comes coping strategies that mask the problem. For a lot of people, that's actually all they need in order to deal with ADHD in their lives. For people in grad school, where second chances aren't easily obtained, coping strategies may not evolve enough on their own. To compound all of this, most people who have ADHD without knowing that this is the thing causing their problems, won't know what to tell the doctor/counselor about how it impairs their daily lives.

An ADHD diagnosis is problematic in more ways than just figuring out if it's ADHD or some other problem, such as stress, lack of sleep, or proper nutrition. ADHD has been over-diagnosed to the point where "everyone knows" that if a kid doesn't sit perfectly still, teachers and parents want to shove pills down their throat to control them, rather than let a kid be a kid. Adults, particularly younger ones, have the added problem that "everyone knows" that they're just looking to score legal methamphetamines. Undiagnosed adults with ADHD are usually confronted with the things that your counselor told you, simply because ADHD is our cultural bad guy.

So. Find someone that specializes in learning disorders and get evaluated. If you are evaluated with ADHD, medication is the least part of the treatment. Behavior modification is the important part. ADHD coaches/counselors teach people coping strategies, and more importantly, how to modify their behavior to use those coping strategies daily.

If you aren't diagnosed with ADHD, or the evaluator thinks your ADHD is too mild for much in terms of treatment, you can still find the tips and tricks ADHD people use. It's pretty much about organizing, routines, habits, and creating an environment. For example, a person with ADHD would set aside a space that is used solely for study. No other activities allowed in that space. This helps to eliminate distractions that are internal, as well as external. ADHD has a strong impulse control problem, not just an inattentive and restless problem. If there's a space that a person, by habit and routine, has ingrained into a single-use place, it's easier to control the impulse. I don't write papers in the same place I surf the web, because otherwise, I'll find myself surfing the web when I should be writing, even when I don't have writer's block problems. The strategies that help a person get a handle on their ADHD can help anyone.

You can google ADHD tips or ADHD tricks and get a ton of tips on how to manage daily life. University libraries will have books aimed at people who want to enter the learning disabilities field in some fashion, so they'll also have books on how ADHD counselors/doctors/coaches can help people with ADHD manage their lives.

Too many people think that all they need is an ADHD diagnoses and a prescription, then magically, the ADHD goes away. As if. The meds make it possible for me to read all of the words in a text in one sitting, from front to finish. They don't make it possible for me to understand it any easier, or to not be distracted when I'm reading, or to get my work done when I'd rather be doing something else, or to sit still completely when I'm doing it, or any number of things. Meds don't make me add stuff to my calendar so I don't forget to do it. They do make it possible for me to hit a golf ball consistently, or to drive with the radio on (when I get to drive). They make a huge difference, but they aren't a cure. That's where behavior modification comes in. And that's where, even if you never get diagnosed with it, you can do something for yourself anyway.

Crate training is a must for any dog that will live inside. People tend to think of it as cruel (doggie jail!), but dogs like dens. We covered the dog crate with a blanket, stuck a pillow in it, and pretty much couldn't keep the dogs out of it. The crate thing helps when you have to let repair-people in, or you're dealing with behavior issues or potty training issues, and a variety of things.

Make sure that you learn the laws of the town. Some people like to chain the dog up in the yard while they're away and a significant number of places call that illegal. No dogs on chains without supervision.

Make sure that you have the money to spend on quality food, various accessories (good leashes, etc.), licensing, and vet care. IMOM does great work providing grants for vet bills, but they've only got so much money. Dogs are expensive when they get sick.

Even if you get a dog that's been well trained, go through an obedience class with it. Obedience classes are more about training owners than training the dog. AKC runs several really good programs, like basic obedience and canine good citizen. A well trained dog is a joy. A dog that trains you, instead? Not so much.

Finally, you can't take muttly to conferences. Pre-plan pet sitting. You can check into doggy day care businesses, as well. Every semester I seem to have one day where I can't come home for about 14 hours. Dunno why, but it always works out that way. If I had a dog and no guy to be my doggy-daddy (that sounds weird), I'd take used a doggy day care for my long day. Or some other dog sitter. Large cities have dog walkers. The best business ever has been the yard cleaning industry. Once a week (or more often, depending on yard and dog needs) they clean the mess. Heaven! And not cheap.

I have snakes. I keep them in natural vivs, so I have to spend more of my energy taking care of their plants and soil than I do caring for them. I feed them two or three times a month (depending on season), and spend an aggravating couple of hours every month or so unwinding several feet of shed skin from plants, branches, and whatnot. But, I can leave the house for a few weeks without doing anything more than letting my non-phobic neighbor have a key and instructions on how to use the propane heater should the electricity fail for more than a day during the winter. I have a terrestrial, temperate species, so they spend most of their time snoozing in the dirt. And snake really are cuddly. They're just not the warm kind of cuddly.

From personal experience, if you don't have to have a job, don't have a job. What constitutes the criteria for "have to" depends entirely on individual circumstances. I know someone who "had to" have a part time job in high school because he "had to" have more access to the Gap than his allowance permitted. Back then, I judged harshly. These days? Who am I to pass judgment on anyone's necessities, beyond the universal ones. The only things I need are food, water, and shelter. Everything else is "want". I'm tangenting unnecessarily.

Anyway. I recommend against a job simply because they take away hours that can be otherwise engaged in scholarship. Employers (aside from GTA employers) think that everything else in your life is secondary to the job. For those of us who TA, our departments usually tell us that our own education comes first, and our teaching responsibilities second. TAs have a habit of sacrificing their time for students. Employers don't expect people to focus on their work outside of work hours, but when there's a work-school conflict? Or a choice between sleeping and fulfilling an obligation? Employers don't think you can call in sick when you've been up doing school work for two days. They expect you to put the school stuff aside and get rest.

It comes down to this, in my opinion, there are only 24 hours in a day. The more of those hours you can free up to do your scholarship, the greater the quality of scholarship. I consider a solid 12 hour chunk of that 24 hours to be un-freeable, in general. 8 hours of sleep, commute time, personal care and other chores, personal time (it's important to give one's self time to do leisure, even if that's just watching re-runs on Netflix). That means the other 12 hours are free for school and work. Time is a commodity that has to be factored into any cost-benefit analysis.

The feasibility of working (not assistanceships, to be clear) comes right down to a cost-benefit analysis and nothing else. What will it cost you to work? What benefits will you have from it? Are those benefits worth the cost? And one question, because it's school, if your cost-benefit analysis makes it clear that work would be beneficial, but you discover, after trying to work a job and do school, that you actually can't do it, what would happen if you couldn't have that income?

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 have ADHD. I made it through two BAs with honors before I was diagnosed. I was not diagnosed until I was an adult and my kid got the diagnosis.

Your undergrad counselor was sticking to the letter of the DSM methodology of diagnosing disorders. According the DSM, having the traits/symptoms of a disorder is not enough. The traits/symptoms must impair daily life. A person with a high GPA is not obviously impaired by ADHD, or so your counselor thought. Your counselor is quite obviously not an ADHD specialist.

Get re-evaluated by someone that specializes in ADHD, or barring that, learning disorders. The problem with adults that weren't diagnosed as children is that with maturity comes coping strategies that mask the problem. For a lot of people, that's actually all they need in order to deal with ADHD in their lives. For people in grad school, where second chances aren't easily obtained, coping strategies may not evolve enough on their own. To compound all of this, most people who have ADHD without knowing that this is the thing causing their problems, won't know what to tell the doctor/counselor about how it impairs their daily lives.

An ADHD diagnosis is problematic in more ways than just figuring out if it's ADHD or some other problem, such as stress, lack of sleep, or proper nutrition. ADHD has been over-diagnosed to the point where "everyone knows" that if a kid doesn't sit perfectly still, teachers and parents want to shove pills down their throat to control them, rather than let a kid be a kid. Adults, particularly younger ones, have the added problem that "everyone knows" that they're just looking to score legal methamphetamines. Undiagnosed adults with ADHD are usually confronted with the things that your counselor told you, simply because ADHD is our cultural bad guy.

So. Find someone that specializes in learning disorders and get evaluated. If you are evaluated with ADHD, medication is the least part of the treatment. Behavior modification is the important part. ADHD coaches/counselors teach people coping strategies, and more importantly, how to modify their behavior to use those coping strategies daily.

If you aren't diagnosed with ADHD, or the evaluator thinks your ADHD is too mild for much in terms of treatment, you can still find the tips and tricks ADHD people use. It's pretty much about organizing, routines, habits, and creating an environment. For example, a person with ADHD would set aside a space that is used solely for study. No other activities allowed in that space. This helps to eliminate distractions that are internal, as well as external. ADHD has a strong impulse control problem, not just an inattentive and restless problem. If there's a space that a person, by habit and routine, has ingrained into a single-use place, it's easier to control the impulse. I don't write papers in the same place I surf the web, because otherwise, I'll find myself surfing the web when I should be writing, even when I don't have writer's block problems. The strategies that help a person get a handle on their ADHD can help anyone.

You can google ADHD tips or ADHD tricks and get a ton of tips on how to manage daily life. University libraries will have books aimed at people who want to enter the learning disabilities field in some fashion, so they'll also have books on how ADHD counselors/doctors/coaches can help people with ADHD manage their lives.

Too many people think that all they need is an ADHD diagnoses and a prescription, then magically, the ADHD goes away. As if. The meds make it possible for me to read all of the words in a text in one sitting, from front to finish. They don't make it possible for me to understand it any easier, or to not be distracted when I'm reading, or to get my work done when I'd rather be doing something else, or to sit still completely when I'm doing it, or any number of things. Meds don't make me add stuff to my calendar so I don't forget to do it. They do make it possible for me to hit a golf ball consistently, or to drive with the radio on (when I get to drive). They make a huge difference, but they aren't a cure. That's where behavior modification comes in. And that's where, even if you never get diagnosed with it, you can do something for yourself anyway.

Well, millions of people do this kind of thing every year. Married people in the military (pretty much any military in the world) are told where they will live, usually without much input from them, and they can either leave their family behind or take the family with. Most bring the family along. Now, the military does help with moving expenses, and there's enough income from one salary for frugal people to do fine with (or more, depending on rank), so the problems the OP will face with family are different, at least economically.

There are some social issues that you may or may not have problems with. He gets all of these looks whenever he talks about how we moved here for me to get my PhD. Sure, he's proud of me (his buttons are busting), but people find it very weird that a man will just give up everything and follow a wife's ambitions. They always ask him what he does. She's getting a Phd, what does he do? The men I know that drag their wives along to grad programs, post-docs, or professorships? Their women don't have this. He's getting a Phd, but what does she do?

The moving with the SO thing is problematic, no matter who follows who or why anyone moves. Moving is stressful. Jobs, schools, daily life: all stressful. The key is to make sure the relationship stays healthy. I could tell you what my guy and I do to maintain a healthy relationship, but we're not the same people. Making time for each other, communicating clearly when there are issues, actually listening (thinking about what the other person is saying empathetically, rather than planning what to say), and so on are the obvious things. But what works for you? You know.

It can be done, and it can be done well with satisfaction for everyone in the relationship.

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.

Well, millions of people do this kind of thing every year. Married people in the military (pretty much any military in the world) are told where they will live, usually without much input from them, and they can either leave their family behind or take the family with. Most bring the family along. Now, the military does help with moving expenses, and there's enough income from one salary for frugal people to do fine with (or more, depending on rank), so the problems the OP will face with family are different, at least economically.

There are some social issues that you may or may not have problems with. He gets all of these looks whenever he talks about how we moved here for me to get my PhD. Sure, he's proud of me (his buttons are busting), but people find it very weird that a man will just give up everything and follow a wife's ambitions. They always ask him what he does. She's getting a Phd, what does he do? The men I know that drag their wives along to grad programs, post-docs, or professorships? Their women don't have this. He's getting a Phd, but what does she do?

The moving with the SO thing is problematic, no matter who follows who or why anyone moves. Moving is stressful. Jobs, schools, daily life: all stressful. The key is to make sure the relationship stays healthy. I could tell you what my guy and I do to maintain a healthy relationship, but we're not the same people. Making time for each other, communicating clearly when there are issues, actually listening (thinking about what the other person is saying empathetically, rather than planning what to say), and so on are the obvious things. But what works for you? You know.

It can be done, and it can be done well with satisfaction for everyone in the relationship.

The prompt defined the word "good" for you when it comes to selecting a topic. A good topic for you is one that 1) interests you, and 2) you can engage critically.

Good is one of those ridiculous words, like original, in topic/subject selection. Good or original or any of those qualifiers gets stuck in the brain as a topic/subject that will impress others (selection committees, scholarship committees, dissertation/thesis committees, journal editors, conference committees, and so on and so forth). Here's the key (and I speak of this with all of the authority of someone who has read hundreds of essays by the same kind of person looking for the same kind of outcome: an A) to "good". It's not the topic. It's how you engage with the topic. The fact that a student knows about a topic of interest to me, or to academia, or to whatever, is not impressive. Even if they've accumulated a surreal amount of knowledge. The fact that a student can take a topic (even a topic that they think others will think is banal) and apply critical thinking and the use of outside theories, perspectives, sources, and whatnot impresses me.

Isaac Newton (heard of him?) took the most banal of all topics in the 18th century (gravity, boooooring, you drop something, it falls, what else is there to know?) and critically engaged with it.

So. What are your basic interests and how can you turn that interest into a critical, thoughtful discussion of the topic?

I like comic books, and Batman has always been one of my faves. This was interesting: http://werecyclemovies.com/2013/08/31/gotham-city-and-the-metropolis-of-tomorrow/ Note: critical engagement with a comic book and its film adaptations. It doesn't cure cancer. It doesn't take inspiration from a falling apple to write some of our basic laws of physics. But it's still a good topic for that writer.

Whether your scholarship committee would agree with me about that Batman thing is a whole 'nother story. You cannot know what biases they have. If the Batman thing were a scholarship essay, but the people on the scholarship committee were raging Marvel fans? You lose. You can't try to find "safe" topics that would appeal to them because you don't really know where they stand on an issue, if you even know who they are in the first place, so can look them up. Besides, most people can spot pandering from people who want something. King Lear is the exception, not the rule.

So, do what the prompt suggests. Pick of topic of interest to you and show the scholarship people how you can engage with the academic way (with critical thinking).


(Huh. Apparently a lower case a and a close parenthesis makes an emoticon face.)

Thanks to all of the replies. I forgot how long the original post was, so thank you for reading through it!
Update: It's been about a month since I switched projects and advisors, and I am more convinced than ever that I made the right choice. I am so much more interested in my new project and I have (so far) a very productive working relationship with my new advisory committee. I do agree, however, that I shouldn't have been so timid when I first began my graduate program. I believe the whole problem stems from that. 
I ended up emailing him back and explained a little bit more in depth about what was going on concerning the project. I told him I shouldn't have worked on the old project for as long as I did because it wasn't fair to him or the archaeology site (sometimes archaeologists get very attached to their sites and talk about them like this - we're weirdly nerdy). I got some of my backbone back by telling him that I do in fact want to succeed in graduate school, but that would only happen if I follow the research path I am actually interested in. My email didn't go into much detail about my depression or other related things because my old advisor gossips too much with his favorites and I don't want my personal business spread around the department. My counselor and I did talk about this whole thing after the fact, and she told me he also must have "kind of lost it" in order to have responded like that. Apparently, I unknowingly struck a sensitive nerve. I guess we had more in common than I realized.
He just replied "well, if that is what you want to do..." and asked for all of my lab keys back. The passive aggressiveness has continued, but it has not seeped anymore into the course where he is my professor. I would never tolerate something like that for long. My former advisor has done some things lately that I think are meant to be passive aggressive toward me but nothing too upsetting. He has gotten more possessive, like mysteriously putting all the equipment on lock down and changing electronic door passwords for vague reasons. It feels like he is cutting me out or pushing me away, but I am perfectly fine with this since it doesn't prohibit my research at all. Every time I pass him in the hallway, I just give him a genuine grin because I no longer have to work under him : ) 
In sum, I have learned a lot in graduate school but I have learned the most from this whole situation. I made mistakes, tons of them, but I think I have gained insight that I didn't even know I needed. I am 10 times more confident and focused than I was before. No one, not even a tenured professor, can try to convince me that I am a failure when I know I am not. Learning how to work with people different than you is very important. Even more important is knowing when you are in an unhealthy situation and doing something about it.  

First, my credentials. Well. I can spell my own name, though I don't usually know exactly how old I am. I'm within a year or two, but I'm usually wrong until I've done some subtraction. I teach composition and like to write calculus equations on the board when I take classes in poetry writing. But, here's my real credentials: consider what is written herein in conjunction with what the various instructions on SOPs that you've read have said, with the requirements the program you are applying to has put forth, and with your own experience as a writer. Do you think I know what I'm talking about? Should you pay any attention to it? Is any of it useful?
 
Second, I'm not going to give you a formula for what the standard SOP is like, or a list of things the various thousands of admissions committees will be looking for. There are plenty of prescriptions on the internet, many of them written by professors who have presumably gotten sick of badly written SOPs.
 
Third, I'm not promising that SOP writing be easier after this. It'll be harder, actually. I'm not promising that you'll get in to any place you desire, or that there is any one best thing to put in the SOP to get noticed. That would be totally impossible. Each discipline has its own needs and values, as does each university, each department, and each faculty member on the admissions committee (adcomm). There is no one size and it doesn't fit most, let alone all. There are conventions (use Standard English, for one), but other than include your research interests, I won't advocate that any one thing is strictly necessary. I leave that up to the more knowledgeable.
 
The advice:
 
First thing is to deeply understand that you should write an SOP for each program. Most people take this to mean write one master SOP and then tweak as necessary to make the one SOP applicable to each university (U of A becomes U of B, Professor X becomes Professor Y). You can do that. You can be very successful doing that. You most likely, really shouldn't do it.
 
The next thing to understand is the SOP's purpose. Why do the adcomms want to see SOPs? Shouldn't transcripts, letters of recommendation, and a writing sample do it? After all, transcripts and samples show the actual scholarship and the letters verify it. The SOP isn't for showing scholarship off, or to act like a resume, or anything. So why do the adcomms want an SOP? Why are the SOPs one of those make-it-or-fail things? What is the SOP's purpose? In job hunting terms, the SOP is like a cover letter. The cover letter is to make clear connections between the resume and the job ad. For you, its primary purpose is to make the adcomm offer you admission with full funding. For the adcomm, its primary purpose is to help them see how you would fit into their program (make connections between their program and you). By fit, I mean do they have faculty (or enough faculty) in your area of research interest that can advise, mentor, supervise, and/or committee you through the program to get your degree? Do you have the kind of understanding of the discipline, your research interests, and their program that would make you successful? Do they have something to teach you? Offer you? What can you offer them? They want to brag on you as much as you want to brag about them. If they offer you admission, will you be a good scholar? A good student? Here is the most basic question the SOP should answer: What is it about you that makes you a better prospect than everyone else who's applying?
 
Understanding the SOP's purpose, in practical terms, means that you will know what to put into it and what to leave out of it. And how to phrase it.
 
So, with the purpose in mind, there comes the question: what should you put into it and leave out of it? What format should you use? (MLA? APA? Is footnoting okay?! What about citation?!) Should I stick in a personal story that everyone seems to recommend, except for the half that don't? My research interests? The story about why I got on F in that one, very important class? I'm not going to answer those questions because I can't. Every discipline and department is different. I will give you an answer you won't like: research. Find out the requirements each program you're interested in has for the SOP, think of the SOP's purpose: and now research.
 
Research is one of the basic keys to writing an SOP. It's no different than the writing sample you'll be including in your application packet. For each program you apply to, do some research. How much research you need to do depends on a lot of things, the least of which is your personality. More research does not automatically mean a better SOP. Less research doesn't automatically mean a better one, either. What makes the right amount of research? The ability to craft an SOP that is specific for the program that you're getting into. Here's some ideas (not an exhaustive, inclusive list of what to do) on what to research:
The program itself. Look at the recent graduates and, if possible, read their theses and/or dissertations, at least in part. The acknowledgements can give you an idea about the program's culture. The introduction can give you an idea about what kind of scholarship the program produces and expects. It will also, and this is very important, give you an idea as to how the program uses language. If you speak to them in their own language, that helps your case. You've likely done this, if not, seriously, you should have done this. Look at the program's website and read it all. What kind of classes are offered for both undergrad and grad. Who are the faculty, the tenured, the assistant, the visiting, the emeritus, and the graduate students. What kind of ties to the community (both academic and their local town) do they like to talk about? Do they talk about how their graduate students are working with community partners? Do they host conferences? What happened at the last one? This gives you a taste of the program's culture. The faculty. All of them that might be on the adcomm and the ones that are relevant or somewhat relevant to your interests. Crack open JSTOR etc. and search for recent faculty publications. If you're basing your interest on a faculty member on the interests they've got listed on the site and a reference to them in an article from a decade ago, or worse, only their reputation, you don't have a strong basis to establish clear reasons why they have anything to offer you. Read their recent publications, see who they name drop in terms of theory, other faculty, and so on. Make a list of what each faculty member can offer you in terms of research, not just the ones that are directly related to it. If you're into studying apples, but Dr. V works with oranges, think about how Dr. V's work might help you out. Take notes when you research. Each program has a bunch of people, and you're likely applying to multiple programs. It's easier to refer to notes than to go back and look it up all over again. What's happening in the field with your current research interests, if necessary. This is so you can situate your research interests in the discipline, and then situation your research interests in the program. You can just tell them what you're research interests are and leave the situating to them, but you can lose that chance to sell yourself as the best amongst the rest. Research you. Yup. You. Scribble out some lists or paragraphs or whatever that inventories you. Who are your influences? Who are the theorists you keep coming back to? Who are the theorists you loathe, mock, and/or ridicule? What are your research interests in general and specifically and anywhere in between? Some SOPs will need to be more general, some will need to be more specific. Length restrictions, what you found out about the program, the faculty, the state of the discipline, and so on, can alter this for you. What kind of scholar are you? Student? What's the difference? How do you manage your time? Stress? Health? Do you expect to bring your dog? Do you have health issues? Do you have any academic things that are a negative? If you do, how negative are they? It's easy to see that as an either it's entirely bad, or it's somewhere in the huge good category, but some things are negatives that need to be addressed for certain programs, while other negatives can be ignored, or you should discuss with the one relevant letter writer so they can address it. While Sam ultimately received a C in the Research Methods course, the grade doesn't reflect the actual scholarship as Sam fell ill during the mid-term and consequently failed it; my course policies do not permit re-taking the test. What are the good things about you? Not just the grades, awards, publications, and presentations, but also the character traits. What are you weaknesses? Don't do the job interview baloney, my greatest weakness is my perfectionism. Of course, the important, probably ought to be on the SOP questions: why grad school? What will you do with the degree you want? Why are into the research you're into? Why that particular school? Why are you worth admission and funding?
 
Research the assistanceships. Some SOPs will want you to write a bit about teaching or research with assistanceships in mind. So, do a bit of research on what these entail in the programs you're looking at. What do they do and how do they get it? Have you done assistanceships in the past? If so, what were they like? Do you have a teaching philosophy? If not, make one. Have you done anything that can be discussed in terms of the assistanceship? I taught kung-fu to white belt children, so I have teaching experience. I was part of the state herpetological society and went out to help them with their field counts twice a year. I learned that licking petrie dishes is always a bad idea, no matter how much they resemble pistachio ice cream.
 
Research SOPs. You're doing that, right? Go on to forums (like this one) and read the SOPs people have posted and then read the responses. Look particularly at SOPs in your discipline or related disciplines. Psychology might look at other social sciences. Physics might tell the joke about the Higgs Boson and Sunday mass. Bear in mind that the people responding to and/or criticizing the posted SOPs are likely not on an adcomm. Some have been  or will be, but it's not likely they'll be on the adcomm you're hoping will like you best. However, you can start to get a sense of what SOPs are like. What format is it in? Does yours look like everyone else's? Do you have the exact same opening sentence as half of the people hoping to get into a program in your discipline? I've always wanted to be a librarian since those wonderful, summer days I spent in my (relative of choice)'s home library. 
 
So, to take stock. First, understand the purpose. Second, research. A lot. Let the purpose of the SOP guide your research efforts.
 
Next, get the specific requirements for the SOP from each program. Make a list of similarities. If they all ask for a statement of your research interest, score! One sentence fits most! Most of them will be of different lengths and will have different ideas of what specific information they want. Most won't tell you enough, aside from length and one or two "should have" things. They mostly won't tell you if you should use APA or if you should footnote, or how to format it. Single space? Double space? They will tell you whether it should be on paper or what kind of file format to use. I have only one suggestion: consistency. Okay, two suggestions: unless otherwise specified, don't include anything other than the SOP. No bibliography or footnotes. If you quote or paraphrase someone, cite them in the text the way they do it in the average newspaper article. As Scooby says, "Ruh-roh!"
 
Now, start writing. Create something of a master SOP, or a set of master sentences for the SOPs. Some things should be in every one of them, like what your research interests are. Because length requirements are different for each program, you should work out more than one sentence or set of sentences for each thing you plan to put into more than one SOP. Have a more detailed explanation of your research interests and a more concise one. Even though this might be central and, perhaps, most important to the SOP, you don't want most of a short SOP taken up by one thing. Make these sentences do extra duties. If they can explain not only why you're into what you're into, but also why it's significant to the discipline/program, and how the program factors into it, bonus! The more functions one sentence can serve, with clear, readable logic, the more room you have in the length requirements to bring in other things. Think of this master SOP as more of a set of sentences you can hang on the individual SOP's unique structure. A flesh and skeleton metaphor can work here. You can order all SOPs at this point, you'll probably want to put research interests in the middle or toward the end, rather than in the first sentence, but the key here is that the skeleton of the individual SOP and most of its flesh will come from the needs of the program you're writing it for, not from some predetermined formula. No generically applicable, master SOP that has a few tweaks here and there.
 
Here's the thing. The SOP is one of the most important documents you'll write in your life. It's not something that should be done in a few hours, after looking at the program website and spending some time on the net searching for a how-to-write-an-SOP-guide. It takes work backed by research. The readers can tell quite easily how much research you've done on them by the way you structure and write your SOP. They can tell if you're sending out a generic SOP to several programs because it will be too general. You can't change faculty names in and out, along with a detail or two that makes it seem tailored to the program. The individual SOP should be tailored from the beginning. Some sentences won't change much, so you can pre-write them. But how they fit into each SOP, the reasoning you'll use to try to convince the adcomm that you're the best applicant, and the perspective you'll take all the way to the words you use should be done with the program in mind. It shouldn't be generic. Even if it doesn't seem noticeably generic to you, that doesn't mean that the adcomm won't notice it. They read many, many SOPs every year. People who read SOPs develop a sense about the generic, the cut and paste work.
 
How to name drop gracefully, or bring up the theory and histories and whatnot you're working with when there's only a teeny amount of space for everything? That's a bit easier than it might seem. It's not in the explanation; it's in the usage. If you can use the relevant theories and people and methodologies correctly in a sentence, you don't have to show the adcomm that you know how to use them, or how they're related, by explaining it. Trust them to have enough education to make a few connections for themselves when it comes to the discipline. Example: Novels such as Twilight exemplify how Marxist alienation can be applied to childbirth. My research interest lies in the alienation of women from the product of delivery in Modernist American fiction, such as Faulkner's Sound and the Fury. (Huh, I wonder if that would really work?) Two sentences and I've referenced theory, period, history, relevance for today, and some methodology (it's literature, not science). Use it, don't explain it.
 
If possible, have a professor you know read the SOP to your preferred school and give you some advice. They know more than most other groups of people. If not possible, your current university's writing center can help, or other people who are familiar with the field, or with writing. Your high school English teacher or your English major buddy can probably say something about your grammar, but might not be as helpful as expected. Example, in English, the convention is to speak of historical people in present tense. Shakespeare writes, "To be or not to be," because he thinks it is the question. History has kittens. Shakespeare has been dead for centuries, he can't write! Past tense! Shakespeare wrote, "To be or not to be," because thought it was the question. Someone in the field is preferable!
 
Finally, a word about my real credentials. The adcomm is going to do to your application what you've just done with this post. They are going to judge your credentials (your ethos, trustworthiness, veracity, credibility, knowledge, and so on) based on the impressions they get of you from what you've written. So, be knowledgeable about you, your field, and the program, and use that knowledge well.

Well, millions of people do this kind of thing every year. Married people in the military (pretty much any military in the world) are told where they will live, usually without much input from them, and they can either leave their family behind or take the family with. Most bring the family along. Now, the military does help with moving expenses, and there's enough income from one salary for frugal people to do fine with (or more, depending on rank), so the problems the OP will face with family are different, at least economically.

There are some social issues that you may or may not have problems with. He gets all of these looks whenever he talks about how we moved here for me to get my PhD. Sure, he's proud of me (his buttons are busting), but people find it very weird that a man will just give up everything and follow a wife's ambitions. They always ask him what he does. She's getting a Phd, what does he do? The men I know that drag their wives along to grad programs, post-docs, or professorships? Their women don't have this. He's getting a Phd, but what does she do?

The moving with the SO thing is problematic, no matter who follows who or why anyone moves. Moving is stressful. Jobs, schools, daily life: all stressful. The key is to make sure the relationship stays healthy. I could tell you what my guy and I do to maintain a healthy relationship, but we're not the same people. Making time for each other, communicating clearly when there are issues, actually listening (thinking about what the other person is saying empathetically, rather than planning what to say), and so on are the obvious things. But what works for you? You know.

It can be done, and it can be done well with satisfaction for everyone in the relationship.

Well, millions of people do this kind of thing every year. Married people in the military (pretty much any military in the world) are told where they will live, usually without much input from them, and they can either leave their family behind or take the family with. Most bring the family along. Now, the military does help with moving expenses, and there's enough income from one salary for frugal people to do fine with (or more, depending on rank), so the problems the OP will face with family are different, at least economically.

There are some social issues that you may or may not have problems with. He gets all of these looks whenever he talks about how we moved here for me to get my PhD. Sure, he's proud of me (his buttons are busting), but people find it very weird that a man will just give up everything and follow a wife's ambitions. They always ask him what he does. She's getting a Phd, what does he do? The men I know that drag their wives along to grad programs, post-docs, or professorships? Their women don't have this. He's getting a Phd, but what does she do?

The moving with the SO thing is problematic, no matter who follows who or why anyone moves. Moving is stressful. Jobs, schools, daily life: all stressful. The key is to make sure the relationship stays healthy. I could tell you what my guy and I do to maintain a healthy relationship, but we're not the same people. Making time for each other, communicating clearly when there are issues, actually listening (thinking about what the other person is saying empathetically, rather than planning what to say), and so on are the obvious things. But what works for you? You know.

It can be done, and it can be done well with satisfaction for everyone in the relationship.

I've never heard of anyone's writing sample being stolen, though I suppose it could happen. What happens more often is someone beats you to the punch and publishes the same basic idea you had, without acknowledging having heard it from you, and before you have any manuscript already in print or at least presented. This doesn't require using your actual text but is just as awful. It'd also be hard to prove that they took the idea from you, and even if you could show that they read your writing sample it'd be hard to argue that they didn't already have the idea in mind beforehand.
 
PIs stealing their students' work happens and is also terrible, but is different than what the OP asked about.

I have ADHD. I made it through two BAs with honors before I was diagnosed. I was not diagnosed until I was an adult and my kid got the diagnosis.

Your undergrad counselor was sticking to the letter of the DSM methodology of diagnosing disorders. According the DSM, having the traits/symptoms of a disorder is not enough. The traits/symptoms must impair daily life. A person with a high GPA is not obviously impaired by ADHD, or so your counselor thought. Your counselor is quite obviously not an ADHD specialist.

Get re-evaluated by someone that specializes in ADHD, or barring that, learning disorders. The problem with adults that weren't diagnosed as children is that with maturity comes coping strategies that mask the problem. For a lot of people, that's actually all they need in order to deal with ADHD in their lives. For people in grad school, where second chances aren't easily obtained, coping strategies may not evolve enough on their own. To compound all of this, most people who have ADHD without knowing that this is the thing causing their problems, won't know what to tell the doctor/counselor about how it impairs their daily lives.

An ADHD diagnosis is problematic in more ways than just figuring out if it's ADHD or some other problem, such as stress, lack of sleep, or proper nutrition. ADHD has been over-diagnosed to the point where "everyone knows" that if a kid doesn't sit perfectly still, teachers and parents want to shove pills down their throat to control them, rather than let a kid be a kid. Adults, particularly younger ones, have the added problem that "everyone knows" that they're just looking to score legal methamphetamines. Undiagnosed adults with ADHD are usually confronted with the things that your counselor told you, simply because ADHD is our cultural bad guy.

So. Find someone that specializes in learning disorders and get evaluated. If you are evaluated with ADHD, medication is the least part of the treatment. Behavior modification is the important part. ADHD coaches/counselors teach people coping strategies, and more importantly, how to modify their behavior to use those coping strategies daily.

If you aren't diagnosed with ADHD, or the evaluator thinks your ADHD is too mild for much in terms of treatment, you can still find the tips and tricks ADHD people use. It's pretty much about organizing, routines, habits, and creating an environment. For example, a person with ADHD would set aside a space that is used solely for study. No other activities allowed in that space. This helps to eliminate distractions that are internal, as well as external. ADHD has a strong impulse control problem, not just an inattentive and restless problem. If there's a space that a person, by habit and routine, has ingrained into a single-use place, it's easier to control the impulse. I don't write papers in the same place I surf the web, because otherwise, I'll find myself surfing the web when I should be writing, even when I don't have writer's block problems. The strategies that help a person get a handle on their ADHD can help anyone.

You can google ADHD tips or ADHD tricks and get a ton of tips on how to manage daily life. University libraries will have books aimed at people who want to enter the learning disabilities field in some fashion, so they'll also have books on how ADHD counselors/doctors/coaches can help people with ADHD manage their lives.

Too many people think that all they need is an ADHD diagnoses and a prescription, then magically, the ADHD goes away. As if. The meds make it possible for me to read all of the words in a text in one sitting, from front to finish. They don't make it possible for me to understand it any easier, or to not be distracted when I'm reading, or to get my work done when I'd rather be doing something else, or to sit still completely when I'm doing it, or any number of things. Meds don't make me add stuff to my calendar so I don't forget to do it. They do make it possible for me to hit a golf ball consistently, or to drive with the radio on (when I get to drive). They make a huge difference, but they aren't a cure. That's where behavior modification comes in. And that's where, even if you never get diagnosed with it, you can do something for yourself anyway.

I can sympathize with how you feel. The first two years of grad school for me was not in an ideal location either and I ended up starting over at a PhD program elsewhere. In Canada (where my first program was), it's normal to go elsewhere after a 2 year MSc (and you can usually only get into PhD programs after a 2 year MSc) so I didn't burn any bridges by leaving though. The abnormal part is that most people stay in Canada (for a 3-4 year PhD following a 2 year MSc) instead of going to the US where I have to start all over. Another difference between our cases is that my new school is a better research and location fit for me! Although one thing that was the same was that my first school is in a tiny town and my advisor there was the reason why I wanted to go there. 
 
However, I had very strong location-based reasons to move away from my first graduate program after my MSc was over. My PhD program search was very motivated by wanting to live in certain geographical areas. I am happier where I am now and I think it is worth it to have started over but be happy with my non-work life. But again, I also think I am in a better place for my career as well, so it's not a matter of location vs. career here (not that the first place was a bad fit, it was actually the best fit possible for me in Canada)
 
It is ultimately up to you and your priorities whether or not you want to start over. I don't think starting over is the end of the world! Here are some thoughts for/against starting over from my point of view, and hopefully they give you some things to think about:
 
Reasons to stay:
1. Like danieleWrites says, you don't have 5 years left! I think the next 3 years will probably go by faster than the first 2 years. 
2. You're in a really good program from what it sounds like, so it might be easier to follow danieleWrites' suggestions about changing your outlook and finishing up your program
3. The timing might not be ideal right now for you to apply to new programs because many deadlines have already passed? So by the time you would change programs, it would be only 2 years left in your current one.
 
Reasons to move:
1. As Usmivka said, grad school is tough enough, so why make it worse? It sounds like you have already completed your MS requirements so getting that and leaving should just be a formality right?
2. For me, location is very important and I would pick location fit over research fit in most cases. The way I see it is that I can easily change my research interests/motivations to fit my work but I would find it extremely difficult to change my personal views and outlook on life. I would be very unhappy if I could not get ethnic foods (especially certain vegetables) where I lived but I would be way less unhappy about having to work on my 2nd or 3rd most interested topic instead of my top choice.
3. Research topics will change a lot and I don't think a PhD thesis should have to be your #1 love. I got advice that I should work on whatever will get me employed, not necessarily what I love the most. In other words, the only requirement for a thesis topic is that you should not hate it...you don't have to love it. I find that many people will not "love" their topic anymore after spending 5+ years studying it in depth!
4. Some people say "you won't get to choose where you live as a postdoc etc. so why worry about it in grad school" but I think about it another way. Since most academics have to go where the job is, I think grad school and post-doc is actually the rare time where you have more control over your location than others. So, I would say to make the most of this chance and pick nice locations now because you might end up somewhere crappy later. My personal goal is to go even more extreme and I have decided that location is more important to me than career, so I would rather not be an academic if I had to live somewhere I did not want. 
 
Just some ideas to think about. I think the main point of what I wrote is that, to me, there isn't that much difference between "#1 best research fit" and even "#5 best research fit"--if you are in a strong department and if you are a skilled worker, you will be able to find success without needing it to be your favourite topic. On the other hand, I think there is a huge difference between "#1 best location fit" and "#5 best location fit". So, if we are considering schools that are roughly equivalent in terms of research fit and resources available, I would just pick schools based on location (which was what I did for my PhD program as I was considering a few schools that were almost equivalent in terms of research fit).

You might be in a 5 year program, but you don't have 5 years left! You're a 2nd year, so you have, what, 3 1/2 or 4 years left?

Now, mental health is a serious issue. It does you no good to stick with the perfect program if you end up needing in-patient therapy. Your program has a selfish interest in your mental well-being, as well. They don't want to be known as the school that gives their grads anxiety disorders along with a degree. Of course, you're getting a PhD. Jobs for PhDs are more along the lines of "beggars can't be choosers" than anything else. There is no guarantee that you will get your PhD and then find a job opening in your comfort zone. There are more Podunk Us than there are cosmopolitan universities.

So, what can you do? That kind of depends on your ability to adapt to your environment. You've been there for a year, probably a year and a half (not counting the time you've been home during break, right?). You've made friends and you've done some things. Cow tipping isn't much fun if you're used to opera (and vice versa). You're, no doubt, still experiencing some culture shock. You're in America, but not like any American you're used to. (These people are totally alien, amirite?)

I think that the first thing you need to do is go to the university's counseling center and get some counseling. You're feeling trapped, rather than bored. A person with a social circle, but not a lot of options for entertainment, would be, in general, bored. That's not you. Trapped is not just feelings of boredom, or feeling like a stranger in a strange land, but also feeling rejected and rejecting at the same time. Trapped is a loss of power, perhaps even a sense of fear and/or distrust in the natives. I was married to the military before I joined it myself. I've moved a ton. Some places felt like a noose around my neck. Other places were just dull.

Once you've spent some time with the counselor and worked your way through your feelings (are you unable to adapt? or do you just need a safe space to work through a foreign subculture?), go speak with your adviser. You're not the first person in the program to have trouble adapting to the small town in the South lifestyle. Tell your adviser that you're having trouble adapting to the culture of the area and ask if s/he has any suggestions for a big city person in a small town world. This will do two things for you: 1) it will give you another person who might have some ideas on how to help you adapt, and 2) your adviser is getting the heads up that your life isn't perfect, so if things do get to the point where you just can't stay a second longer, your adviser won't be surprised by the information.

You obviously have a great student work ethic, so the usual clues about a student in distress aren't appearing. The program likely thinks your world is gravy. If you find a way to diplomatically let them know your life isn't cake (asking for advice is a great way) while also showing (not telling) them that you're doing your absolute best to overcome and adapt, you will have a method to continue to develop their respect and their help, and, if worse comes to worse, they won't get as snitty if you have to leave. This is, of course, assuming that your adviser and professors are normal human beings that have the usual amount of caring for others. Some people are just plain mean and there's nothing you can do about it.

Lastly, see if you can organize a regular trip into the nearest urban area for some fun. A once a month trip to a big city can do wonders. I have a buddy who moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan Kansas. We'd go to Topeka two or three times a month and we'd drag him along once a month. While we did our thing, he'd ride the city bus for an hour. It was enough of home for him to adapt.

I did my MA and then spent a year and a half off doing some adjuncting without any real studying (other than to read stuff written by faculty and grad students in the programs I was interested in for application purposes, rather than learning). Now I'm in a program and found that there's a lot to love and a lot to hate and everything in the middle.

If I had to pick the one thing I hate most is the time compression of research (I'm reading pretty much Herbert Blumer's entire intellectual lineage and some important relatives in order to write a paper) and how that compression changes the way I speak with my non-grad friends and family. I keep dropping all of these words without thinking first, into every day conversations. The fam is full of brilliant people, some that are always interested in learning new things, but defining things like symbolic interactionism in a sentence or two? I'm an introvert and suck at conversation already. Add in the short sleep and over-thinking. I want to go back to the normal conversations I had with the fam when I adjuncted. Where I'd say compromise instead of dialectic and we all contributed to the conversation, rather than me dropping in these stupid words and shutting everyone up. And hurt feelings are had by all.

*sigh*

I admire your intelligent and rational approach to problem solving, Penny. I sincerely hope that your leave brings you the best result for you. Though I doubt it, hopefully the program you're critiquing will reconsider their Full Metal Jacket approach to pedagogy.

Unless your school doesn't do teacher evaluations, your department already knows he's a crappy teacher. But he's got tenure, right? And he's a full professor, right? Not much that can be done about getting rid of him.

There are things that can be done if the department is willing, but there's not much you can do as a student and TA. I would suggest that you speak with a full professor that you trust in an off-the-record fashion for some advice. This person knows the rules for faculty of his stature and what you can and cannot do. At the very least, s/he might have some advice as to what to tell the students. If nothing else, you'll feel better because you did something and someone listened to you.

Probably the most important thing you can do for your students is be there to listen to their frustrations and complaints. But this is a be-careful thing. A sympathetic ear that commiserates with the situation can do wonders for student confidence, to assure them that it's not them, it's him; but you don't want to say anything or be put into a position by a student trying to use your words to better their situation. But Mr. Hobbes said... isn't going to hold any weight with anyone else they complain to. Students are usually good people who wouldn't want to do anything to bring trouble down on your head, but they haven't the first clue about how a university works, let alone how teacher hierarchy works. They know that Doctor has more expertise and authority than TA, but they don't know that, as far as the university is concerned, you're lumped in the student category with them, not with the doctors.

You can also dispense advice. Hand out Twain's homily: Don't let school get in the way of a good education! Talk about cost-benefit analyses in a realistic way. What good would it do poem-Becky to spend hours and hours fighting for a grade she can't get because of the teacher to the detriment of her other classes?

The most important bit of advice you can dispense involves how your university's grade appeal policy works and how long, after the semester ends, they have the option to appeal. And, particularly, that should a student feel it in their best interests to file a grade appeal, they should keep a record of everything and only send copies, not originals. For example, emailing the professor directly rather than talking about it after class or in office hours. Or, if they talk about it, put their phone, already recording, on the table/desk and inform the professor that the conversation will be recorded and would he like a copy emailed to him. States have varying laws about recording people and how that can be used, but all states are okay with it if all parties concerned know they're being recorded. Most especially they should keep the originals of the assignment instructions, the rubric (if possible), and their graded work. At any rate, grade appeal policies are in the student handbook, but students never pay attention to or remember this kind of thing, which means they don't feel that there's anything they can do when the grading is unfair. And because they feel they can't do anything about it, they feel powerless and get angry. I consider teaching students how to effectively advocate for themselves in the university one of the responsibilities of a lower division course. We're all human and make grading errors, or other errors that upset students, and they need to know the appropriate way to deal with it to the satisfaction of both parties. On top of that, most students in lower division courses came straight out of high school or a gap year, and all the advocating for their interests was done by someone else. I suppose I think this way because I teach two of the four courses every single undergraduate in the US has to take to get a degree (comp 1 and 2, public speaking, and algebra). Anyway, tell them who they can turn to for help (like their academic adviser, the counseling center, dean of students office, or something), and to practice the conversation with a friend, before having it.

I imagine that if he had a line of students waiting for him to justify his grades, his assignment "instructions," and his "rubric" before they took it to their grade appeals to the chair, or dean, or whatever, he'd change his ways.

One thing you can do about him, personally, because you and your fellow TA have access to both grades and students, is to see if you can find grading patterns. If he's writing and publishing "poetry" about grading based on curves, odds are he's probably doing it for realsies. If so, he's violating Title IX. If Dr. Dog is violating Title IX, the university has to do something about him. If his grading patterns show that he is grading based on sex and attractiveness, you have something that you can take to the department head that the department head can actually do something with. Because you're a TA, you can bring it to the department head quietly, on the downlow, without putting anyone on the spot right away. This can come back to bite you, though.

You definitely don't want him to go wandering around archeology conferences with a Tom Collins in hand telling everyone who'll listen what a disrespectful, thin-skinned whiner you are that enjoys wasting valuable time and resources just to turn traitor at the last moment for someone who'll coddle you. That means addressing the problem.

I have to wonder, after reading your post, how much of the compatibility problems stem from your feelings of being the outsider? Even we prefer-to-work-alones need to feel like we're a welcome part of a group. Humans = social animals (darn it all). I wonder this because you made two mistakes. The first was presenting the team-player, low-maintenance facade by acquiescing to the group. The second was giving your adviser no feedback about the real problem, so he could only make judgments based on the project.

Being assertive is ]i]not being high maintenance. Being submissive is not being low maintenance. So, now you're at a point where you switched advisers, but the old adviser thinks you did so because you couldn't handle the studenting part of it, and your inability to do the work prompted you to have some kind of primadonna moment.

Your task is to change that impression of you, because that's not the way it is. So, yes, you need to speak with him.

The problem with you not asserting yourself is that he likely had little to no idea that you weren't interested enough in the project to make it your thesis, and that you were having difficulties assimilating into the group. One of the major things about team work is that you have to treat yourself as an equally valuable part of the team, too. That means asserting yourself. So, he might have known a student that seemed easy-going and enthusiastic about the group, the program, and the thesis project, until things started going wrong and you started clashing with him. As the semester wore on, the problems he was aware of had to do with your work on the project, and eventually your responses to his criticisms, rather than your dislike of the project from the very beginning. So, when you swapped advisers completely out of the blue, what reasons for your switch did you give him to choose from?

You should not return to your old adviser's project, but you should have enough respect for yourself and for him to tell him what the real problems are. That means meeting with him and explaining how, in your efforts to be a good student and a good part of the team, you never stood up for yourself, and, in retrospect, the only thing that did was cause problems for you, for him, and for the team. If you have the opportunity, practice your conversation (whatever it is for you) with your therapist or with someone else you do trust. That way you can work out what to say, how to say it, and stuff.