danieleWrites

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

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

A non-habit forming sleep aid to start. Take half-dose if can. Second, do the insomnia dance. Turn going to sleep into a routine that does not vary. Don't do anything in bed except sleep and sex. No eating, no reading, no anything. If you're already doing that, good! No caffeine within 6 to 8 hours of sleep (everyone metabolizes it at a different rate, it's 12 hours for me). Decaf has caffeine in it. Try to avoid sugars. Don't nap. Make the right environment. For most, it means a cooler room, a window cracked for fresh air, covering up any sources of light (like the face of the alarm clock), and using white noise (a fan, a white noise generator found cheap at most big box stores). Some people prefer a warmer room. Go to bed at the same time every night. Focus on the white noise. The sleep aid should help you beat back your lesson plans so you can let your brain wander off into a doze. Once you've established the routine and you're sleeping, stop with the sleep aid. Essentially, you are training your body to recognize that it's time to sleep now, and it should go there. Your brain will follow.

Gooey: daniele gives good advice for helping insomnia. In my case it was more than that; it was a generalized anxiety reaction. I decided on a course of anti-anxiety medication that changed my life completely. If you find yourself having other problems besides lack of sleep--tummy trouble, sweating, shaking, mood-swings and so on, consider talking to a doctor.

A non-habit forming sleep aid to start. Take half-dose if can. Second, do the insomnia dance. Turn going to sleep into a routine that does not vary. Don't do anything in bed except sleep and sex. No eating, no reading, no anything. If you're already doing that, good! No caffeine within 6 to 8 hours of sleep (everyone metabolizes it at a different rate, it's 12 hours for me). Decaf has caffeine in it. Try to avoid sugars. Don't nap. Make the right environment. For most, it means a cooler room, a window cracked for fresh air, covering up any sources of light (like the face of the alarm clock), and using white noise (a fan, a white noise generator found cheap at most big box stores). Some people prefer a warmer room. Go to bed at the same time every night. Focus on the white noise. The sleep aid should help you beat back your lesson plans so you can let your brain wander off into a doze. Once you've established the routine and you're sleeping, stop with the sleep aid. Essentially, you are training your body to recognize that it's time to sleep now, and it should go there. Your brain will follow.

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

A simple "Hi, how's it going?" is as good a way as any to break the ice. Ask "Do you mind if I sit with you?" in classes and meetings instead of just sitting by yourself (they almost certainly won't). You don't have to launch into a soliloquy in front of them, just show you're interested in them and desire their company. 

So far so good (I started my research project about a month early, so had time to settle into the area/Dept before everything got crazy).
 
The coursework is actually a bit easier than I expected: I completed a Masters in the UK, so pretty much have to learn & get tested on familiar material all over again. Which is probably a good thing in that it will really hammer home the basics...but bad in that I don't find the material especially challenging yet...which leads to complacency. 
 
My cohort is really nice and I'm getting on well with the professors and older graduate students. TAing is going to be manageable. 
 
The biggest problem I have is that there are a LOT of grad students also interested in the PI I want to work for. On a practical level it means I might have to share a fumehood (MY fumehood! The one I went to all the effort of cleaning/re-arranging when I arrived   ). On a more metaphorical level, it means I'm in competition with a handful of fellow newbies already for a place in this lab and can't guarantee to myself that I'll end up with my first choice PI. Which is stressful.  

significant? definitely. however, for a B.A. thesis, i could see how it could grow into an enormous project very easily. you might want to have a small handful of specific examples in mind, then use those to come up with an argument, rather than talking about a big, potentially nebulous phenomenon. sounds interesting! good luck!

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

I grade pretty much the same way as fuzzy indicates. I'm only usually assigned something like 3 or 4 hours of grading per week, so it's definitely something I can do in one afternoon. Also, the courses I was grading for usually only had 1 to 2 questions per week (but they take a pretty long time for the students to do and for me to grade), or they were things like lab reports or lab notebooks.
 
I try to make a full detailed marking rubric for each type of work I'm marking (e.g. problem sets, lab reports, lab notebooks) and hand this out to all students at the beginning. I explain it the best I can so they know what's expected of them. Then, I make an abbreviated (1/4 page) rubric with just the keywords/criteria (and their point value) and when I grade the work, I just circle whatever the mistake was, or tick whatever they did right. I write their final score on the rubric (it also shows the points breakdown) and staple it to their work. This saves me a lot of writing the same stuff over and over again on multiple assignments! (e.g. I can just circle "sig figs" or "show units" or "label plot axes" etc.). And it makes sure that I always take the same number of points off for the same type of error!
 
I also make sure to keep time at the end for doing "admin" things, such as entering grades into spreadsheets and writing up an email to the prof with a summary of the average, the distribution, and common mistakes. 
 
As for scheduling marking time, if I was able to set all of my due dates etc. I would choose to have homework due at noon on Wednesday, allow students to hand in late homework with a X% (usually between 30% and 50%) late penalty until noon on Friday, and then do my marking on Friday afternoon and/or the weekend. 

Do NOT under any circumstance email potential advisers and "explain the situation to them". This is the worst advice I've ever heard. You're supposed to explain that you bombed your master's thesis and nobody you interacted with over 3 years will write you a LOR, and they are supposed to be impressed and go out on a branch to try to get you into their program? .... No. Just no.
 
Secondly, LORs DO matter. They matter a lot. Bad/neutral LORs are certainly submitted. It is incredibly easy to tell when a professor is just doing their duty and when the professor genuinely believes in a student. The former is NOT a good reflection on an applicant, and is basically the equivalent of writing a bad LOR. No professor wants to write a glowing LOR of someone who will enter a program and not be able to handle it- it reflects badly on them.
 
For the record, I successfully went through an application cycle for my master's, then again for my PhD. As a grad student, I also coordinated the master's application process at my last program. I've also been involved in multiple labs and saw the application process from within them. Career-wise, I also applied (and received) jobs offers before my graduate career, and I was involved in hiring my replacement at my last research job. I've seen a lot of job/graduate school applications, interviewed a lot of people, and I've had a lot of conversations about students/faculty/bosses about the process.  While fields may have different application processes, there are some things you should never do- whether it's applying for grad school or a job. I strongly suggest you do not take the above advice.

Undergraduate studies are about, um, being taught with some independent-ish scholarship at the end. This varies by student and by discipline, but for the most part, there are few research projects included as a part of the program. Undergraduates must make their own research opportunities and move toward scholarship on their own. Sometimes faculty will encourage them, sometimes not. Graduate studies are about independent scholarship, not being taught. In the MA/MS program, there is that transition from being taught to independent scholarship, but the thesis is supposed to not only be representative of a student's best work, it should be proof that the student is capable of independent scholarship. The PhD program has little being taught involved. Yes, there are classes, but the student is expected to contribute as much to his or her own learning as the teacher. In a PhD program, you shouldn't expect much help from teachers, you should expect to be sort of colleagues-in-training. Colleagues don't tell you what to do, they help you figure out your options.
 
You keep returning to this characterization of yourself as a struggling student and the characterization of your adviser as an unhelpful person. I take your word for it that you struggled because you tried out scholarship that was beyond your capabilities and, reading between the lines, reasonably beyond the capabilities of the average MA student. I have a choice of ways to understand the phrase "struggling student"; its meaning depends on context. What were you struggling with? The material itself? The paradigm shift from undergraduate student to graduate student and all the new expectations and conventions that come with it? Yourself? Most of the time, "struggling student" is a student that has difficulties with the material. Sometimes, it's a student that hasn't adapted to the methods, expectations, and/or conventions of the learning situation. Sometimes, it's a student that has to struggle with his or her own self-doubts, lack of confidence, and so on; every student has these, but for some, they are an outsized impediment, rather than a more normal evaluation of ability. Sometimes, it's nothing more than maturity, a student struggles because he or she was not ready for the program. A lot of college freshmen drop out because they aren't ready for college. They need to do other things first. It's normal. Figure out what you struggled with the most. Currently, it sounds as if it was the material. As much as you love philosophy, if you struggle with the material, you might end up as one of those PhD candidates that never makes it past the coursework into comprehensives or the dissertation.
 
You believe in yourself and you have a goal. You are willing to evaluate criticism. This is most of the battle.
 
I suggest that you go to the university library and read theses written by graduated philosophy students. Read dissertations by philosophy students. The library should have these copies either in book form or electronically archived. Compare your scholarship to their scholarship. The dissertations will give you a strong idea as to what the philosophy department, and your adviser, considers to be appropriate scholarship from a PhD candidate, appropriate enough for them to certify that this person has earned a PhD. A dissertation is not just the student's best work, it's new knowledge added to the field. Can you do that?
 
The thing about this issue that bothers me is that your thesis committee signed your thesis when they thought it wasn't good enough. Why was your thesis good enough to get you an MA if your committee thinks it wasn't that great?

People who are unequal on the career ladder have great marriages just as people who are equal on the career ladder have yucky ones. I understand the concern about you supporting him, because that's a burden for anyone to bear, financially supporting a spouse. It can be done and no one has to be a six-figure breadwinner to do it. Is it the money thing? Or the sense that Brian is dead weight in some way? Is it his inability to maintain a decent job? Or his inability to complete school?
 
I think it kind of boils down to one question: do you want this guy as he is? Some people aren't interested in college degrees, they prefer the trades. Some people can't cut it in college. I'm pretty sure that I'm reading a lot into the original post here, but what does Brian want to do with his life? Is he still not sure? Did he to back to school because he caved to pressure, or because that's the path he's taking to realize his goals? Does he have a goal? All of the prime, ADHD coaching and meds in the world can't make up for lack up purpose. I've got ADHD and I wouldn't have failed out ages ago if this wasn't what I wanted for my life. Academics aren't the only way to go. I'm married to a soldier/carpenter. He's got college credit, but most of it is military oriented. He's not going to college and I'm getting a PhD. I know a literature professor who is married to a carpenter (her dream guy in the job she dreamed her dream guy would have) who can't stand poetry. You'd think they have nothing to talk about, but they get along fine. I hate to make assumptions about people because the assumptions always seem so wrong. Does Brian agree with your take on things? That now that you're both in college, that you're both finally on the right career path?

No! You are not being pushy. This is of grave concern to you because you need the promised money for your expenditures. Do not rely on your adviser's promises because he has no control over your placement. Call your adviser and ask him for the name and contact details of the person in charge of the office that's in charge of matching you to your job. Contact that person directly. You should have a copy of your award letter, promising you that you would have a position that would earn you at least 5,200 and for what time frame the award covers, and who is responsible for promising you this award. Do not let them tell you it's policy or that this is just the way it's done and you have to wait. If they promised the position with a minimum amount of pay, it is the university's duty to provide that for you. Now, it's important to have that promise in writing. If the only promise is from a phone conversation with an adviser, who likely has no authority to promise that the position actually exists rather than say that you may apply for one, then the university has no obligation to provide a job.

1000Plateaus, I am very sorry that you are in this painful situation. It is very difficult to hear unfavorable assessment of your abilities and to realize the implications of having a unfavorable review from your supervisor and second reader. What follows may be hard to read and I apologize in advance, but after you calm down a bit you may want to seriously consider your professors' opinions of your potential to succeed in graduate school. From all I can gather from this post and your previous one, there was never any serious blowout between you and your supervisor -- the main problem seems to be your ability to do up-to-par work at a reasonable pace. (Yes, I understand that some of the blame for that is on your supervisor for letting you take on what turned out to be an over-ambitious project but no, I don't think there is any reason to think your supervisor was maliciously setting you up to fail). You took three years to do a two-year degree and you had to basically write your whole thesis from scratch after the first submission was rejected. You may have finally brought it to a satisfactory level for a masters and you were therefore allowed to defend, but that does not entail that you can or should continue on to a PhD program.
 
It appears that both of the people who know your work best think that you should not, and they will not write you strong letters of recommendation. I think you should respect this choice, or (as you are contemplating doing) work very hard to change their mind and persuade them that you deserve their support. As it stands, if they do not believe that you can make it in a PhD program, you cannot ask them in good conscious to write such a letter. They will have to lie, or the letter will not be good; from their perspective, it's their name on the line: they are vouching for you and your success, but they don't believe in it. Beyond that, if they are in fact correct, they are doing you a favor in telling you their honest opinion from the start. Certainly, the delivery was lacking and hurtful in your case and I am sorry that you had to go through that. But not everyone who wants a PhD can be successful at a PhD program. It's better to know that now than to waste several years before either dropping out or finishing the degree but failing to get a job. I honestly don't know if this is true for you, but sometimes you simply have to tell students the hard truth instead of letting them just struggle along and waste important years of their lives on an impossible mission. 
 
As I said, I don't know if what your advisor said was a fair assessment of your work at all. Either way, it's important to view it as an assessment of your ability to do the training for a certain job, not as an assessment of your personality or person. There are extremely bright and successful people who would struggle in a PhD program because the requirements are set up in a such a way that it does not play to their strengths. That doesn't make them any less accomplished, you just need a very specific kind of personality, abilities and strengths to make it through, and only a (small) portion of it has to do with your intellectual abilities. Maybe that's something to consider. If, on the other hand, the assessments of your professors are simply wrong, I wish you all the best in your battle to attend graduate school. I think your approach is the healthiest one: do your best to prove that you are able and willing, and earn the letter and the trust.

No! You are not being pushy. This is of grave concern to you because you need the promised money for your expenditures. Do not rely on your adviser's promises because he has no control over your placement. Call your adviser and ask him for the name and contact details of the person in charge of the office that's in charge of matching you to your job. Contact that person directly. You should have a copy of your award letter, promising you that you would have a position that would earn you at least 5,200 and for what time frame the award covers, and who is responsible for promising you this award. Do not let them tell you it's policy or that this is just the way it's done and you have to wait. If they promised the position with a minimum amount of pay, it is the university's duty to provide that for you. Now, it's important to have that promise in writing. If the only promise is from a phone conversation with an adviser, who likely has no authority to promise that the position actually exists rather than say that you may apply for one, then the university has no obligation to provide a job.

A lot of schools sponsor some kind of in-house research colloquium or competition, others have conferences aimed at students and welcome undergrads. Do a research project and present it somewhere. I never asked my undergrad adviser about grad school because she wasn't particularly helpful. I did go to two of my professors that were familiar with my work and talk to them about my plans and ideas. They were full of advice. If you've got or have had a prof that's working in the stuff you're interested in, he/she's the one to go ask questions of. You can join your major's and/or interest's association, which offer student discounts and may offer methods for you to publish, present, or other types of research. Find one of you profs that's doing research and see if you can help with the project. You probably won't get any publication credit, but you can list it on your CV and have that prof write a letter of recommendation that mentions what you did.

People who are unequal on the career ladder have great marriages just as people who are equal on the career ladder have yucky ones. I understand the concern about you supporting him, because that's a burden for anyone to bear, financially supporting a spouse. It can be done and no one has to be a six-figure breadwinner to do it. Is it the money thing? Or the sense that Brian is dead weight in some way? Is it his inability to maintain a decent job? Or his inability to complete school?
 
I think it kind of boils down to one question: do you want this guy as he is? Some people aren't interested in college degrees, they prefer the trades. Some people can't cut it in college. I'm pretty sure that I'm reading a lot into the original post here, but what does Brian want to do with his life? Is he still not sure? Did he to back to school because he caved to pressure, or because that's the path he's taking to realize his goals? Does he have a goal? All of the prime, ADHD coaching and meds in the world can't make up for lack up purpose. I've got ADHD and I wouldn't have failed out ages ago if this wasn't what I wanted for my life. Academics aren't the only way to go. I'm married to a soldier/carpenter. He's got college credit, but most of it is military oriented. He's not going to college and I'm getting a PhD. I know a literature professor who is married to a carpenter (her dream guy in the job she dreamed her dream guy would have) who can't stand poetry. You'd think they have nothing to talk about, but they get along fine. I hate to make assumptions about people because the assumptions always seem so wrong. Does Brian agree with your take on things? That now that you're both in college, that you're both finally on the right career path?

As suggested by Lisa44201, "time boxing" can be effective and there are apps for it, of course.
 
If you've gotten this far, surely you've developed techniques and rituals over time to help you complete your work?  I am also a lit student who suffers from ADD as well as anxiety.  Both can impede my work, but over time I learned how to manage them not by trying to cure myself of them (I don't like to think of myself as curing parts of my personality), but rather how to play to my strengths.  Mine have served me well throughout undergrad, and I imagine I'll just continue to apply them in grad school, they're basic principles.
 
For example, the most important thing is to give yourself plenty of time to work.  This may mean missing out on leisure stuff, but it's the price you pay.  If you give yourself ample time, then you can allow for lost time due to distractions.  When I'm to sit down to work, I have little "rituals" that I go through every time to remind my brain that it's time to work.  Depending on the subject, type of reading, era of the reading, I have different music and perhaps different food/drinks that get me primed for work.  If it's a paper or exam preparation, I try to get into a competitive mindset and get myself "pumped up", before setting about my work, which is dorky, but has helped me a bunch.  Confession: I haven't written a paper or studied for a test without Young Jeezy's album "The Inspiration" being involved somehow.
 
Also, I think I proofread the final draft every major paper I turned in as an undergrad at least 5 times.
 
As an undergrad, my classmates would ask me how I got an A on every single paper I wrote, and my answer was simple: I did it the same way every time.  Obviously every paper was different, and required a different intellectual approach, but I had my process down to a kind of razor precision.
 
If it's reading, I always take notes in pencil in a notebook.  I find that it's far too easy to zone out while typing and simply forget what you're doing and not retain a thing, as well as the built in distractions a computer provides.  I think pencil and paper forces you to think more about what it is you're reading and writing down.
 
Sometimes I lose my train of thought, and I say "focus, focus" to myself, it's weird, but I find that helps me snap back into it.  

Here's my situation-
I finished undergrad in 4 years, took two years to work in industry, and am now going back to grad school for 4 more years.
When my girlfriend at the time and I started dating, I had one year of undergrad left, and she had just transferred to a new school and had 3 years left. After a year of dating, (and after I graduated,) we moved in together. For the next two years I supported the two of us, (and our 3 dogs) so she could focus on finishing school. We both insisted that she have a degree. So she graduated in May with her BA, we got married two weeks ago, and we are moving from TX to CA in 2 weeks. I will be on stipend, and she will be starting her own career. Hopefully the two of us will make close to what I did by myself in industry.
 
The point is, there's no reason I can think of why you would not be able to support both you and Brian once you graduate. I did it for two years, and now that I am going back, she will be supporting me along with my stipend. Our careers ladders were about as misaligned as they could be. If it's important enough to you to be with Brian, and him with you, y'all can figure it out.

I am in a somewhat similar situation to you.  My husband is a year older than me, and we met in high school.  He went to college a year ahead of me.  I finished in the standard 4 years and went straight into a PhD program - I am entering my sixth year.  He, on the other hand, spent 5 years in college, dropped out, joined the military for 4 years and then decided to return to school to finish his bachelor's degree.  He managed to get admitted to the same university I attend as an undergraduate, so he's an undergrad here while I'm a PhD student.  I have one more year left, and he has 1.5 to 2 years left.  I have accepted a postdoc for 2014-2016 in a city 5 hours away.

You just…have to go with the flow.  I understand the compulsion to try to plan everything out.  I'm like that too, and academia encourages us to make 5 year plans and 10 year plans.  Life doesn't really work that way, especially when you are planning with a partner.  I'll graduate in 2014 and my husband will graduate in 2015; he's not yet sure what he wants to do after he finishes and even whether he'll move to my new town with me or stay here in University City until I finish my postdoc and we can move together, or what.  *shrug*

You don't know for sure whether or not you'll be able to support him with your post-grad school salary (maybe you will, if you live frugally).  You just have to go with the flow and deal with obstacles as they come while trying to plan as best as possible.

The idea behind these letters of rec is that these people, given their stature and understanding of the field, can vouch for you as a worthwhile candidate for your program. That generally implies they've worked with you extensively, taught you, etc., but that isn't always the case. On your part you want the strongest, most convincing letters possible. So if you've done enough work with people who haven't been your teachers, but you still feel they know enough about you to write the most convincing letter of rec, then it seems like a good option. Now of course this is all my opinion, but it's based on several years of experience gaining knowledge myself of the process, and even though my field is different (I'm humanities/literature) I believe the concepts are shared. Hopefully more people respond to your post so that you get the most global idea possible.
 
That being said, another thing that's important to understand is that every program is individual. Application committees are made up of faculty members that are individual human beings with their own preconceived notions of what is good/bad and you just have to hope that your package fits well enough with what they envision as their ideal grad student to get accepted. Again, my gut feeling is that it won't matter as long as the letter can substantially and logically vouch for you being a good fit for your program. 
 
Hope that helps! Good luck to you!

I would say it's a bit unethical, especially as your chances of being finished with an MS next year are pretty slim. 
 
That said, I would think it's a pretty surprising move to choose an unfunded MS at a slightly "more prestigious" school over a funded PhD. 
 
Assuming the funded PhD is a decent school, it would be a much better move for your career, financial and otherwise. 
 
An unfunded MS will generally tell people that you didn't make the cut for either a funded MS or a funded PhD program, and is the schools way of telling you they didn't really want you. 
 
Just my 2 cents. 

It sounds like you have a legitimate complaint. He should never laugh at you when you bring him a problem. That's humiliation, which is harassment, which universities take seriously. He says you aren't writing at the graduate level, but did he explain why? Did he have a constructive response when you asked? You asked a fellow student, but you can't get reliable feedback because people don't want to hurt other people and will offer solidarity rather than criticism. You should not go over your p/a's head. You should, instead, take it directly to him. Don't take him complaints, but rather ask for suggestions to improve. He wants you to take a required course rather than the poet laureate's course (unless you're getting an MFA in poetry, I don't see how he's wrong here). His reply is a good one for a university student: is it going to help you write? If you think so, you should not only say so, but explain how and why. Yes, because Poet's work focuses on compressed narrative, imagery, and accented prosody, which is where I need work with my writing. While you have to have him sign off on courses you take--your candidacy is his responsibility--you aren't exactly asking for permission. You're a graduate student, so you should have looked at the course offerings, your requirements for candidacy, your interests, and your weaknesses in scholarship before you ever went to his office for advising. If you want a specific course, you should have reasons beyond who is teaching it. He's told you what he wants to know: is it going to help you write? So you should be able to answer the question. It's not about picking interesting classes, it's about selecting classes that will improve you and will help your job prospects. If he's right about your level or writing, will the required class be better for your over all scholarship? Sometimes, you have to let what appear to be great opportunities go in favor of your academics.
 
I think it comes down to this: can he help you help yourself achieve your degree and put you in a place where you're a strong job candidate? If not, the program might not be the fit for you.
 
I also think you should talk this over with someone who is able to understand both sides of this situation, knows university policy, and can advise you on how to resolve problems with this professional relationship in order to have a better experience in graduate school. That person isn't a fellow student (they don't know how policy works and will usually prefer solidarity and sympathy over constructive) or someone in the department (you don't want to add to your reputation). Your university's counseling services are a good place to start. They can help you work through this with confidentiality, and in enough time to drop with a full refund if necessary. They can also help you deal with the hostile work environment this guys presents, either personally or officially, as the case may be.