rising_star

This depends on your dental insurance. The plan offered at my last employer (for full-time employees mind you) did not cover fillings, crowns, bridges, or implants for the first full year of your membership unless they were somehow emergency procedures. One full year of paying where you could basically only get x-rays and cleanings covered. And, there were only had 3 dentist offices within 30 miles that took the insurance, so you either had to travel, be super flexible and come in whenever they called, or wait nearly 8 months from when you enrolled to get in for the x-rays and cleaning. (Yes, I know that's a long wait but, when there were literally a few thousand people plus their families with this insurance and only 3 offices taking the insurance, waits were long.) Yea, this is what I've paid in the past too. I didn't have dental insurance in grad school because there was no plan for it. I don't have it now because I've got great teeth and have kept them up well. FWIW, you really should invest in a power toothbrush if you haven't already. Even the $25 Oral-B ones do a much better job cleaning your teeth than you do. My dental hygienist said she can tell the difference between those who use one and those who don't. If you can, get one with a timer to ensure that you are brushing for the proper amount of time (2 minutes). The other thing is to floss at least once a day. The power toothbrush and some floss will make a world of difference in your oral health.

Yea, I'm also lazy and just do the target-date retirement fund. Eventually I'll buy shares in a stock market index to complement this. Eventually.

ADDABD, I actually don't think I misunderstood your original point at all (also, given my years of experience around here and grad school, you perhaps should not assume that I don't understand what fieldwork research grants in anthropology are ). But, we'll go back to what you wrote since you went so far as to cite yourself (also, our servers, AFAIK, are not in Indonesia but I guess you're just making assumptions all over the place so I should let that one slide...) Two things here: 1) You seem to believe that there is manipulation involved. Some granting agencies, like Wenner-Gren, stipulate that the funding cannot be used for tuition or write up while others do not. Others are more vague and just say "research expenses" or "research." In my case, one of the grants I received specified that it was to support me in my research, whatever that entailed. In their eyes, data analysis (in my case literally notebook upon notebook, plus hours of recording, plus hundreds of pages of website stuff) is part of the research. And, given my limited internet access while in the field, I actually couldn't really do all of my research while physically there. Again, some grants are stricter about what you can spend the money on than others. 2) Having applied for writing up fellowships, I have to say that there are fewer of them available than there are for fieldwork, unless your fieldwork is based in the USA. Many of the dissertation writing fellowships require your research be in a specific, narrowly defined field (so on education, for the Spencer, for example), be of a certain gender (AAUW), or certain ethnic identity (AAA Minority Dissertation Fellowship) which rules out many applicants. For example, a lot of people in my department were able to get funding to go overseas to do their dissertation research and very few of those same people were able to get dissertation completion fellowships because they were white and/or male and/or their research didn't fit into the fields listed as eligible in the fellowship descriptions. (FWIW, there's a fairly comprehensive though admittedly not all-inclusive list here. If you read the titles, you can see some of what I mean about the narrower eligibility for these than for research fellowships.) Another factor is that many of the dissertation completion fellowships open to people of all fields are residential, meaning that you have to relocate to wherever that fellowship is housed (examples include Yale's International Security Studies, Exeter Dissertation Year Fellowship, and the Woodson Institute at UVa, just to choose three). Not everyone is able to do that for any number of reasons that I won't go into. Yet another factor worth mentioning is that a lot of the programs listed on that link offer just 1-2 awards per year, which is quite different than applying to Wenner-Gren, SSRC, etc., where dozens of awards are granted each year. If you actually have numbers to back up your assertion that there is more funding available for things like writing up results than for conducting field research, I'd love to see the data (as I'm sure would my PhD advisor and others). And, since the excerpt I took ends with a thing about the OP, I'll make another (hopefully crystal clear) statement to the OP. You maximize the possibilities of being able to use multiple grants by listing everything you'd need to be successful. If you're thinking about international research, you should consider that costs may have increased since you did preliminary fieldwork. I found this was the case in my research and was grateful that I'd added I think 7% to what I'd spent during pre-diss fieldwork to my budget since that entire amount was absorbed by rising rent and electricity prices. Another thing to do is to lay out every single thing you'd like to do. Would you like to hire a transcriber (if the grant allows)? A research assistant? Buy fancy software or a new computer? Print out materials or make copies of things you find? Include all of that. Is your project a multi-faceted one where there's a thing you could do that would add on to your project that isn't enough to do by itself? Include it in your proposals and, if possible, your budgets. If it's in your proposal, then you can argue for rerouting some of your grant money to that "side project" (not really a side project because it's related to your original research) if you happen to get multiple awards. One of the things you, the OP (and everyone really), should know about fieldwork is that this is your last real opportunity for extended data collection and time in the field if you go into academia. You should collect as much data as possible, even if you're not sure you'll need it. You may discover when analyzing your data that you're glad for some of what seemed additional then because it now seems necessary. Or, going through those data again later may enable you to publish an additional article or write a book chapter that might not have been possible otherwise. More data is better almost always. So that's why I'm suggesting having the complementary smaller projects in mind and mentioning them where possible. If you get multiple awards, you may be able to use those projects to justify more time in the field, more research support, etc. ADDABD is probably going to say this is unethical but, you'll need the data. Your first few years post-PhD, even if you're lucky enough to be on the tenure-track, you'll be busy with teaching, service, and trying to publish the dissertation, which can make it hard to find the time for and be successful at getting a major grant to continue your research.

ADDABD, I should have clarified. One of my grants was for "dissertation research" and there was no requirement that it be used for fieldwork. Rather, it was meant to provide support for one's dissertation research, however that was defined. They also didn't produce a list of alternates or honorable mentions. Had I declined those funds, they would not have been awarded to someone else (I asked someone that had previously served on the fellowship review committee before making any decisions about what I would do). I guess what you're saying is the ethical thing to do would've been to let the organization keep those funds and hope that they awarded an additional fellowship in a subsequent year with the money I didn't accept? If you want to talk about the structural system, that's fine. We should have that conversation. Graduate programs should have that conversation with their students. I think at the faculty level that conversation may be beginning to happen given that the rate of success for NIH and NSF grants is declining as more people apply and the organizational budgets decrease. That said, I went into my field knowing what the expectations for fieldwork were, not just in the discipline but also of my advisor. I changed topics a few times, in part because I wasn't sure if I could get funding for some of the topics or they weren't feasible for various personal reasons. That is also part of the structure of graduate education. I was lucky in the sense that it all worked out for me in the end but now, looking at job ads for the past few years, I find myself sometimes wishing I'd stuck with my original topic and interests. It would be great if graduate programs had the funding available for students to do fieldwork. And I mean all graduate programs, not just those at private institutions (I went to a public university but considered going to a private one in part because of the summer and fieldwork funding available). In my own grad department, there were several conversations about the teaching load for those ABD but, because of the broader budget at the university, there really wasn't a way to lighten that teaching load unfortunately. Which basically put grad students in the same position as faculty: needing to get a grant to buy out that teaching time. The solution is probably to decrease the size of graduate programs to be quite honest. But, I doubt that's in the cards.

I have a preference for Garamond or Georgia but I can't seem to convince my students to use it, unfortunately. For official things, I tend to use Times New Roman just because people are familiar with it but I may play around with other fonts on my CV this weekend.

ADDABD, I think what you're implying is that what I did isn't ethical. But, considering that I negotiated with the people funding me directly after consulting with my department's grants person, I think it was. They knew I was planning to use one grant almost exclusively for the first part of the time in my field and then use the other to be able to write up my results and analyze data. This mattered because in my grad dept, those in the writing stage were instructor of record for undergraduate courses of 50-70 students, which is a lot of course prep and grading. The write-up money I took out of that grant was the exact same monthly salary I would've received as a TA plus health insurance since that was no longer covered. Everyone involved thought this was fair (my advisor, the dept chair, the grants person internally, and the funders). So, I'm not sure why that would be considered unethical. Also, let while I don't get to decide who gives me money and when, I do get to make decisions about what to do with it. I have a friend that got two fieldwork grants and decided to expand on her original project and do more data collection. Again, she asked for permission from the funders and received. A lot of times, especially if one of the grants isn't federal, people are willing to be flexible. More time in the field as a grad student is rarely a bad thing since it's also one of the only times in your career you'll be able to go into the field for months on end.

Actually, that would depend on the SSRC grant. There are grants from SSRC to fund 9-12 months of international dissertation fieldwork/research. I'm assuming that's what the OP means rather than the SSRC dissertation proposal development program. OP, the advice to talk to the department's admin is spot-on. In addition, if there's a grants person in the grad college, talk to them as well. But, if you're working out budgets for submission, you write each grant's budget assuming that you will not get any other grants. That is, your Wenner-Gren budget is based solely on what your project needs and not any possibilities of getting a second dissertation grant. If and when you get two dissertation research grants, then you work with your budget/grants person internally and communicate with all funders about what you want to do. I know a few different options for handling that situation. One is to spend longer in the field. Another is to ask if either or both funders will allow you to use some of the money for support while writing your dissertation up at home, writing it while in the field, or for a return trip to the field. In some cases, people do have to not accept one of the grants but usually there's a way to avoid that. I had multiple dissertation research grants and negotiated with one of the funders (one was non-negotiable basically except for the start date) to fund a semester of time to write up results and a follow up trip to the field.

I'm not familiar with the area, Payel, other than having visited there once. It's in the Baltimore-DC metropolitan area so there's definitely public transit. I'm sure whomever is hiring your spouse will be able to provide you with local resources to look into. If that doesn't work or you're impatient, you can also check the city-data forums online for information.

It sounds like plenty to me. If you're comfortable with public transportation, you may be able to live a bit further away to save money on rent.

I had a 14" for most of grad school but I also had a 21.5" monitor on my desk at home to connect that laptop to. I liked having both.

I'm not in history. I also started my PhD program with a MA, which meant I was eligible to teach courses. My first two summers I taught summer courses AND did research abroad. I applied for and received funding to cover my research expenses and used to the summer teaching money to pay rent and expenses stateside. It worked out well in that it helped me refine my research question, figure out what data and resources were available, make connections, and gain teaching experience. The summer courses at my institution are 5 weeks max in length, which meant that I still had plenty of time to spend 6 weeks doing research and a couple weeks at home with my family. It's good that you're asking now. Deadlines pop up seemingly randomly for the kind of small thing that can support summer research. One summer, I found funding from a source even the grant/fellowship folks at my university hadn't really heard of. It was a total longshot (they hadn't really been funding research from grad students OR research in my area) but I applied and got it, much to the surprise of my advisor, the university grants person, and I. My point in telling this is that you should apply even if you don't think you'll get it because you really never know. It's kinda a crapshoot when you apply for funding so just do it if you can. And don't overlook small grants ($500-$1000), even if you need to go overseas. I got 3 small grants my first summer, which was enough to fund a 5 week research trip abroad. There was less competition for those grants because a lot of people overlook the small grants and go for the larger ones. Don't be like that. Apply for it all!

I ate fairly "clean" in grad school, if only because I didn't eat out a lot. I did eat frozen dinners from time to time, so that wouldn't be clean. But a lot of my cooking was done in the slow cooker (or crock pot) so that I could make 3-4 meals at a time, rather than having to cook every day. Even now that I'm out of grad school, I still do most of my cooking once a week on Sundays. I'll make a quiche or frittata to portion out for breakfast each morning and eat that along with greek yogurt and berries or oatmeal. Then, lunches are usually soup I make a big pot of for the week. And dinner is something else, maybe soup and salad,, or maybe something else if I decide to cook a third thing for the week. By doing all the cooking on Saturday and Sunday, I've got food throughout the week with minimal effort. And, if you plan better than I do, you could make extra and freeze some portions of soup or whatever and then just take those out when you need a quick meal. I'm trying to move more in that direction but it's difficult for whatever reason. At any rate, I don't consider myself to be part of a movement. I do what I do because I don't like eating out unless it's certain things and because I want to save money.

You should go to as many as you can and also talk to more advanced students (3rd-5th years) to see what the expectations regarding attendance are. In my grad program, attendance at the departmental colloquia wasn't technically mandatory. However, there were faculty that kept track of who was in attendance, including which of their advisees. I was told that at annual review whether one was engaged in the department's intellectual life (by attending these colloquia and not just grading a pile of papers in the back while you're there) was considered and could be a tiebreaker if it came down to deciding who would get the last funding slot. So, definitely make sure you're at those kinds of events unless you have a conflict. My department also had a grad student association that it was good to attend, if only to get updates on things like departmental funding, internal funding opportunities, and to get to know your fellow students better. As for the social, you can be more selective. Some people NEVER went to our department's weekly happy hour while others always did. Some went and drank Shirley Temples or club soda (both students and faculty). I did go but rarely talked shop while there, which made it a nice way to get to know people. If there are department-wide social events, like picnics or potlucks, you should make an effort to attend those. I know it's hard to balance because, on the one hand, your work should come first. But, making connections (networking) is going to be key to getting through your program successfully. You need to get to know your fellow students so you have resources to turn to for things like discussing the readings, getting help with the homework, practicing a conference talk, getting someone to look over a draft before you send it to your advisor, etc. These social events are a good way to start making those connections.

I like the Pilot G2 gel pens. I also sometimes use ballpoint pens (Pentel fine or medium, different pack but the same pen in proflorax's picture above) depending on whether I care about being able to see the ink on the other side of the page.

My cards don't list any credentials or certifications. They also don't list the field of my PhD. They're just name, job title, department, university, phone number, and email.

I would select a book in a related subfield.

Letters are insanely important. Those reading your application trust their peers to be able to evaluate your ability to succeed in grad school, so they take the letters quite seriously. When I applied to PhD programs, there were phone calls between POIs at schools I applied to and one of my letter writers. I know because I was told about them. They called this letter writer because they knew the person personally and professionally. So yea, letters matter. Make sure yours are strong. And, as much as you can, try to get them from people that are known in your field.

Kenway, there's nothing in your post or about what you've written that suggests you aren't cut out for grad school. And, given that you're only a few weeks in, it is way too early to talk about transferring. At the graduate level, transfers should be about getting a better research fit, not about trying to live near friends. I say this because, as has already been pointed out, it is difficult to stay in one location for one's entire life. Even if you transfer to a PhD program near your family and friends, you have to think about whether you'll be able to pursue a meaningful career near them as well (as danieleWrites has pointed out). I think the major thing right now is to try to do some things to get your mind off of what you no longer have. Explore your new city. Take some trips into Canada. Explore the Finger Lakes region. If you like wine, there's great ice wine in the Niagara region and great wine in general in the Finger Lakes. Continue hanging out with those in your program and working to meet others. Join a meetup group. Go to campus-wide graduate student events. Take up a hobby. I write this as someone that was super homesick as an undergrad and seriously considered transferring back home to be near my friends. But, in the end, I'm glad I didn't because I grew and changed as a person in ways that were actually probably really good for me. Also, my friends changed and some of them are basically acquaintances now because we've drifted apart. That happens. People do drift apart and you will. I should say that given all the technology these days, you can/should schedule regular Skype/FaceTime/Hangouts chats with your friends so that you can see them and get caught up on their lives. That will help you stay in touch and feel like you're still part of one another's lives. Don't take any drastic actions right now. Everything is new so of course you feel uneasy. Do what you can to take care of yourself mentally and physically so that you're making decisions in a clearheaded way. Talking to a counselor about everything is also a great idea because they will be able to provide strategies for dealing with homesickness as well as provide an outside, unbiased view on your decision-making process regarding dropping out or transferring. Best of luck, Kenway. Do keep us posted.

Write a proposal this fall. If possible, do it as one of your final papers for a course. If that's not possible, then try to use your seminar papers to develop the ideas that will ultimately be in your master's thesis (that is, write a chapter or two of the MA thesis this semester for final papers). By doing this, you'll be able to get feedback soon about whether your topic is a feasible one for a MA thesis (you seem concerned about picking too large of a topic, so this could definitely help), as well as get feedback from multiple professors on the topic itself.

I pretty much always went home for at least a week, sometimes two. I'd take some reading with me and maybe work on some paper stuff but, in general, I took the time to relax. If you're in the mindset of treating grad school as a full-time job, then you should remember that most full-time employees in the USA get 2 weeks of paid vacation per year (which is admittedly paltry compared to European countries). So, if you can take a week or two away from work, you should. See your family or friends. Read a book or two for pleasure. Explore a side interest that you've had to put on the side due to grad school (could be a side research interest, a hobby, or something else). Explore the area where your grad school is if that's an appealing option. Even if you're in a lab, you can probably worry a bit less about doing work in the evenings, if only because you won't have classes.

This conversation has really morphed. I've actually spoken to librarians at two different university libraries about e-books in the past few years and I'll share what they've told me. At one library, the librarian pointed out that the had a growing collection of academic e-books. Most of these come in packages of varying sizes, so you end up with some really excellent books and some that are not so good (lots of texts published in India, I've noticed, and available by going through Springer for example). The librarian told me they were paying for these because it enabled them to expand their collection more than they could with physical books. But, she also noted that the availability of specific e-book titles could change from one year to the next depending on what the cost and options are. I feel like that was definitely an important caveat and she emphasized it. Also, the price they pay apparently determines how many simultaneous checkouts are allowed for a particular title. She told me that the library itself was the one setting limits on the length of the checkout. I also asked her about why public library's have worked to enable their users to read e-books on their e-reader but the university library books all required a laptop. That answer got way complicated and technical and I wouldn't be doing it justice to explain. But, a lot of it relates to the proprietary software used to view those books (eBrary or NetLibrary, for example) and their incompatiblity with Kindles/Nooks. Sorry I can't provide more on that one. As for whether or not libraries will pay subscription fees for things that don't change, I think they've already demonstrated that they will. The move to get rid of older copies of bound journals and instead pay for subscriptions to databases that have those back issues is one such example. Sure, you also have to subscribe for the recent issues. But, at least in looking at the journal subscriptions for the 3 schools I've been at most recently, there's almost always a year beyond which you can't go back electronically (either because your school doesn't subscribe to the deep archive or because they haven't been digitized). So if and when libraries get rid of those older issues (and some are because they want/need the space for other things), they go from paying once for something to having to pay for it year after year even though the content hasn't changed. Back to the original question, I just had a thought. Even if your specific issue isn't covered in the published style guide, might it be covered on their website somewhere? I mostly use Chicago Manual of Style and they have a searchable website as well as a Q&A section that covers various citation and style topics (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/latest.html). You might want to see if there's something similar for MLA or whatever style it is you're trying to use.

Are the Nancy Foster scholarships still around? If so, that might be a program to look into. If you're looking for funding for writing up, there are several dissertation completion fellowships out there, with more options if you're an underrepresented minority (which for some programs means if you are underrepresented in your field). More generally, my advice is to check the major university funding databases, like those of Cornell, Duke, and UCLA. They're all excellent and can be incredibly helpful. If there's a person tasked with scholarships or grant support in your college or the Grad School, make an appointment with them too. They might be able to point you to internal and external resources, as well as assist by reviewing your grant applications before they go out. Sorry about your situation. Good luck!

There's actually a lot of drawbacks to libraries for switching to e-books. One is that certain publishers force libraries to buy additional e-copies of the same book after a certain number of checkouts, which doesn't happen with physical books. Also, switching to e-books requires users to have certain technology (or at least access to that technology), which may mean the library also has to purchase e-readers for checkout (some public and college libraries have actually done this). And, of course, if some change happens to the format (ie the switch from cassette tapes to CDs), the libraries may be in a world of trouble. Personally, I'm glad libraries are sticking with physical books, especially with the studies coming out that say you absorb and remember material better when you read it in a physical book.

I would definitely follow the money. If you can't get any immediately, defer your admission and start at a later time when you can.

victorydance, my guess is that the OP is struggling with how to cite quotations taken from e-books. That is definitely tricky since most citation styles require the exact page number to be included. I'd probably just try to avoid using direct quotations, which is generally a good practice in writing anyway, just to avoid the entire issue. If you do need page numbers, consult the specific style guide and/or ask the editor if it's a manuscript and the journal's style guide doesn't address that specific issue.