rising_star

Everyone else has posted about diet but I'm going to post about exercise. I find that working out actually gives me more energy than I had before. So, I'll do a quick weightlifting workout that takes maybe 30-40 minutes and I'll be wide awake after, even if I'm dragging my butt when I get to the gym. If you're completely sedentary in the evening, you're really not doing your body any favors or encouraging it to be more active. I also try to incorporate walking and exercise into my day whenever I can, which I think helps.

I guess I'm not sure why you want to get a master's. It's not super valuable in terms of employment opportunities, at least not in the US. If you're just super interested in people, you could read anthropology on your own and participate in MOOCs.

I'm confused. If you're staying in the same field, why do you need a different advisor? I work on a very different subfield than my advisor but we're in the same field and use the same methods, so it's really not a problem. He's still able to advise me, though I turn to others (through my network) for advice within my subfield.

Depends. Is it a did well in class type letter or one that will address your academic potential? If it's the latter, it doesn't really matter who writes it.

You need to track down the first recommender. S/he may very well be working at another institution, which would resolve all of your issues, wouldn't it?

Send an email even if it's only to ask if he's taking on new students. That alone is information you need to know before you apply.

Whatever you do, do not single them out in class. It will not help things. What I would do were I in your shoes, is schedule individual meetings with each students and talk with them about their paper to understand why there are no citations. Is it because they didn't understand how to cite material? Because they didn't know they had to? Because EndNote screwed them over? (I realize that last one is unlikely but it happened to me during my master's.) You can use the reason why they didn't have citations as the basis for deciding whether they should be allowed to rewrite. Because honestly, if you just fail them, even if it's on 10% of the grade, you're showing them that one mistake (which may have been an oversight in their eyes or may have been intentional, impossible to know without asking) means they earn the same grade as someone that lifts their paper from Wikipedia or an essay site. And that's incredibly discouraging for students. I'm with jmu on all of this. I only take a "tough crap" approach when dealing with juniors and seniors because they've all had freshman comp, they all know they need to cite, etc. I cut them way less slack than I cut freshman. And yes, giving them another opportunity gives them a chance to learn from their mistake. If they learn from it, they're less likely to repeat it. Unfortunately, a lot of students think like this. But, we don't all learn at the same rate. Not everyone can grasp the material in the same amount of time so allowing people to redo their work for a higher grade gives them the chance to learn from their mistakes and take another shot to grasping the material. Pedagogically, it has excellent value, even if the A+ students out there can't stand it. (And, I write this as someone that hated it as a student but now understands it as an educator.)

First, I want to say that you're confusing bluntness with hostility. I don't mean you any ill will but I am being very blunt and honest with you, as I am with everyone else I know in graduate school or that wants to be in grad school. Second, I'm not saying that I believe you'll take longer than everyone else to do a PhD. I am saying that it will be hard for people evaluating your application to overcome that perception. They are going to know the overall time-to-degree for your program, if they know anything at all. Otherwise, they're going to judge your application by comparing how long you took to do the MA to that of their own MA students and others with a MA in the applicant pool. You may think that you have overcome those obstacles but, you continue to place the blame on your advisor and accept very little of it personally. That won't read well in an application, especially since you aren't going to have a rec letter that says "Oh, all of X's students take forever to finish so actually 1000Plateaus finished quickly given who he worked under." Do you see my point? Third, while you may be taking what people say under consideration, you come across as dismissive of everyone that does not support your entrance into a PhD program immediately, that thinks you took a long time to finish, that thinks your difficulties were personal and not just due to your advisor, etc. You are fairly one-sided in your thankfulness if you read the comments carefully. Those of us who have said that applying without your advisor's letter is a bad move have been brushed aside, for example. I absolutely 100% agree with this. If I were in your shoes, I would try to schedule at least 45 minutes to meet with each one of them and find out what they genuinely wanted you to do, where they think you came up short, and why. Without their support (even if that just means they won't badmouth you if someone calls them), you are going to have a very, very hard time pursuing a PhD in a reputable program and with funding. If you don't care about either of those, then please tell us so we can stop giving you advice as if you do. One year longer really is a lot longer for master's students. It's the same as going full-time, taking a full load of courses every semester, and taking 6 years to finish a bachelor's in the US. It's a lot of extra time and a lot of extra money, whether that's yours or the department's. And while professors may be jerks, it generally takes a lot to have two professors who worked with you on a thesis refuse to write you recommendation letters.

telkanuru, that's totally fine. I wouldn't worry about it. I basically don't answer any student emails the day before or of an exam, unless it's about them missing the exam due to illness or something. If the answer is in their book or notes, I'll write back with one line "The answer to your question can be found in the textbook" and leave it at that. Some will then write back and ask where but, I then tell them they need to find it themselves. I don't waste a lot of time on student emails because most of the time, it really is a waste of time.

Two points here. 1) Just because "lots" do it does not mean that you should. Some of those people in the "lots" take time to have children, go abroad to conduct research, have their field sites literally burn to the ground in a forest fire, etc. You can't compare yourself to anonymous data. You should be comparing yourself to the other people in your department. How many of them finish the master's in less time than you? How does your time to degree compare to the departmental average? 2) People don't generally take way longer than the norm on a master's and then get to go on to a PhD. A master's program is either 1 or 2 years. If you take 50% longer than everyone else, then that makes it really, really hard to believe that you'll somehow be able to finish a PhD in a timely fashion. So instead of the "average" you presented (which, btw, is not broken down to show whether or not those people already had a MA when they began), it becomes reasonable to suspect that you'd take 50% longer than that, so 9-12 years. No one would take on anyone who they knew would take that long to finish. No one sane, at least. At this point, you seem both incredibly stubborn and thick-headed about all of this. It is clear that you won't listen to the collected wisdom of many senior graduate students so, why do you keep posting?

I mean, you could put it on your CV as service, which could be good especially if that section of your CV is empty... But if it's as obscure as you say, I'd worry that they wouldn't have anything relevant for you to review.

This is really field dependent. If you're applying in clinical psych, 10-12 may not be enough. If you're applying in my field, that same number would generally be considered overkill.

Try UCLA's GRAPES site or the Cornell list of fellowships. Both will help you find fellowships/grants in your area.

I'm going to disagree with Sigaba just a bit. Part of that is because at my university we can print out a class roster with pictures (the same as is on their student ID) so there's no need to do the photo thing. Second, if it's a discussion section, you need to do actual icebreakers where the students get to know one another, otherwise they may not get comfortable speaking around one another until halfway through the semester, which is not good. Third, there's some pedagogical research on this but, if you let them leave early the first day, it sort of sets them up to think you'll let them leave early every time. There's always the people who pack up with a couple minutes left in class. But, what you'll find if you let them leave early day 1 is that they'll start packing up 10-15 minutes before class ends "because that's when you let us out last time". Definitely not a precedent. Sorry I was so brief before. What I should've added is that the type of icebreakers and activities you want to do on day 1 is very dependent on the type of course you're going to be running. You'll definitely want to do student info cards (for freshman, I usually ask them what their major is or will be, why they came to this university, and what they think their first semester will be like). You don't necessarily want to read the riot act or go over the syllabus in minute detail because it's generally overload, especially since they'll have multiple other people doing that to them in one day. If you're going to have them working in groups, have them do something in groups on the first day. If they'll be doing a lot of in-class writing, have them do that. If they're going to have to write and then share (think-pair-share, for example), have them do that. So, it's impossible for me to sit here and say which icebreakers you should use since I don't know what kind of class you want to have for the rest of the term. Hopefully these ideas will get you started.

Honestly, Google is your friend here. Or, any book intended for first time college teachers.

Chill out. You are definitely overreacting. This kind of thing happens a fair bit, including at conferences and in the hallways of departments. In truly toxic departments, it happens at various functions and faculty meetings as well. Welcome to academia (or any other workplace really)! It is way, way, way too early to even think about switching advisors, especially over something like this. The battle is between the two of them and you should do your best not to get dragged into it. Part of that includes not having both of these people on your committee. Just put your head down and do your work. It's your first few weeks. No need to go make drastic changes because of one conversation. (Also, in my experience, every single conversation I've ever had like that with a faculty member has been a prescient warning. I don't know about your gender but it's entirely possible your advisor was warning you because there are things she knows that she can't share about the other person's inappropriate behavior that go far beyond professional/intellectual disagreements. There are many a story of male faculty members acting inappropriately toward female graduate students, for example. Or of giving female students lower grades and harsher critiques on their work out of a desire to "make sure they earn their degrees". Only time will tell in your case.)

Make an appointment with the DGS and start scouting options for a new advisor.

Go here to reply:

Please don't make the same post in multiple places.

I'm assuming this question is about non-academic jobs and that student A isn't that close to graduation. If you don't list someone as a reference, they can't contact that person. It's that simple.

I'm not in your field probably but my inclination is that you don't need to describe each project. I would list all of your skills in their own section on the CV.

boopiter, what you've described sounds more like the way undergrad admissions works. At the graduate level, your applications goes directly to the department where an internal admissions committee decides on applicants. Then, those selected for admission are forwarded on to the graduate school for admission. So, what Eigen is saying is that the department could choose to offer you admission but then you could ultimately be denied admission by the graduate school on the basis of your GPA.

Man, there's some trainwreck advice being given out here. Listen, there are lots of reasons why you should be worried about the rec letter situation. Some schools actually require that you list the person's relationship to you when writing down who they will get letters from. So, it will be a red flag for them if you never write "advisor". Also, faculty know each other and they talk. Don't think someone you're applying to work with won't pick up the phone and call someone they know in their program (rec letter writer or not) to ask about you. I've said this many, many times on here over the years but, when I applied to PhD programs, one of my rec letter writers got multiple phone calls from my POIs asking for additional information about me, to follow up on stuff in the letter, etc. That rec letter writer knew about two of my admissions before I did and even warned me that one of my POIs was going to call! So do not underestimate or doubt the amount of talk that goes on.* Were I you, I'd think very seriously about pursuing this path. Take some time off to really consider your options and lay the groundwork for pursuing the PhD. Maybe you need to take additional MA classes so you can get better letters and write a strong writing sample. Maybe in doing so you'll regain the confidence of those you've already worked with. But just forging ahead now seems like a recipe for disaster. *And please, don't tell me this shouldn't happen because of FERPA. Because it happens anyway and good luck finding a way to bring a lawsuit if you ever find out.

10 applications in this economy is really not very many. You need to be applying to quadruple (or more of) that amount if you want to land interviews and from there a position.

You find other options. There must be other professors you've taken classes with. Reach out to one of them.