music

1. Professor (possibly, my discipline isn't exactly huge in my home country but I would like to try and change that) 2. Government education advisor for my discipline (I guess somewhat qualified post-PhD) 3. Non-profit/arts organisation director (a pretty realistic option) 4. Millionaire ( )

I live alone. I think the benefits of being able to sleep/eat/shower/study when I need to, without having to be considerate of someone else's potentially differing schedule, or relying on a roommate to be respectful of my needs, outweigh the somewhat inevitable loneliness. I like being able to act like a disgrace (eating out of saucepans, not getting dressed all day, having obscenely long baths, naked dancing in the living room etc) without feeling guilty. It's great when my partner visits to have my own space. I think having a roommate would be a real downer on the relationship thing and make visits less comfortable. I feel like in the past, that has been a real issue for both myself and others who have roomed with me - there's not really a good way to make excuses for sex noises. I would say that if you plan to live alone, be really proactive about socialising. It's hard enough to justify that time for most students, but living alone makes it very easy to make excuses and stay home with your books.

I opted for grad housing for my first year. If I wasn't going home for 4 months over the summer, I'd have considered moving out after the first term and found somewhere. As it is my grad housing situation is pretty good value and all-around ok, but I gather I hit the jackpot compared to some schools with that.

I was able to do Skype interviews, since I was applying from abroad. Is that an option for any of the programs you're applying to? Have you enquired whether there is any funding available from either your current institution or the interviewing institution?

Counterpointer, I'm also a musician and in this kind of situation of having minimal financial resources and the need to learn a skill, I would look into a skill-swop. Find a student who wants to learn your instrument, and speaks German/French to a high level. Maybe an undergrad senior or college student majoring in one of those languages, or someone in the local community who wants instrumental tuition and is a native speaker. If you committed to 1 hour each per week during term, that a lot of one-to-one hours during which you could focus on the reading exam exclusively. What about other students in your position, can you set up a study group together? Also, get hold of more past papers. You wouldn't usually go into an exam without having practiced for it, right? You don't want to waste more attempts just getting to grips with the format and figuring out likely difficulties, so do that in your own time.

I had a skype interview for Penn last year. It was pretty fun, they asked much less vapid and more concrete questions than most interviews! Stuff like 'describe a couple of articles you've read recently' and 'if you could have written any article which you've read, which one would it be and why'. From my list of apps, I had skype interviews for Cambridge, Stanford and Penn. I felt like Penn had already made their decision (they gave an extremely strong hint during the interview), Cambridge were extremely thorough (2 hours in total, partly bc I was up for funding though), Stanford seemed kind of like a pointless formality, I didn't get to share anything useful with them which wasn't already on my app. I wasn't sure what the purpose of it was - qs were stuff like 'what worries you most about when starting grad school'. It was also very short - 10 mins max. Tbh, my experience made me wonder whether the interviews are more just to check you're not a fraud, that you really did write your own application materials.

All my papers are in and I'm waiting on grades. Starting to get ahead with reading for next quarter. It feels soooo good to read extremely slowly I'm also starting to apply for summer fieldwork funding, which is very exciting, and getting reacquainted with my violin and lie-ins.

My usual conference attire is a skirt, opaque tights, and a nice top or blouse. If I'm not presenting I might sub in black trousers or a smart jumper. I also tend to adjust on day 2 based on what others wore, to some extent. A major consideration is that I don't want to have to think about clothing once I get there -> no white tops, always a spare jumper in case of a lunch-related incident, comfy shoes in case of blisters, a light scarf in case of the nervous rash I sometimes get on my chest area...you get my drift. I think your gender/ethnicity/age plays into this somewhat. As a younger female I feel somewhat obliged to make significantly more of an effort than I see more established male conference attendees making. Some non-white colleagues have stated that they feel in a similar position. I would always rather over-dress than under-dress at a conference, especially when presenting. Older men in my field have this tendency to 'dress the part' - being in ethnomusicology, you sometimes see people 'going native' with their choice of clothing. Definitely not a move I will be making any time soon.

Today is the final day of the quarter for me. Three final presentations in three days has sucked, but it turns out I did a better job than I needed to. Now it's just a matter of writing up my final papers and tackling some holiday reading. Suffice to say my case for the flight home is about half full of library books. My review session was very positive as well. I'm actually amazed and really pleased with myself that I made it through the first quarter of a PhD program, in an area which I've never studied before. Next quarter, hopefully I can avoid developing a nervous tremor approaching the final week of classes. I feel like checking in occasionally on this thread has been a useful way to stand back and evaluate more objectively how things are going.

Can you treat your PhD simply as a job until it's finished? If you feel like quitting is not a viable option, perhaps you can treat this as a less-than-enjoyable job, do it for the paycheck and eventual qualification, and in the mean time explore alternative career options through your university career guidance program. It sounds like you're at the start of your 4th year, in which case perhaps you can work with your advisor to explain that you really want to complete by the end of next academic year. 18 months is not such a long time in the grand scheme of things. Have you expressed your concerns to your advisor or friends? I would think that perhaps a good number of your concerns are actually pretty common, and your advisor may think you're doing better than you give yourself credit for. Some external, objective perspective can be a wonderful thing. That said, sometimes quitting is a good option. Do learn about the sunk cost fallacy that @fuzzylogician mentioned. Have you looked into whether a leave of absence is an option, which might allow you to explore other career options without fully quitting? It might show you whether the depressive feelings you mentioned really are due to the PhD program, or whether they're more general and just playing themselves out in whatever situation you find yourself. Speaking as someone who has suffered from debilitating anxiety issues, the latter was the case for me. I actually quit my previous career because I felt like the anxiety was caused by it (I was a violinist) - to some extent that was true, but I also know that anxiety will follow me whatever my career is.

A week today I'll be done for the quarter and packing to go home for 5 weeks Had a fairly major panic attack + migraine on Wednesday right before an exam, bc all my final presentations are on consecutive days next week and I feel horribly underprepared (even though in reality they just need a few final touches, and I know my material well). Papers aren't due for another 2 weeks, thankfully. I am *so* excited to see my partner back home. Already a little anxious about missing the first week of next quarter to present at a conference in the UK. Also my courses for the Winter are a lot less inspiring - 1 is to fulfill a curricular requirement but it reputed to be insanely hard, another is a lunchtime class (HATE HATE HATE) outside of my department, lecture-style instead of a seminar, and the prof has a reputation for being kind of dry. I feel like I did well on a couple of counts this quarter: keeping up my powerlifting, doing homework as soon as it's set, and turning in assignments before the due date when possible so I could move on to the next.

I was in a somewhat similar situation. I got accepted for my PhD over 4000 miles away from my bf, who I had been dating for 8 months at the point that I left to start school. In the end, I figured that I'm young, and if we want to be together forever, we would work out a way to make it happen. As it turns out, he's relocating to be with me next summer, and spending time long distance made it very clear to us that we really do want to spend our lives together. It's not an ideal situation right now (suffice to say I am looking forward to the holidays and spending a huge chunk of my stipend on flights, and he is also finding ways to visit me each quarter), and it probably wont be for some considerable time, but I have no regrets taking up my PhD offer. Even if things hadn't worked out because of the distance, I would interpret it as having been for the best.

Yeah. This. Still getting weekly homework and reading plus all the final papers and presentations are due in 10th/11th week. Eep.

Another Mendeley user. I use it as a virtual (pimped) bookshelf. It's great not to cart readings around to class, and to be able to search PDFs when a specific point of discussion comes up. I can honestly say it has made transitioning to grad school so much easier, by eliminating pretty much all the organisational stuff - I just download stuff from Jstor, or the university online blackboard, or wherever, import, and go. I also keep records of books which I don't have in PDF format, so I have a complete list of my readings, tagged by keyword and ordered by date. And no, I don't work for them!

They do not equate. Most US schools will specifically tell you to give your home country's GPA score because, unsurprisingly, they have a better handle on what that equates to than any individual applicant does.

Coming from a UK institution, do not worry about your 'GPA'. UK and US systems do not correspond at all, and being more specialised in our undergrads in the UK can give an advantage when applying for PhDs. Even if you get a 2:1, don't let that deter you. I opted to only apply to private schools in the US, because the public schools often do guarantee give full funding to international students, which seemed too big a gamble for me - unless you have significant savings, it might not be worth applying somewhere which may well be unaffordable, even if they make you the most generous offer they can.

Tax is a big outgoing (14%). US citizens do not have tax withheld at source, so effectively they often keep their entire stipend, so I am told. I also had to wait for my stipend for longer than US students because the paperwork was lengthy and required a bunch of signatures which I couldn't get til orientation week, so bear in mind you might need to pay your way for the first few weeks of term. The other significant one for me is flights home. My SO lives in my home country, so between us we are looking at around $5000/year on flights (ouch). He also plans to relocate, so that's two lots of international relocation expenses, which are *significant*. My relocation cost around $9000, including furnishing an apartment from scratch, buying a new phone outright because most non-US citizens can't get a contract phone due to not having a US credit history, stocking my kitchen, bike, climate-appropriate clothes, shipping my belongings etc. Aside from flights home, I just budgeted very tightly for rent/utilities, and consequently my day-to-day finances work out the same as any US student.

Since dropping my 4th course I can actually get my work done by Friday night. I've gone from feeling horribly overworked to feeling guilty about being able to do other things on the weekend :/ Planning to counter that by getting back into my own research on one of my two free days, and practicing my instrument again.

I can get through my coursework (classes+reading+small assignments) in about 25-30 hours per week. Maybe an extra 10 hours for semi-obligatory events and bonus assignments. I dropped a 4th language course bc it was taking me up to around 60 hours per week which I considered unsustainable. My current workload is great - like a regular job, and I pursue my personal research on the weekends.

The awesome thing about being diagnosed with Celiac is that you start feeling better pretty much immediately when you stop eating gluten (and any other foods which you might have become unable to digest from having a damaged intestine). The less awesome thing is you might have to wait til all the testing is completed until you're given the go-ahead to stop eating gluten. I was diagnosed about 2.5 years ago and it improved my quality of life drastically. So this might be a blessing in disguise, in the long run!

I'm probably reading about 15-20/week pretty thoroughly (1st year humanities student). It feels like a lot, and I'm not sure how much I'm digesting properly, but it's also a great way to get a feel for styles of writing which I like, and get a broad overview of my field in these early stages of grad school. I'm a slow reader, so it takes me maybe 4 hours from Mon-Fri to get through this.

Can you treat your research as a regular job? A lot of people aren't passionate about their jobs, so if you're getting paid, perhaps you can treat it that way. Formalise your hours with yourself (9-6 Mon-Fri, or whatever you want/need), and know that you are not obliged to work beyond those times. It can help keep your current research on track while also giving you plenty of time to look into what you think you want to do in the future, or take your mind off your situation by freeing your mind up on the evenings and weekends.

I'm about to start week 3 (we run on quarters) and decided to drop my 4th language course, and just take a regular courseload I was coping, but had zero time for anything aside from studying, which I figured was unsustainable. My advisor was really cool about it, but I feel like a bit of a failure. My regular courses are going well though, getting through pretty much all the reading and enjoying them for the most part. Turning in my 2nd paper today and doing 2 in-class presentations this week. Hoping that there might be some feedback soon.

Quite possibly because in your course (as in mine), students aren't necessarily living on campus, or even in the same country, once they've passed their exams, and might be off doing fieldwork for a good chunk of the later years. It may well simply be the case that students who are still in coursework are simply on campus a lot of the time, so stopping by a departmental event for free food more than makes sense.

There is a big difference between 'making sure I'm really understanding things' (which sounds like a self-confidence issue, and a fear of giving a 'wrong' answer in class) versus a fundamental lack of understanding of the reading/topics. I doubt it's the latter, or you probably wouldn't have been accepted into the department in the first place. So let's assume that you are capable of understanding the materials in question. Your first port of call on issues like verbal presentation, language, time management and study skills would likely be outside of the department with the university's graduate student organisation, or some similar body, depending on what your university provides. For issues relating to imposter syndrome, I would check out the counselling centre and any related inter-departmental group sessions which might help you. Then, as TakeruK says, start with your peers, then go to a TA, then the prof, if your issues are not resolved.