falernian

So I'm starting to tackle my program's reading list, and I'm realizing that it'd be really useful to have some kind of flashcard app for the Greek vocab I don't know.

Does anyone have any suggestions that have worked for them? As far as I can tell the usual apps want you to type in for both sides of the card, and I'd rather have the actual Greek instead of transliterating.

Maybe more broadly we can talk about apps you guys have found especially useful as Classics grad students?

Vancouver has excellent transit, so you can be pretty flexible when choosing a place to live. The cheapest apartments will be further out (New Westminster, Burnaby, Commercial Drive) but if you do choose to live out there, be sure to find a place near a Skytrain station. This will make all the difference. 
 
I lived downtown (in the West End) with two roommates during my first year and paid $725, but it was a cramped living situation. If I was doing it all again, I'd probably find an apartment somewhere along the Canada Line (which goes down Cambie Street). From Cambie, there are express buses that run to UBC along Broadway (9th Ave), 25th Ave, 41st Ave, 49th Ave, and (I believe) 70th Ave/Marine Drive. So almost anywhere along Cambie is convenient to UBC, but it's also very easy to get downtown from there. For me, it was the best of both worlds. 

Anyway, is anyone here advised by an assistant professor?
 
Me!  My adviser was beginning his third year on the tenure track as I began my first year in the program.  He is up for tenure this year (and has been promoted to associate professor) as I finish up.  For context, I am in a lab-based social science; when I arrived, there was me, one other doctoral student, and one project coordinator, and maybe one or two RAs.  That was basically the lab.  And he had one large grant.  In the past 6 years he has acquired about 3-4 more large grants, has multiple projects and we now have quite a staff in the lab.  He's been very successful!
 
Are you able to get across to them what you want out of an advisor?
 
My adviser has been phenomenal, in a word. I visited the April before I attended and we really clicked.  We have similar working styles - and he's very busy and I am very independent, so it worked well.  He doesn't need to micromanage me, and I get my work done without a lot of oversight or nitpicking on his part.  He clearly cares about my progress, and has been able to balance being constructive and giving good feedback (sometimes negative if necessary) on my work.  It also helps that I am not afraid to ask for what I need, and came into the program with clearly delineated goals.  I think when you have a busy junior professor, being forward and organized helps a lot.  He also cares about me as a human being, and make sure that I have a good work-life balance.  We've published three papers together and are working on another two.  I'm first author on two of them.
 
FWIW, I also have a secondary adviser in my secondary department.  He is a tenured full professor who is well-known in my field.
 
Do you still have some autonomy, even though they're more invested in your research?
 
Definitely.  I have a lot of autonomy.  My adviser has some major projects and data sets; he of course has his own projects/papers/specific aims that he wanted to write on when he got the data.  But he's been very very open to me basically picking whatever I want to do out of his data sets and doing that.  He doesn't tell me what to work on; he gives me suggestions, and I take those in different directions.  This is going to be very dependent on your professor's personality and level of neuroticism, though.  I think my adviser trusted me to identify important projects and saw a willingness in me to take charge/the lead on projects he also thought were important, and we have very similar interests, so he didn't feel the need to assign me work.  That's also not his style (nor is it mine, because I have explicitly told him I wasn't interested in certain things).  Other PIs may have that style where they want to assign or push you into things and you have to work within that framework.
 
Do you have to divert time from research towards the administrative tasks of setting up the lab?
 
In the beginning, I did spend some time on admin stuff because there wasn't anyone around to do it.  Admin in our lab was a lot of participant work, so recruiting and screening participants for studies, conducting interviews, data management from the web diaries we collected, etc.  I don't have to do most of that now because he's hired other folks to do it (although I still am the primary data management person on one of our projects; I enjoy data management, actually).  I wouldn't call it a diversion, though, because it's an integral part of getting the research done AND it's always a good idea to get involved in the collection of the data.  You get closer to the data that way.  That's the reason I always volunteer to do data management, because through cleaning and organizing the data I get very very close to it.  I never did paperwork or anything like that; we had a project coordinator who was responsible for IRB submissions and filing consent forms and things of that nature.
 
Are there any things that have or have not worked in building a relationship with your advisor?
 
Being organized and goal-directed helps.  Especially in the beginning I came to my adviser at the beginning of every semester with a list of academic and professional goals, plus my class listing already picked out (using the student handbook for guidance) and we would go over them and talk about how to achieve them.  At the end of the semester we reviewed.  I also prepared an agenda for each of our meetings; even if I didn't send it to him in advance (which I usually did not) I had a list of things to tick off and talk about.  As I went along in the program more, he looked to me more and more to direct our meetings to what I needed from him.  You're expected to become more independent over time, and I think having a junior professor advise you sometimes helps with that.
 
Be aware that especially around their third or fourth year - and especially at a nationally-known RU/VH institution - junior faculty start traveling extensively to establish a national reputation, which they will need for tenure.  They have to give talks in far-flung areas and get known by senior people in the field who can write letters for them.  That may mean getting on their calendar earlier, or making do with less frequent meetings.  I meet with my adviser biweekly but I know some people who meet with theirs like once a month.  In year 6-ish they will also be preoccupied with putting together their tenure dossier.  My adviser's tenure cycle wasn't the normal 6 year one, for whatever reason, so his tenure dossier compilation actually coincided with my early days of dissertation writing, and he was less available.  That was fine for me; I just put my head down and wrote, and by the time he was ready to meet again I had a chapter and a half waiting for him, lol.
 
You also need to think about what you might do if your adviser has to leave, especially if you will be entering in their third-ish year.  At most places the tenure clock is 6 years; if they get denied they get a terminal year (7th) to find another position.  If your adviser has been in the department for 3 years already when you start, he'll be beginning the 4th year in your first, and will be going up for tenure in your third, which is likely when you are taking exams and planning for your dissertation proposal.  If he gets denied, then he will be searching for another job when you are beginning your proposal process/finishing up exams and planning the diss, and that's a really crucial period for doctoral students.  It's also a sucky period for them to leave wrt to you. If you transfer with him, you may have to retake exams or even coursework at his new department unless he has the clout to negotiate for that not to happen (probably not).  If you stay, then you're just beginning the dissertation, so a lot of professors won't be willing to basically be a proxy sponsor for you (you know, serve as your "sponsor" while really your old adviser is your main diss adviser) so you may have to change tracks.  Privately, I thought about what I might do should my adviser leave the university.  (This is one of the reasons I chose to do a secondary data analysis for my dissertation.)
 
My advice, too, is to "adopt" a Trusted Senior Mentor/tenured senior faculty member who can serve as either a formal or informal adviser.  Junior faculty can be truly excellent mentors, but by definition they are less connected and have less clout within their departments and within your field.  On the other hand, a well-known senior adviser can pull some tremendous strings for you, and open some doors.  I have had experiences like that myself with my quite well-known senior mentor.  Working with one also puts you in a new and positive light, as I have seen people's reactions to me when I tell them who I work with here.  Senior faculty also generally have more time, assuming they aren't overburdened with administrative assignments.  (The flip side, though, is that very senior faculty - especially the ones with the cloud and the admin assignments - aren't necessarily as productive as the young faculty.  Some are, some aren't, it really just depends.)
 
So the tl;dr version is don't avoid a junior/untenured faculty member, but realize that there are some concerns to think about when choosing to work with one and consider the possibility of adopting a senior faculty member as an informal mentor.

I was one of the WUSTL acceptances! Really excited, they're my second-choice program. A bit dismayed to hear UGA's already sent out a few, as they're solidly my favorite. Hoping there's a possibility of being waitlisted?