overworkedta

Talk to the governing body in charge and try to seek out mental health services if you are genuinely feeling depressed and if that's an option where you are. I experienced some really hard times adjusting to life in Britain during my year abroad (believe it or not) because of a housing situation as well. I had two great housemates, one meh one, and one truly awful one. We also had no working stove, no working heat, etc. Until I made British-living friends, I was pretty miserable. Making even one friend a couple months in was truly life-changing for me. I loved school and being able to travel but my living situation was truly awful because of one roommate and my inability to make food I wanted to eat. Food was a huge issue for me there. Reaching out to the local uni and housing board, I was able to solve the problem and get the student responsible for trouble written up. The problems didn't completely go away but my life got much better. However,really, it was having friends locally that "got" things and could tell me who to talk to that made all of the difference. Finding friends can be trying (even for an extrovert like myself) but it was a great life skill to gain. Even with the awful weather (I have SAD and was dx'ed there) and terrible food, I found ways to help myself and now miss Britain years later. I have since been abroad to Rwanda for a summer and had almost zero lag adjusting even despite language barriers. I made friends, surrounded myself with things I knew would help (like good coffee and the occasional ex-pat food treat) and did much better. Don't leave before you have exhausted all opportunities. It's never easy to go abroad - especially the first time you do. Find resources and try to stick it out. If your mental health simply won't permit it (I get that completely), then you can definitely take care of yourself and pull out. But I would seriously try all avenues before that.

I think that as well. It makes sense to me to do it that way. I don think they will be open Monday. I know my FPA and most others won't be in either because of the holiday. We don't start the semester until Tuesday.

Blargh. This is so frustrating. I guess I will push back my worries until next Friday?

Well, it's 6. Let me guess, not happening today?

Yeah, boyfriend FORCED me to leave the house to go shopping today and then basically admonished me for phone checking. It kept me busy until about 2 PM or so. He even got me coffee. So, win for him. Like I said, I love him to pieces. He has been an amazing force in my life during this very stressful past year. We are pretty much eachother's rocks. If nothing else, this process makes me realize how great I have it and how much of a support system I really have. I can't doubt he loves me or anything.

I doubt they'd do it on a weekend. Like any smart bureaucrats, they would wait until the end of the day so they didn't have to field any annoying calls. I doubt they would come in on the weekend to do anything. I'm freaking out, too. I wish there was a given date/time that we could know about. I also don't think it will be Monday since Monday is a holiday.

I'm giving it until 5 PM (Central) because they've said in the past they've come around 6 PM in the evening. I will wait until then and then commence the cooking and drinking I was planning on doing regardless. I planned a dual purpose Chicken Picatta because local white wine was on sale and the meal doesn't take that much wine.

Anytime I hear anything come through my email, I freak the eff out. Because I am now officially an "instructor" and classes start next week, I have to do a ton of things with email today. I have gotten about 150 emails in the past hour. Seriously!

Yup! And checking twitter.

I made this accompanying my blog post today:

If you're like me and you use the university server for things like accessing remote stats software, you probably already have a VPN connection. I used my VPN while I was in Rwanda for a summer and Britain for a year to watch US shows and access US-only content. And I still had my British VPN when I came back in 2009 so I watched british shows on i-player with it. I found out the international students visiting us here do the same thing for their home country, so apparently lots of people have the same idea! But it's a good option! If I get it, I will be in Canada, so I will still be able to keep up with most of my shows and the like no problem. That's also why the SO wouldn't have a big issue getting a job if he had a visa. No real language barrier. I mean, we might even be living in a francophone place and my uni may be French-primary but he can just hop across the river and get a job no problem.

Well, the bf has always been excited about it since I told him. He didn't think he was going at all he's just very supportive. He told me he was planning on proposing at the end of the year if all goes well recently but we may end up getting hitched and the figuring out the visa later. I would love to bring him and while it seems crazy I think it could work. We didn't plan on crazy fast wedding decisions but I'd like to share this. I've already been abroad twice solo for extended periods of time. If that wasn't the case I might second guess it. He reckons if we get that visa he will just come up and take a pt job. He has trade skills that could land him something. I'm lucky in that I get extra fellowship funding on top of the grant and I have to use it next year regardless because of my health insurance. That will help me a lot. If I don't take the money, I have no health insurance.

From every school that I was accepted to and funded back in 2010, I got an offer that usually told me what the responsibilities were and my expected amount would be between the fellowship and stipend I had been offered. I also received a full tuition waiver, health insurance, and some other things. They detailed that I would be expected to pay fees.

If it's not tomorrow, I'm going to lose my mind. I still haven't started teaching (I teach a M/W/F class) because we have MLK, Jr. day so I won't start for almost another week! I think my SO is going to kill me because I've just been generally stressed out and unpleasant. One can only take so much stress. He's seen the worst of me this year between this and comps!

Almost had a heart attack. The SO was like, "I'm here for you, just read it." And then I was all "Oh, shucks, just a survey." Eff that.

It depends on the school and the department. A lot of programs in my discipline (political science) don't have a terminal MA for academic programs. Some do, though. These are divided into schools that accept their MA's outright, those that may, and schools that flat out don't. My school treats all PhD and MA students the same and will gladly admit them. There are a number of other schools that do this. Of the schools that may, it's often because they have very different expectations for their Master's students. In this case, the students may not get the same rigorous methods training, take the same number of "upper-level" courses, etc. For those that don't they either don't want "academic incest" or they don't think of their MA students highly at all. My ex-BF was at one of those schools on the east coast. It's disheartening, sure, but they will help place you elsewhere hopefully in that case. As for doing the same program from BA through PhD, I don't think it is a good idea and neither does my undergrad but my current institution will let students do it. I don't get it but they do.

I'm not even thinking about this until January. I have classes to teach, a syllabus to possibly write, a paper to finish and present, and a million family gatherings (both with my family and my SO's) in the meantime.

I'm ABD and a political scientist so things may have changed a bit but I applied in 2009-2010 for a Fall 2010 position. It's never a bad idea to re-test. You will do better, be more comfortable, and be more aware of what to expect. My scores weren't amazeballs on the GRE (not as much as I wanted, anyhow). However, they were okay. I took it again and improved my quant enough to feel better. I applied specifically to a lot of quant-focused programs, so I knew that part mattered. My verbal was still higher, though. That said, I got many offers (I took a fellowship offer at my current school that paid the most) and had tough choices to make. My letters of rec were apparently sterling and my past research and conference attendance was really important to the schools that accepted me (per the several DGS's I did speak with). My GRE scores actually mattered less than those two components. I was recommended and received a fellowship despite my GRE scores being lower than some of the other people in my program who didn't receive a fellowship on top of their stipend, so it's a crapshoot. And yes, this only applies to PhD applicants and not Masters students. They have different expectations and baselines depending on who they fund, if they fund, etc. My department pretty much funds all people - including masters students- at least quarter time! We are very lucky over here.

Amirah, you're awesome I added my info.

I have an ASUS. I paid all of $400.00 for it two years ago. It is still in GREAT shape. I bring it everywhere and use it as my work computer. I run another monitor off of it for stats programming at work and at home. I have had zero issues but always back up things and keep most things on a flash drive or the the cloud as I am working. I do sometimes leave it in my locked office (maybe once every couple of weeks if I have to) that I share with two people and don't worry about them taking it or worry all that much since it is fairly replaceable for the cost. That said, we did have a break in in the building twice last year, so I would be wary to leave an expensive machine. My roommate has a mac but she NEVER leaves it. The first computer I had on the go in grad school was a 2 year old netbook from ACER and it was plenty useful for what I needed it for. I ran stats programming off of VMWare on it with no problems. However, the battery got a bit fried and I just decided it was time to upgrade when it was almost 4. It was a great PC for the price though ($200.00). I have a Dell at home but it is a piece of crap studio XPS 1640. Stupid computer. It's 4 years old and has been through numerous motherboards, hard drives, and keyboards. It is the replacement for the replacement for the original model and boy oh boy do I hate it. That's why it stays here. It also weighs a ton and my ASUS is super light. Macs look very, very different with the programs that I use. The interface confuses the heck out of me so I just... can't. Also, for the price, I feel like I would need to baby the machine quite a bit. I would be nervous about something happening to my computer all of the time. Another thing to consider, if you want to use two monitors, you need to get an adapter and bring it with you everywhere (same as a projector). That can be annoying (it is for my roommate because she teaches off of hers). I think they are quality machines but since I replace my computer every few years and have more than one machine, the compatibility of windows is hard to beat. I hate windows and would run Linux if I could run all my programs on it but i don't have many options right now.

Honestly, I would take the job if that seems like a good offer. That seems like a lot of money for me but I'm also a political scientist! Jobs with a BA that pay that much are pretty nonexistent. You should consider that you can always go back to get a degree while working. My mother works in engineering and so do some of my friends. Their workplaces pay for further education so this may be a good situation. You can always apply to elite schools again, as well, should you choose to go that way. Also, I would be asking for stats from U of Chicago about what placement rate they have, what jobs people are getting, etc. If you aren't getting funding there and your opportunity to make a substantial amount of money doesn't seem worth it, then it makes sense to take a job right now. At least, that is what I would do.

Yeah, that's pretty much our process but they wanted ours submitted a week ago to make sure nothing went wrong on their end with the final submission. Mine was submitted officially on Friday afternoon and okayed by the institution. I think it's just so that there aren't any freak outs. They say embark can crash, so early submission is good. Good luck for everyone. I'm not even thinking about this again until after Christmas. With comprehensives just finishing up a few weeks ago, I'm still recovering.

It's interesting that all of you noticed this as well. I also sent an email to my fellowship rep and he told me the same. The printout scared me.

Okay, so I have no experience with a degree from Canada because while I looked into going up there post-BA, I didn't. I stayed here. However, I have a lot of friends who have been back and forth between Canada and the US and am kind of aware because I want to do the opposite and move to Canada. There are a couple of things you can do but the easiest way that most of my friends have found is to take a job with a multinational that operates out of TO or Vancouver or something. I have a bunch that have taken jobs in TO and then moved down here temporarily at first and then decided to stay. One of them is now back in TO because of a promotion and another is living in San Fran because they moved him down there. They had to identify that they were willing to move and then did. Another friend has a degree from Trent but has gotten job interviews down here while on vacation. He took about 10 days, left TO with his wife, and went to visit my friend in SF. He got two job offers while down there. So, I have had friends that are really lucky. I hear it is actually harder for what I want to do (the opposite - move to Toronto or Vancouver). That's all I got. Good luck! If your school has a careers person, they also probably have someone who knows about this sort of thing. Our Canadian Studies program here at my uni works with students on placement in Canada sometimes. You may have a similar resource there.

Hey all, best of luck to everyone I just submitted my application to the Canadian Fulbright program. I'm nervous but I've gotten excellent feedback and learned a lot on the way.