maelia8

For everyone who's already accepted their offers and is all set since April 15th, have you heard anything further from your department yet? I was asked to have my official transcript from my undergrad institution mailed to the Berkeley registrar and confirm my FAFSA with my tax return, but that was over 10 days ago and I haven't heard anything since.

I'm a historian/Germanist by academic trade, but I also have a strong interest and some experience in ESL teaching, which was going to be my alternate path if that whole humanities Ph.D. thing didn't pan out. After years of designing costumes for anime conventions, I also could see myself formally studying costume design and becoming a professional seamstress, and I also cherished a dream of becoming a translator/interpreter and working for the state department … I wish I had multiple lives to live out all of my professional fantasies!

My college's graduation was outside in the football stadium. It didn't take very long though, as my college has a total of less than 3,000 students and about 500 per grade (that's about how many were at my father's high school!), and I was fine with walking. The whole ceremony only took about two hours, including speeches.

I'm definitely feeling more excited than scared, but the prospect of the move is a bit overwhelming, since I'll be moving first across continents and then across states to get to where I'll be going to school. I have so much old stuff lying around my various residences to go through before I move that it's a bit daunting. I haven't even gotten to the point yet where I can really start to worry about anything related to the fall term - at the moment, that still seems impossibly far away. I can't seem to imagine anything beyond move-in day right now

@VioletAyame, I also did all of the pressuring myself! My mother didn't get a degree and my father went to a very low-ranked state school, and both of them had solid C averages in high school. When I ended up getting straight A's and telling my parents that I needed to do all of those extracurriculars to get into a good college, they were just kind of bemused. All they ever told me was that I had to pass, the rest I made myself do - staying up until 3am studying for AP exams, being on 5 different committees and two volunteer groups, the whole shebang. When I applied to university and decided to go to a small elite private liberal arts college rather than the big state school everyone went to, my dad told me, "Sweetie, you got a full ride at the state school, why don't you go there?" I just looked at him and thought, are you kidding me? I'd rather take out a few thousand in loans per year and go to the elite school, sorry dad. I know a lot of kids whose parents pressured them into getting good grades and being super academically involved, and by the end of high school most of them pretty much hated their parents. Because my parents had no expectations of me, getting good grades was something that I did for myself, and I always felt good about it. I would never pressure my kids to do that though - I'll just have the same rules as my parents did: pass and I'll be happy

@Gnome you hit the nail on the head - I'm from Southern Oregon/Northern California.

Believe it or not, I was a nerd AND a geek. AP classes and extracurriculars up the wazoo, 3.9 GPA, but all of my hobbies involved anime, manga, cosplay, and indie comics, so my friends were all into that stuff too. All of the other honors students did NOT get it … they thought I was pretty weird for hanging out with a bunch of people who for the most part didn't give a damn about their grades. @Gnome Chomsky: yup, the alternative to being a nerd or a geek in my small town was definitely meth or serious weed (I'm talking about growing acres of it in the forest and running a whole operation of trimmers and dealers - can you guess where I'm from?).

I was definitely involved in a whole lot of nerdy clubs and extracurriculars during high school - model UN, amnesty international, mock trial, academic scavenger hunt, spelling bee, math club, key club … the list goes on. Definitely took mostly AP classes too … not much else to do when you live in a small town.

I think that applying to grad school is a process that simply involves a lot of uncertainty, a process that no one should go into with complacency, but rather with humility. Expectations must be surrendered - once you've done your best to carefully research schools and made your application the best that it can be, at the end of the day, you just have to let go and hope that you are lucky enough to have a couple of admits at programs that are a good fit for you. These probably won't be all of the programs that you thought were an amazing fit, but if you did your homework, hopefully it will be at least some of them.

I'm not even in grad school yet and I don't have much of a social life (boyfriend only on weekends, other friends perhaps once a week on average), so who knows if I'm going to miss it much when I start school in the fall

I would have tried harder to get fee waivers for the GRE and for grad school application. It really exhausted my savings, and neither I nor my family are rich. I didn't take time to look at the fine print to see if I could have qualified for any fee waivers, and I know several of my friends who were successful in getting them after a little bit of extra research.

I've been teaching ESL for two years, and I can definitely tell you that the first couple of weeks I was quaking in my boots. Sometimes you lavish loving care on lesson that you feel really good about, but it unexpectedly bombs among your students, and other times you throw together something at the last minute and it ends up being a hit and stimulating really good discussion. Lecturing is definitely harder than leading a discussion, but it's part of the process and can even be fun if you're talking about something that you really love talking about (I also like preparing power points for lectures and finding pictures to match). Good luck!

What I think it's important to keep in mind when discussing the terms "childless, child free, and not sure yet" is that for many people, these decisions change and evolve over time. I know many people who when they were 20 said they absolutely did or didn't want to have children but now at 25 have changed their opinion one way or the other. It's really important to keep this in mind and be careful not to judge people for changing their minds over time ("but you always wanted to have kids!" "but I thought that you of all people would never have kids!"). These decisions are not alway monumental, and depend a lot on factors such as current partner and current income. I know a lot of people who are not categorically against having children but who respond to the question with something like "At the moment, that would not be financially feasible, and I'm not sure when it will be" or "Maybe someday, but I haven't found someone yet with whom I'd like to have a child." When I'm asked whether I want to have children, I usually answer "I'm not sure yet" (I'm almost 25) but if I were really honest, the answer would be something more like this: "If at some point in the future I am in a relationship that I feel is stable enough to support childrearing, have enough money to afford to raise a child, have a stable job and have the desire to have a child with my current partner (who is also considering reproducing), then I might start to think about having a child." I just couldn't even consider it one way or the other unless these requirements were fulfilled, so at the moment it's a moot point (I have neither a stable job, money in excess, or a partner with whom I would consider reproducing).

I spend about $50 per week at the grocery store (but I also buy soap and toilet paper and sponges there, so probably a little less for food), and I think that's just fine - if you're getting a lot of high quality organic produce and minimal packaged foods, there's not much you can do to cut it down below that IMO. Try to buy things like rice and pasta and beans in bulk, and make sure that none of your veggies are going bad before you can eat them. That's about all I can recommend.

Follow the money - both programs are good, and it seems you'll be just as happy or happier at George Mason

I can't deal with my nasty, nasty headache while conjugating French verbs anymore …. time to lie down and hope for it to go away

I find it to be much more of a problem to get enough sleep and schedule my day adequately when I don't have enough to do than when I have a lot of things to plan in … I tend to lie in bed for hours and stay up late and ruin my inner rhythm of sleeping/waking hours. When I actually have a lot on my plate, I tend to buckle down and plan out every minute, for fear of forgetting something.

I'm a teaching assistant at a high school right now (I know this is a bit different, but the principle is the same) and I prefer that the pupils call me by my first name. Being called by my last name makes me feel uncomfortable, and I feel that it tends to age me unnecessarily in the eyes of the pupils (I'm 24). Both my first name and my last name can be difficult to pronounce, but I feel that the first name is a bit easier, and the pupils seem more comfortable and ready to approach me once I tell them that they can call me by my first name.

I don't think that getting a teaching certification can hurt your application in any way, and it might even help it! It's a great thing to put on your resume because it shows that you have real teaching experience, and whether or not you aspire to teach at the university level as a professor, you would probably end up teaching during TAships while getting your degree, so I don't see how more teaching experience could possibly hurt. I had two years of teaching experience when I applied to my program in history, and I'm sure that it helped my application.

You could always wait to thank her until the beginning of the next email you send with your next question: "Thanks so much for your great advice last time! The information you have me has helped me to arrive at another important question, and I'd really appreciate any help you can give me." That way you wouldn't have to worry about falling into an endless cycle of thank-you emails.

How easy or hard is it to change advisors in your field, and how important is it to stick to an advisor with the same research area for a long period of time while working on your degree? If it's very important that your friend connect with an advisor superbly suited to his interests early on, then I agree with jenste, it's time to look for funding elsewhere. If not, I'd suggest he wait it out for another couple of semesters and see if he has the option to change at a later date.

Honestly, I'd just tell your boss as soon as you know, unless you're worried about getting fired because of it. In most industries, it can help your manager to know as far in advance as possible when you are leaving, because a lot of jobs have seasonal upswells when it's easier to find new employees (often at the beginning or end of the summer).

Do you have other people who can vouch for your credit history, or stand surety for you to pay (relatives, for example)? That might calm some landlords.

After researching for a couple of days, it seems to me that in my future university town, the student housing goes in two waves - one wave NOW, right as people become sure that they are leaving/arriving in August, and another wave right in mid-July/early August as everyone who didn't know they were leaving/those started looking for places late frantically try to find renters/rentals. I posted on Craigslist yesterday, and there are definitely postings available already for August - not too many, but they are there.

All the departments where I declined an offer or asked to be removed from the wait list asked me where I was going instead. I think they do this because they track it and keep private stats concerning which schools they get turned down for, but I can't prove it. I just didn't provide that information in my response - it is honestly none of their business, and as we no longer have an association, I see no reason to tell them.