Neist

Anyone ever shop at Aldi? I love Aldi. It's owned and operated by the brother of the owner and operator of Trader Joes. It's very, very cheap, but the food is surprisingly decent.

Especially on the 1st of the month. It's surprising how many retirees on social security go shopping late at night. Sounds like everyone is doing well! My classes start the 22nd, and things are starting to build steam! I'm helping one of my most like-interested faculty members with a project before the semester starts. Fun stuff. There's two long days of ethics orientations starting tomorrow, and I have another two long days of TA training next week. Peppered throughout is a mix of random "welcome to graduate life at the university" stuff. Should keep me busy.

@klader I outline as I write, but it's time-consuming. If it's a particularly dense source, I might only average 10 pages per hour. Also, try maximizing reading time during a day, but keep it casual. For example, I'll get up early in the morning and immediately begin to read. I take breaks when I want to, and I'll continue "casually" reading for most of the day. I try to never force myself to read faster or longer; that'll only lead to anxiety and discomfort. For me, it's all about maintaining a steady pace. Be the turtle, not the hare. I can only speak for myself, but the few 10+ reading marathons I've been forced to conduct were nearly always unpleasant.

I'm not sure if this is exactly topically relevant, but I'm not sure where this would go either, so... Has anyone else kept tabs on the job market and positions for your potential career in the distant future? Boston College just posted my dream job. To be honest, I wasn't sure if my dream job even existed. I'm insanely jealous that it wasn't posted in 3 years.

Yeah, I'm not a very fast reader either, but I can manage ~7 hours a day of reading somewhat comfortably, as long as I pace myself. At 7 days of reading, that'd be ~50 hours a week, or close to 1000 pages of somewhat intense reading; I can probably average a steady 20 page an hour pace. If you're not a very fast reader, you might consider either Google Books or Kindle Books and have the book read to you via headphones while you read the text. I can read a little faster that way because it's reinforced both visually and audibly.

I kind of wandered into a sub-forum that I don't know much about, but you can generally apply however many times you like. Personally, I might give up after 3-4 years, but I'm sure there are others more persistent than I. Besides, if a program was really annoyed by an application, they'd probably politely ask you to stop, and I doubt that'd ever happen because schools make a fair amount of money from applicants.

All joking aside, I feel your pain. I can comfortably ingest, perhaps, 750-1000 pages of reading a week, but I know there might be some heavy weeks that go beyond that. I've heard that one of the faculty members like to test graduate students by assigning Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist for a single week! I love books, but man...

I really like the National Parks ones.

@hippyscientist Have you ever watched any Ken Burns documentaries? They are almost a gold standard for US history documentaries. I can't stand his haircut, but he can make a documentary.

I'm taking 9 hours, and my classes are pretty routine and boring. It's a lot of introductory and survey courses. I'm taking: History Science Survey to the 17th Century Information & Knowledge Society (general survey for LIS) Organization of Information & Knowledge Resources (subject-specific survey for LIS) The history of science course I'm looking forward to the least. My interests nearly entirely exist in the post 17th-century world, so I imagine the course is going to test my patience. However, I've taken survey courses in the history of science from this university from these professors, so I'm probably better off than the rest of the contingent. There's only 5 of us, and I think only one other has any significant experience with the history of science (which is pretty common in the field pre-graduate school). The spring looks to be shaping up to a more engaging semester. The LIS department is offering a social informatics course and a cataloging/classification course (I'm big on bibliographies, so...), and I'll get to take the latter history of science survey course. If I'm lucky and I can afford it, I might try to take some bibliography courses at the rare book school next summer. That'd be super awesome.

Eh, I'll fix it if they don't pick up the slack. Like I said, I'm pretty good at the school thing, and I'm even better at backup plans. Besides, I'm pretty sure they have worse grades than me in class, and both partners seem to want A's. We will see. I'm patting myself on the back a little bit, but I had it pretty together in January. However, I had a lot more anxiety. Anxiety is almost always an underlying issue in my life, but it peaks during times of unknowing. Not knowing what I was going to do for the next several years and not having the means to gain that knowledge expediently was my personal hell. I'm probably more happy about that experience being over with than actually getting accepted into a program. Ugh.

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny I ignored it. I'll do the work at the last minute if I have to, but I'll let them sweat it out beforehand. Maybe it'll pressure them enough to do their work. @Need Coffee in an IV Thankfully, I'm good at what I do, and I have no qualms about pressuring others to do what they're supposed to. I like friends, but I like friends who avoid shunting work onto me more. @hippyscientist Thanks! And I'm actually surprised your moving expenses were that affordable. I thought it'd be substantially more. Can you pay an extra fee for overweight baggage? Sometime's that cheaper than shipping extra stuff. @MarineBluePsy I think the instructor is pretty empathetic, so it's not too terrible, and these are people I'll never have a class with again. Now, if this was the same group of people that will be in my entering contingent, I'd be more much vocal. Vocalized annoyance is better than secret, seething hatred. @Danger_Zone Well, the class ends this week, so. *shrugs* This is the last assignment before the final exam. I only need a B in this course to avoid the proficiency exam, and I think I'm floating around a middle A at this point. It's also an undergraduate course, so I'm not exactly pining for an A all that heavily. In other new, I discovered that one of my courses have already posted the required text. Considering reading it before the semester begins, but I'm not sure if that's for the best. I'll probably forget some points if I read it now. Hm. I guess I could read it twice, but...

Okay, so many soapbox, but... I'm taking foreign language classes currently so I can skip the need to take a language proficiency exam. Anyway, I'm typing this at 1:20am because my partners, most of which are undergrads, are so lazy that they can't be bothered to do the work themselves. When we claimed what we were going to do for our group project, I deliberately took the heavier selection of work in order to relieve them. Now, I get an email basically summarizing, "Uh, I don't think I can do it all, you need to help me." I've been doing homework for the last 10 hours, and the work they were responsible for would have taken an hour, tops. I feel compelled to slap someone.

Personally, I'm going to love it. I've always wanted to invest more of my energy into my education, and I've never had that opportunity until now. I've just been there for so long. I'm 33, and I've been there for 10 years. That seems like an eternity at my age. I've worked there for my entire adult life.

Oh, definitely. I live probably 300 yards from my old place of employment. It's a building on the campus where I'll be attending in the fall.

So, I worked my last day of full-time employment last Friday. I've worked in the same place for over 10 years, and now I've entered a new phase of my life. Weird feeling. Good feeling, but weird.

I have not! Both look pretty interesting. I'll look into them. I really need to post an update in this thread. Ugh. The longer I wait, the more work it'll require...

Good to hear that other campuses are just as bad. Don't get me wrong. The game is fun, but it's crazy how popular it is. I guess that at this point a lot of college students have been exposed to Pokemon their entire lives. Makes me feel old.

I'm not sure if I'd call your GRE average. It might not be at the upper end of possible, but a 162 probably isn't going to disclude your application from consideration. GRE is important in History, but I don't think it's as important as other disciplines. Philosophy students have it real harsh. It's almost expected that you'll have over 165.

Anyone else's campus seemingly taken over by Pokemon Go? I took a walk a few nights ago and stumbled across bundles of hundreds of people... crazy...

My advice to you will be extremely limited, but I'd take their advice. I'm not sure how Canada programs work, but a lot of European programs have very light course loads as well. I was looking at a program in Denmark that only required 3ish courses a year. I guess most of the education involves hands-on experience? As per how US post-docs would regard such a light courseload, I must refer to others. That's way out of my boathouse of experience.

I can only estimate based on the program I'm attending, but there's definitely more students than there are assistantship positions. I believe there's under 10 rotating assistantship positions, but there are 15 students in the program, and that's excluding doctoral candidates. I know a few individuals have been awarded outside-of-department funding (via a library RA-ship or the like), but I'm guessing there are at least a few people covering the bill. In general, I'd say paying tuition in the humanities is pretty uncommon, but not because certain programs have an ability to fund everyone. The students who end up matriculating are just the small minority of students who did receive funding from a larger pool.

Yup, and kitchen staff can routinely work more than 40 hours a week and rarely get paid overtime. Food service is very loveless work in the United States. There's a good reason why mostly only young people do it.

I'm definitely on the lower end of means compared to 99% of students I meet, and while other student's family's affluence is never blatant, there are hints. Sometimes, it's how nice of a car they drive or how much they spend on food. Sometimes, it's the clothes they wear; I doubt anyone of lesser means has a closet full of Patagonia. Sometimes, it's passing mentions of what their parents do for a living. I generally just nod and hold my tongue. It does feel as if they live in another world. Peers of mine will mention in passing that they didn't grow up with much money, yet their second breath notes how their parents can only pay their rent, not their tuition. Or they'll comment that their 'really old, junky car' is only 2-3 years old and probably cost more than my student loan debt when new. I genuinely wonder how these people will do after graduation.

Sometimes I'm jealous of countries that rarely tip. Tipping etiquette is so arbitrary and often tacit. There are no hard and fast rules, but @sjoh197 's link is useful, as is her advice. To be honest, if you simply tip waitstaff, hotel staff, and food delivery folks, you're already 90% covered on the vast majority of tipping situations that a person routinely encounters. Taxis, hairdressers, tattoo artists, and other customer service, skill-based artisans (for a lack of a better word) often get tipped as well, but one probably encounters them uncommonly enough that I wouldn't stress too much about it initially. Definitely tip bartenders and waitstaff, though. In the US those jobs are not sustainable without tips, often getting paid hourly wages less than half of the legal minimum wage. For example, minimum wage in Oklahoma is about $8.50, I think, but a bartender or waiter might make under $3 an hour. Considering that living wage in the US, regardless of location, is probably closer to $12-13 an hour, bartenders and waiters have a tough go of it.