Neist

Well, at least a lot of yours is hopefully well-written! A lot of historians are really bad at writing. It's one of the primary reasons I read a lot of the work of science writers. It tends to be much more palatable.

Both. Sorta. Most books I read are about information studies, science, technology, or medicine. These books usually aren't as academically dense as books assigned for classes, but they are tangentially related. I do read some fiction books for pleasure, but they tend to be related to my primary interests. For example, I read The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate a month or two ago. I'm interested in cultural representations of science, technology, and medicine, so the book is inline with these interests, if not directly relevant.

I'd just hold out a bit longer. They might have assured you that the reimbursement process was painless, but experience tells me that anything in academia works as fast as tar pitch flows. It's only been two weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if it took a few months, even. It's not a great situation, I admit, but I think it's the nature of the academic beast.

I've started getting ebooks. It's hard to justify the space demanded by physical books. Although, there's plenty of good books that aren't available as ebooks, so. I'm actually doing pretty good on the book stack front. I have maybe.. 20 unread books? I'm okay with that.

Yup, I'm the same way! I always have some rice, beans, etc. sitting around. I could manage to eat for a week or so, at any rate.

I echo this, and I'd like to reinforce the potentiality of a pre-blizzard rush at grocery stores. It might be a good habit to just keep an extra week or so of food in the house, assuming finances allow it. People go crazy when bad weather is about to happen. Sometimes I feel like they think they have to buy six loaves of bread and five gallons of milk.

I have no basis of providing you with a solid answer, only my gut intuitions, but I'd think you'd have a chance. People always say that life experiences can really help an application to a receptive program, and you definitely have life experience. If I were you, I'd remain hopeful. Of course, I could be naive as well, so.

I think there's enough non-degree certifications and free MOOCs that I should be able to fill in the gaps, but I guess time will tell. If I do finish a PhD, I'm somewhat hopeful that I could land a post-doc position. I'm interested in a somewhat obscure niche sub-discipline, and there's several post-doc positions for it. I have to wonder how large the applicant pool for these fellowships are, because I honestly don't know many people who share my interests.

Congrats!

Access to Lynda sounds nice. Udacity has some free introductory programming and statistics courses, and that's probably what I'd take. Gotta boost my technical skills! You know, I've considered asking faculty members, but I probably already seem overly eager. I haven't even gotten my enrollment information for the fall semester, so I'm trying to mollify my obsessive planning until a proper time. Anyone else think a MA, or even a PhD, just isn't enough time to study something sufficiently? I don't think squeezing in all the coursework I'd like into a PhD is possible.

Those all sound wonderfully cheesy.

In the previously-mentioned spirit of productivity and planning, I cleaned my desk and bought a desktop bookshelf. I like being organized, and it seemed like a relatively cheap way to stay that way. I don't have any bookshelf space to speak of at my apartment; most of my shelf space is in my office at my job, and once I start graduate school I'll be losing that shelf space. I'm excited for this fall.

Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. I'm pretty sure that the gym here requires that everyone supply their own belt. However, the facilities at most universities tend to be pretty nice. The free weight room alone in our gym is the size of a lot of freestanding gyms, and that's not counting the cable or hydraulic weight machines. Also, I found a video of the Penn State facilities. It's a few years old, but it looks like a nice building. And $200 weightlifting shoes? Yikes! You'd be hard-pressed to find any athletic shoe in the US that expensive (although some do exist on the higher end).

That's completely understandable, considering that you're moving to another country. I'm not moving at all, so there's much less for me to think about. Regarding conferences, I'm not sure how it is in your discipline, but there's quite a few options for me. My research is very interdisciplinary, and there's a lot conferences that might inform me even if not directly paralleling my interests. I also have to join some professional organizations that I've put off doing for quite a while now. I need make a to-do list before I forget things.

Well, I'm not sure if I can answer you question, but it might be useful to mention what your discipline is. The answer might vary greatly depending on one's discipline.

Anyone else getting perhaps a little carried away with planning? I'm a person who does well with planning. At this point, I've almost tentatively planned every moment for the next several years. The precise courses I want to take. What skill-building courses I'd like to take in the summers. I'm currently considering which conferences would be best to attend/present at. There's so many awesome things to do, and so little time to do them. High on my priority list is getting a bibliography-focused certificate through the rare book school and teaching myself data analytics via Udacity.

I think you made a decent decision, and if you ever regret it, you can always pursue a LIS or IS degree later (two masters is looked upon quite fondly in the library world). Library science is slowly becoming a technical field, and I'm not sure I'd always recommend it to everyone if one's interests falls outside of that scope. Some jobs will want a degree from an ALA-accredited program (the MLIS is somewhat of a gate-keeping mechanism at this point), but this is slowly changing. More entry level positions are beginning to prefer it instead of requiring it. However, one program I would look into if I were you is the Rare Book School at UVA. They have archives training, and it's incredibly well-regarded in the library community in the US. Most of their programs only last a week or two, and you can work towards subject-oriented certificates, if my memory recalls properly. They have scholarships, too! Now, I'm not sure about the field shrinking, but it's definitely changing. Librarianship as a whole is changing. If you're interested in archives, not library or information science specifically, I don't necessarily think your decision is a bad one.

It depends on the company, I'd imagine. If you want to get a mattress fast, I'd suggest you consider joining Amazon Prime (do they have that in the UK?) and utilize free shipping. If you can find a mattress you like on Amazon, and it's actually in stock, I imagine it'd be to you within a week or two. Amazon Prime free shipping is magical. I've known people who have shipped couches for free with it. As per sleeper sofas, I have no clue. They are very expensive. Also, if anyone out there needs to sleep on something inflatable and you want something warm, I'd highly suggest looking into a good backpacking/camping inflatable pad. Something like a high R value Thermarest would be plenty warm, and it might not cost too much more than a normal inflatable mattress. You might even be able to sell it later to a backpacker. I think it's pretty normal that you'd look at those sort of things as part of your moving budget. I'm not sure if moving weights is even feasible. They do, after all, weigh quite a bit. If this post doesn't make a lot of sense, I apologize. I'm on a lot of allergy meds right now. I feel miserable. Ugh.

Actually, I agree with you! We're not in a place or time where I think unisex bathrooms are possible. However, I do think that the reasons why they aren't possible are due cultural and social norms, not inherent barriers. I think that these norms will lax over time, and eventually, no one will care. But maybe that's the egalitarian in me. I have lofty, romantic hopes for the future. Besides, even if unisex bathrooms were to happen, basic bathroom design would need to change. I think unisex bathrooms would need to be a new type of bathroom, not simply a larger one. This is a weird discussion.

The the building that the history of science department is in here at OU only has 1 bathroom per floor. So, if you're not lucky enough to be on the correct floor, you have to travel to get to a bathroom. Pretty annoying.

So, my job keeps giving high priority, rush tasks. I wish someone would realize that if everything you give me is rush, nothing is. Really. I'm sorry about your bad day. You know, one time I chipped my tooth eating some corn. Corn. I still have no clue how that happened.

Oh wow! I bet you do have to deal with a bunch! Like I said, I'm happy being ignored. I'd rather be ignored than anything else. Years ago I learned that attention is rarely worth it, at least to me. I'm probably the most content lonely person ever. Also, it's a little off topic, but also on topic, I hope that I live long enough to experience a gender blind society. For example, what's with separated bathrooms? It's an antiquated, inefficient practice. Everyone knows that women's bathrooms are nearly always more crowded than men's bathrooms, especially at large events. I'm baffled why we don't just make one really large bathroom.

One of the reasons why pulling your admissions results in the previously mentioned way is so interesting is that, if a lot of people do it and share their records, we could collectively see trends in acceptance patterns. I cannot imagine that enough people would request their admission records to make a study worthwhile, but it'd be super interesting. Make a great book, I bet.

This made me laugh. I agree with you. I'd rather not deal with anything rather than get special treatment and deal with a load of crap. I neatly fall into a comfortable wallflower role, even if I'm not socially awkward. I like blending into the background. People bother me less when I blend in.

You should! It's pretty short, too, so it doesn't demand a huge investment. Ether Day looks interesting. I might have to attempt it via ILL and see if I like it, given your criticisms. So, I couldn't get through The Cosmic Cocktail. It's too much of a science lesson, and it comes across very dry. I'll finish it later. Instead, I started Alchemy of Air and My Year of Running Dangerously, the latter of which I only read because I bought the audio book for a few bucks on Audible's daily deal. I've finished both, and both were entertaining and enjoyable. I needed an entertaining book after The Cosmic Cocktail. I'm now burning through Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms by Amy Stewart, purchased today via Audible's daily deal.