wanderingwondering

Sorry for not responding earlier—midterms. Thanks everyone!! That's all very helpful.

Hi everyone, I'm moving from Boston to the Bay Area for grad school, and I'm a little intimidated by the logistics—so I was hoping to find someone here who's been through the same. I'm not moving any furniture or vehicles, just books, clothes, and electronics. Also, I'm flying home in June and moving to the Bay Area in late July, so I need some way to (1) transport lots and lots of boxes to the west coast and (2) store them for a month or two before I actually get there. Does anyone know a safe and reasonably priced way to do this? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

Wow, thank you so much!! That is lots more useful information and advice than I could have hoped for.

So far, I've been admitted to several programs that are very closely matched in funding and ranking. The main difference between them is that my potential advisors are at very different stages of their career—in particular, the PI that I would be working with at my top-choice school is also starting in the fall. This is both really exciting and really scary for me. The professors at all of my other choices are already well established. But I think that this professor is the best research fit. When I visited the school, I felt so at home talking to her and the rest of the department, and I got the feeling that I really wanted to spend the next few years working and talking and commiserating with them... Anyway, is anyone here advised by an assistant professor? Are you able to get across to them what you want out of an advisor? Do you still have some autonomy, even though they're more invested in your research? Do you have to divert time from research towards the administrative tasks of setting up the lab? Are there any things that have or have not worked in building a relationship with your advisor? (So many questions!) I know that these are all questions that I should ask this PI directly. But I'm planning to meet with her soon to talk about it, and I'd really like some pointers about what I should consider before that conversation.

Hi everyone, I suspect that this has been discussed to death, but I'm really curious and in need of some tips. I'm starting a PhD program in cognitive and developmental psychology in the fall, and I'd really like to use the months ahead to explore foundational works in cognitive science.* The problem is, most of my reading material comes from library books, so I can't annotate or keep them as I would PDF's. How do you keep track of ideas, information, and references from books? My first impulse is to just jot everything down, but I'm sure someone has a more efficient way of doing it. Thanks! *If anyone has anything to add to my reading list, I'd be really happy to hear it! Right now I'm reading Alison Gopnik's Words, Thoughts and Theories and Susan Carey's Conceptual Change in Childhood, but I have Concepts, Kinds, and Development and Vision waiting on my shelf... I'm broadly interested in Theory of Mind, naive theories, and conceptual representations.