qeta

Based on your disinterest in methods, theories, historiography, etc., I don't think you should be in academia. Academic programs train students for a very specific job and that job involves productively engaging with previous schools of thought and literature and different methodologies and their attendant ontologies/epistemologies. It sounds like you would be happier at a professional program of some kind, or a 9-to-5 office job. And I'd also tone down the rhetoric about Third World "shit holes" if you want to do NGO work.

Quote Haha, I am pretty sure the FoC quote was me last year!

I have met Professor Naisargi Dave at University of Toronto a couple of times. She is friendly and her work is extremely interesting. I study at McGill (poli. sci.) with a couple of American PhD students: they received the standard funding package and were given a waiver on the international student tuition; I'm not so sure if they also received a waiver on the international fees.

Revenue stream

I adopted my rescue beagle during my last year of undergrad last year. He wasn't house-trained, but thankfully since I lived on campus I would come home every four hours and check on the doggie. He moved with me when I started my MA in September 2014 and has actually mellowed into a great apartment dog. I don't leave him alone for more than 7 hours and 2-3 days a week I don't go to the campus at all. I've found it pretty easy to balance my time even with classes, teaching, and some other university commitments. I just had to be super-careful about scheduling my time. Honestly, my dog made the transition to grad school and a new city so much easier. I always have a super-loving and -affectionate being to come home to - it's a seriously amazing privilege.

It's very possible that the students may not give you honest answers, but I urge you to contact them and, if you can, talk to students who have graduated. I and one of cohorts in my MA program are currently working with an extremely unhelpful supervisor. The only solace we've had is Facebooking/emailing his previous students and figuring out that he is never going to be more helpful than this. A PhD is a long-term commitment and difficult work, you have a right to know what you're getting into.

I fail to see how you refuting the validity of the Arab Agricultural Revolution would offend Muslims or why any professor would say that. In fact, a cursory search on JStor on the topic brings up a refutation of Watson's thesis by Michael Decker written in 2009. Most of the sources he cites on farming machines, techniques, and systems were written after the mid-1980s. ETA: I am also going to stop responding because I can no longer take anything you say seriously.

Academics in history, sociology, and political science (the three fields I have been involved in) all care deeply about methodology. Methodology lends rigour to the way researchers answer questions and increases the internal and external validity of the research. Methodology is also about field standardization - other researchers may not be able to verify all the empirical details of a certain work, but they can certainly evaluate its methodology. I almost had a heart attack reading "who cares about methodologies?" because the answer to me seems very obvious: every academic.

I hope you all will forgive my intrusion here, as I only have an undergraduate degree in history and study political science at the grad level. jpb's comments here strike me as a very accurate description of the current historiographical project. One of the books I read as an undergrad was Odd Arne Westad's Decisive Encounters about the Chinese Civil War. It is an old-school military history in some ways and at least 4-5 chapters are devoted to analyzing the tactical moves of the CCP and the KMT armies on the battlefields, as well as the KMT's diplomatic maneuverings. But in the rest of the chapters, Westad also pays attention to the social and political restructuring of the countryside by the CCP cadres - the changes in their interactions with the peasants, the middle farmers, the landlords, and the women over the course of the civil war. It is precisely because Westad approaches the CCP's victory through these different lenses that he is later able to write his last chapter on the post-civil-war transformation of Chinese society and politics in such a decisive way. Focusing on the military tactics and battles alone would not enable this comprehensive picture and would not do much to clarify why the CCP's victory in the Chinese Civil War was so very pivotal.

Iron deficiency

Grand parade

Stimulus package

Oregon coast

Nevermind.

There are some GIS courses by Penn State that are offered for free on Coursera. I haven't taken them so can't vouch for them. I learned ArcGIS basically because I had to for a large survey project at an NGO. As geographyrocks says, it was fairly intuitive and easy to pick up. Some universities hand out a one-year, student version of ArcGIS for free as long as you're registered, so you may want to check with your university's electronic resources librarians about that.

Tobacco chew

Trading places

Double Dutch

Sore loser

Thank you, rising_star.

Under siege

Sister act

Life hack

Aid agency

Buried alive