Minnesotan

From my experience teaching, the grad scene is absolutely nothing like the undergrad. For undergrads, this is just a degree factory, like any land-grant university in the states. Classes with hundreds of students, almost completely taught by the TAs; undergrads who are just here to party; professors that don't give two shits about the undergrads; etc. As a grad student, people actually care about you and your work. Also, you get to work with the good professors, while all the newbies are stuck teaching undergrad courses.

The trouble with California is that it's inhabited by Californians! You can call me Longshanks.

York is pretty much how everyone described it: good academics and a shitty social scene. I like it, though. I think I am getting a lot more work done than if I would have accepted an offer from a school that's actually in the city they say they're in. ha! I'm finishing up an MA, so the lameness of North York and the impersonal nature of commuter colleges is no big deal for me. If I was stuck here for seven years, though, I think I would go apeshit.

Wow! You know the fit's gonna hit the shan when articles like that start popping up in school papers. How often do you see a university professor stating his/her opinion under conditions of anonymity? Normally they're complete publicity whores. =)

Florida's a swamp. Drugs, guns, and poisonous reptiles are the high points of living in Fla. heh

Woo! What program?

Anybody heard back about their OGS application yet? The website says they notify "by April 15th," but who knows how many rounds of acceptances they send out. Also, April 15th is a Sunday, and we all know nothing gets done in Canada on a Sunday. =)

Does UMN = U of M? Why so many California schools - you realize you would have to live there for at least two years, right?

Hard to pass up doing your grad work in the humanities at Harvard.

It seems everyone is from Minnesota around here! I agree with Jon - but I'm in the humanities (history) - JHU is a pretty big deal for us. Surprising it isn't for chem. As for cities, you'll never hear someone in Chicago wish they were in Baltimore. That's for sure!

Director of grad studies. Close enough.

Right. If you've got the DGS on your side, the battle is half over.

At least you're aiming high. I hope you included a backup school or two.

It might be helpful to name names here. As much as we all hate to admit it, an unhappy 5 years at Yale beat the hell out of a loving, touchy feel-fest at Johns Hopkins. BTW, 20 minutes late from an even moderately well-known prof is a breath of fresh air compared to some places (Berkeley's self-important hippies could forget you for months on end). Also, the urban uni versus college town uni is a major issue. You really need to figure out which you prefer, though it sounds like you'd prefer the UChicago environment over the Maryland-College Park area.

I hope you learned your lesson, missy! Next time apply to more than one program. =)

I always heard Purdue had a fairly good English program. Either way, you might want to take other things into consideration. Crime, diversity (whether you consider that good/bad), cost of living, college town vs. urban center, etc. You have to live there for two years, so you had better check out the whole story.

OMG! You're right. I stand correted on that score. Another utterly ridiculous area of government interference! Soon there's going to be an official Department of National Morality to let us all know who deserves what, what we can think, who we can employ, and how many hours each day we're expected to worship the one and only xian god. =( They already censor the radio waves, why not our brain waves, too?

But you're missing a distinction between power and the perception of power. Why do you think a woman has never been president, despite the fact that the majority of potential voters in the U.S. are female? If there was an issue where actual power was involved, rather than perceptions of power, I would understand government involvement. But when government steps in to alter perceptions (i.e. tell someone how to think), we are crossing into a George Orwell novel. Let's keep Newspeak out of America, if possible. =) As for equality "as I attempt to define it," you're right. I am a stoic, no-shit, off the cuff Minnesotan farmboy who looks to the bottom line whenever possible. The bottom line here? There is only one group of people in America against whom the government mandates discrimination: the able-bodied white male. You can talk about 'how we define things' and 'power dynamics' all you want, but all that is meaningless in the face of cold, hard government action. Show me an active, enforced law that discriminates against Asian-American women and I'll happily recant and rush out to be the first in line to join the bark-burned dynamics discussion group and organic knitting club. Until then, all you have is theory ignoring reality. Oh, and the white male dominance of academia is an absurd suggestion! Business and politics I'll grudgingly admit, but academia? Check those enrollment numbers again, sister. =) And the number of departments, offices, scholarships, and campus resources devoted to women, and non-white racial or ethnic groups. The outrage in academia when those Michigan kids started a token scholarship for whites is evidence enough of the hostile climate white males have to endure at university (not to mention the vicious womens' studies majors, heh). Anyway, and so this is clear since we're communicating over the inmpersonalnet, while my argument is heartfelt, it is also made in the spirit of friendly debate. I would hate people to mistake my straightforward manner for rudeness. ***edit: I hate typos!***

A noble race of happy, hearty folk. I'd offer to buy you a beer sometime, but I'm studying in Toronto for a while. =)

Yeah. Applications for assistantships have no bearing on your decision to attend. You need to know if you're going to be supported financially by the university *before* you make a decision. So, definitely apply for the assistantship. Whether you get it or not, you owe them no allegiance for turning in an application.

About the time you made the decision to go to grad school. =) Honestly, I had two late (mid-April) acceptances last year, when I was applying. I know it's very, very difficult, but try not to worry too much. As long as you haven't received a rejection letter, there is still hope.

Rarely does heat equate to natural beauty. Just visit Texas, if you don't believe me. Then again, I'm a proud (and therefore biased) Minnesotan. I like trees and lakes. =)

I'm just a mod - I have no power over what goes on in the results page. I am just sick of seeing talk of space ships and orgies where information about funding and the like should go. As for the semantics of racism/sexism, you can claim that they are inherently tied to power, but you are not addressing the fact that claiming someone cannot be discriminated against is fundamentally discriminatory. So, mince words all you like - not all situations in life see a white male having the power. In those cases where they don't, it becomes obvious how flawed your relativist argument is. You can't have it both ways, and people who argue as such are merely seeking special treatment or redress. Well, equality is great - and I'm sure everyone can agree on that point - but vengeance is another story. And promoting the interests of one race or gender over another, regardless which race or gender, is racist/sexist. Affirmative Action, for instance, discriminates against able-bodied white males because their forefathers had certain advantages in the past. Well, what happens when all those people who had the advantages are out of the workforce, and the white males who are now seeking jobs all grew up in an environment of mandated equality (or discrimination allowed only against the "majority" population)? I know I've been passed over for a job for which I was qualified because of my race (what they call white - an inaccurate description of my color, let alone my race), and I sure as hell never had an advantage over women or "minorities." Basically, we're punishing people for the perceived sins of their fathers, even when their descendants didn't own slaves. Nonetheless, 'we all look alike,' so everyone with light skin gets lumped together, so we can all be punished for the misdeeds of a small minority of our population. What we see here is that I am being discriminated against because of the actions of some historical figures who have no relation to me whatsoever. Sounds fair. But this is just an example. Why throw out the entire "whate men are evil and deserve to suffer" argument based on silly things like practical examples, facts, or figures. What really matters is how we define words like racism, power, and equality, right? Pfft! Everyone thinks they deserve special treatment in the ivory tower. Well, let me tell you something: you're more than likely not special. The sooner we all get that into our heads, the better off we are.

This goes double for the Paris Economics retards.

Locked due to duplicate post. Check the NSF topics in The Bank forum.