themmases

I don't think it's appropriate to call this a "girl approach" to dating, especially in a comment where you suggest this guy was doing way more devious game playing and testing of the OP. Plenty of men drop hints and fail to be honest about their feelings; obviously if this guy was ever interested in the OP then that's what they both did. If the OP still has strong feelings for him, they might as well ask him out and just find out for sure. Personally though, I am 27 and I wouldn't be interested in dating a teenager and neither would anyone I know. The age difference gets less important the older you are, but for most 19 year olds it's still a lot. Most people I know are living with or marrying people within 3 years of their own age- usually less- not dating people who have probably only been living on their own for a year or two.

I contacted the admissions coordinator for my program. A lot of times they know the answer themselves, and if they don't they'll be more successful at getting the answer for you than you would be yourself. My experience of being support staff in an academic department was that faculty were way more likely to answer an email from me, trusted staff person, than from an outsider. Sometimes people would even email me and tell me what to say rather than respond to someone themselves, so I would keep being the contact in the eyes of whoever we were in contact with. And some of them hated/didn't check/checked but didn't respond to their email, but I would know that and page them or go find them in person rather than worrying I offended them somehow.

Doing this won't affect your score, except in the sense that an essay with actual paragraphs is better than one that's just one long wall of text. I didn't indent my paragraphs either time I took the GRE. The essay form was a pretty no-frills text box, and tabs don't always come through properly when you submit those, so I never use them. I just inserted two page breaks so there was a blank line between paragraphs, which is pretty standard in most forms and even in many documents depending on the formatting. It's what you and I both did to compose our comments.

My old GRE scores recently disappeared from my ETS account when they turned 5-- it's no longer an option to even send them. It makes sense to me that the scores can't be greater than 5 years old when you apply, anyway-- after you are accepted no one cares about them. I would expect your department to care more about the fact that your scores are from the old GRE rather than the revised GRE, more than they would care whether your scores turn 5 next month or in February. Although there are concordance tables for converting an old score to a new score, they're still not as comparable to current scores which is the point of making people take the GRE in the first place. All that said, if my old scores were really good I would definitely try to use them while I could unless a specific school directed me not to.

Sure you can, there is at least one sub-3.0 thread in this very forum. Having a good GPA in your relevant major will help you as well. The source of your low overall GPA might hurt you-- if it's bad grades in other science and math courses dragging your GPA way down, then you might want to see what courses you have time to take (if you are still in undergrad) that you could do well on and show you've moved past whatever difficulty you were having. Doing really well on the GRE would also help you look like a safer bet. Relevant work or volunteer experience will help you a lot with getting into public health school. If you're worried about applying this cycle, or do apply and aren't happy with your results, a year or two of working or volunteering in a health/environment field will make a world of difference. This forum and Student Doctor both have long acceptance threads where people share their stats, if you'd like to see where people similar to you got in in the past.

I get the ebook versions of textbooks whenever I can. I have to carry a lot of other stuff around with me and I just can't justify a giant book that I only need to read 2 chapters of that week if there is a lighter way to do it. For me, ebooks are also a better use of my time. I have three days each week where I come to campus for one class and work. My choices are to carry materials for other classes around with me just in case I have time for them, or to risk finishing my work for that one class and then not have anything else productive to do on my commute. With a bunch of ebooks on my iPad or phone I can just finish the reading for one class and then move on to the next. I also worried about looking at screens all day, but I think the problem is bigger than eye strain (which you can reduce with screen settings)-- it's also about how overwork and having only sedentary, screen-based work and leisure activities are bad for you mentally and physically. I believe the best way to combat this is to get more exercise and make time for hobbies and socializing away from a chair or screen, rather than by sticking to printed books. In addition to exercise I usually take a few minutes out of my commute or while I'm waiting for a transfer to just look around, relax, and let my mind wander. I regularly use a smart phone or iPad on the bus or L in Chicago and have never had a problem. While I try not to be distracted in public with one or use one where I couldn't hold it securely (as much so I don't drop it as anything), I wouldn't call these items ostentatious in many public places and certainly not on a college campus. Usually I don't get out or even bring my iPad or computer the first time I go to a totally new area or use a different transportation line until I can see if that's normal there. I always end up bringing it later because it is normal and I don't see others having a problem or having a death grip on their device. The only problem I really have with e-textbooks is cost and availability. They may be cheaper than a hard copy book, but often not as cheap as buying a used book. There may be only a few authorized providers, usually the publisher or a company that just does e-textbooks, and you may have to use their app to read your book that you wouldn't have installed otherwise. Often if there's another option, it's Amazon. There will still be a textbook markup and the only real way to save money may be to rent rather than buy. My school had ebook versions of some of my textbooks, but you had to be one of the first 5-10 people to know you needed it and there isn't really a course reserve system like with physical books.

It really depends. My personal experience was that being prepared for the GRE as a test-- understanding what kind of questions would be asked, what counts as a good AW answer, having some idea how the creators think-- was more important and easier to change quickly than content area knowledge. But that probably depends on your background. I did take the GRE without studying in 2008, and with studying in 2013. I'd always been a good test taker and I must have had three upper-level history classes I was researching and writing for, so I just didn't study the first time. The older scores aren't valid now, but they were-- just barely-- when I applied to schools last year if I had wanted to use them. After 4 years of working full-time, one month of casual studying (only quant) and 2 weeks of serious studying (only quant), here is how my score percentiles changed: V: 94th-98th (+4%) Q: 18th-74th (+56%) AW: 98th-56th (-42%) I was never bad at math, and I didn't get hit on the head and forget how to write (or, uh, I don't know-- you guys tell me!). GRE quant only goes up to high school math, but it asks you weird stuff, confusing stuff, stuff that looks harder than it is, and things no one would ever want to know outside of a standardized test. If you don't know that and you're a humanities person, you're quite liable to do what I did and put down your best estimate-- which is often a trick answer-- because you're desperate to just move on. If you passed high school math, aren't constantly making silly arithmetic mistakes, and can work through problems that probably only look complicated without panicking, you can do fine on GRE math. Even if you are in the humanities there is no need to embarrass yourself or render your scores unusable if you decide to change fields (as I did). I got nearly the same AW question in 2008 and 2013. It touched on an area where my political beliefs, my research interests, and a memorable quote from one of my favorite pamphlets intersect and so naturally my answer was nearly the same too. The only difference was that in 2013 I noticed myself writing nearly the same thing, freaked out, and cut off (what I thought of as) a digression that would have made the answers basically identical-- this is not a quote I see other people break out regularly. This took my materially similar answer from a nice, conventional 5 paragraph essay to maybe 4 paragraphs, and my score from 5.5 to 4.0. Don't be me, write a 5-paragraph essay even if you don't want to. As for verbal I've never intentionally studied for it other than a self-check at the beginning of my 2013 studying. I'm just lucky I guess.

Congratulations! I adopted a cat last year-- also a young adult female-- and had some of your same worries. Plus, our cat's previous owner needed to give her to us very quickly so we had out of town plans that we couldn't cancel when we got her, and we didn't have an air conditioner yet (it was a very hot Chicago summer). Naturally I would lie awake when it was super hot, listening to her meowing, and hope she wasn't crying because she was boiling to death or something. My partner's boss is also a cat person and gave us some great advice that helped reduce the night freakouts (especially since Bruce was initially not allowed in our room at night, and she would sit outside and whine). We now make a point to play with her and try to tire her out later in the evening, and since my cat is very gentle and friendly I also try not to let her take long or deep naps in the evening so she will be good and tired at night. Then we give her her dinner later, pretty soon before human bedtime, again so she's full and sleepy when we want to go to sleep. All this stuff helps keep her on more or less our sleep schedule so she's not wide awake and ready to play at 3 a.m. Cats do just see ghosts sometimes and zoom around though, and usually there is nothing going on that qualifies as a problem for a human. Our delicate little flower does it whenever she poops. We've had so many people willing to cat-sit for us that I think a different person has done it each time in the last 14 months. Have some cute cat pictures ready on your phone for anyone who seems interested-- you will quickly find out who the cat people are in your life that you could ask. Then pay them in souvenirs-- we usually bring back gift beer that is made in the area we visited. Finally, get a laser pointer. They're great for when you're studying and can't get up to play with a suddenly energetic pet, or distracting your cat if you spot her trying to jump on something that is No from all the way across the room.

Like TakeruK, I spent a lot of time learning about the test itself. I needed to improve my quant score a lot, and did so successfully-- from 18th percentile to 74th. Obviously, that was possible because I was bad at taking the GRE, not at math. I didn't know the first time around that GRE math only goes up to about high school and uses weirdness and trick questions to increase the perceived difficulty, so I panicked and assumed I had never learned how to solve a lot of the problems on the test. I used the free Spark Notes guide to review the format of the test, strategies used by the test maker, and to review any basic math concepts I hadn't used in a while. I spent a very long time on this, worked along with all the examples, etc., and generally made sure I was no longer making stupid arithmetic mistakes or falling for lots of trick questions before moving on. I really recommend the introductory parts of their GRE math guide. Once I was done, I used the Manhattan Prep book of math practice questions to practice each concept to death. They give you at least 40 questions on every topic, so I'd stop and check my work every 10 problems or so and write out the correct steps to anything I missed. I probably spent a month studying casually in my free time for 5 hours/week tops, then got serious in the last two weeks before the test and spent at least part of most evenings studying. This worked really well for me, and it think I could have gotten even higher if I'd started nightly studying sooner. I was working through geometry problems when I ran out of time to work through every single question, and those were the exact questions where I ended up wasting some time on test day. I didn't study verbal and writing because I was confident I would do well on them. Write a standard 5-paragraph essay for AW-- that was the only difference between my better-scoring old response and worse-scoring new one. I even got nearly the same question, which is what threw me off the second time... I could feel myself writing the same thing I wrote 4 years before.

It's possible to use recs that don't precisely match up with the professional experiences you talk about. Two of my professional references were PIs and co-authors, so it's possible to see from my CV what projects they actually worked on with me if they hadn't talked about it themselves. Since I chose what projects to discuss based on each program's strengths, at some schools my references had been mentioned in my SOP and at others, not. It didn't seem to matter really. However, they were 2/3 of the most important people in my career so far and I think it was pretty clear why I chose them even if I didn't always center their project in my essay for some reason. I'm confused about how you are choosing your references, though. If you're going to use a professional reference, it should be because your work with them was directly relevant to your educational goals. They should be able to comment on whether you would make a good graduate student and researcher (or practitioner if you are applying to a professional school), not just account for your time since leaving undergrad or say you were good at your old job. If you are changing fields, your old boss may not make a good reference no matter how important she was to a career that you're now leaving. And you definitely shouldn't spend your SOP talking about professional experience that is unrelated to the program or what you want to do with the degree.

Happy! My course load is lighter than I understood it to be when I registered-- my computing courses are so introductory that a lot of our work will be done within lab time. That's good because I may be able to get a second job on my boss' new project. I loved my first homework assignment, which was a disease outbreak. The content, difficulty, and focus (lots of health disparities examples in every class) are pretty much what I'd hoped they would be. I am usually pretty shy in a classroom setting but I'm seeing a lot of the same faces from orientation and other classes so I think that will pass. I couldn't get a current syllabus for most of my classes until this week, so some of my books have yet to arrive. That's really my only problem so far.

The people in my program don't dress particularly formally, but they definitely don't look like undergrads. I don't know how to describe it other than to say I wasn't able to pick any of my TAs out of the crowd during lecture. I saw one pair of yoga pants at orientation and they turned out to be on a member of our newish undergrad program. Today to go to the library, then class, then work, I wore navy pants rolled at the ankle, a new/in good condition v-neck t-shirt, pointed flats, and a flowered scarf. I wore pretty much the same thing to work all summer, or the same thing with a sleeveless blouse, and I feel pretty normal. At my old job, where I met with patients, I would hang onto things that were work appropriate but that I didn't like just because they were formal. Then I'd wear my lab coat over them. I don't have patients or a lab coat yet here so I'm more casual but I also look nicer. Most people here are casual yet look nice. Like we're forever going to brunch!

Good point, it actually does! I pull this information from Zotero to Excel because I prefer to take notes in Excel-- I like having the fields of specific information I need to get out of it-- and I want to be able to filter those notes by citation, date, etc. I set it up this way initially because I was doing one part of a literature review and we wanted to make sure that other RAs pulled the same type of information for their topics. It's possible to take notes in Zotero from a tab within each parent item, and I've done that in the past. Zotero also has the ability to index PDFs, pull metadata from PDFs, and sync them all across libraries. However, I find that having PDFs completely indexed makes it hard to search my library unless I remember a longer text string. Once I'm writing, I don't want to search the full text of all my PDFs at once-- I just want to search summaries and data fields. Then maybe I'll text search that one article, once I know it's the right one. Also, after doing retrospective research for a non-profit (read: they will buy you nothing) for four years I just instinctively solve problems in Excel now. YMMV

I would just add that sexist attitudes about exercise are a big reason I, and probably plenty of other women, don't branch out more. My boyfriend goes to a gym near our apartment that is mostly geared towards weight lifting, and he likes the atmosphere where more experienced people will spot him or tell him when his form is wrong. I think it would be hard for me to enjoy that even if it were completely helpful and friendly, just because it's so common for men to actually be judging women in that setting. I find it really ridiculous and unproductive that anyone would put down someone else's chosen form of exercise. Everyone you see at the gym is doing the exact same thing you're doing: reducing their risk of all-cause death. The rest is really just details, and frankly, it's personal. On a more positive note I got to use my campus' gym for the first time last night and it was amazing. Clean, quiet, easy to get in and out even though I went right at 5. I've been counting down until I can go back today.

I have been using a combination of Zotero and an Excel file for work, and I like it so much I think I'm going to do the same thing for my readings. Very often what sticks in my mind about an article is not what I wrote down, so I like having a lot of text-searchable notes or tags that I can use to quickly find what I'm thinking of. For example, in public health (and in life actually) we all know that exercise is good for you. So I would never bother to copy that down, but once I'm writing I might want to cite a particularly authoritative or well-written systematic review about just how good exercise is. Good thing I tagged it "CDC" and "exercise", then. And if I do have to reread something it helps me at least know what to reread, rather than fruitlessly opening a bunch of different articles. My current Excel file has headings for date added, the project I got the article for, citation, DOI, date published, full-text y/n, systematic review y/n, objective, method, outcome measure, sample size, result, recommendation, quotes, and comments. I sort/filter by the first 7 columns and text search the others. When I read systematic reviews, I have a separate file where I keep track of how they measured the quality of included studies so I can use them as a checklist for my own study designs. I do still take class notes by hand though. Physically writing stuff helps me remember it even if I don't reread. And my handwriting deteriorates quickly if I don't.

I left a grad program a few years ago and I'm so glad I did. It wasn't working for me, it was causing me a lot of anxiety, and being there clarified a lot of things about the job market and course of study that I hadn't fully understood before. I left for a totally unrelated job that I turned out to be great at. I knew others in the field in way better situations than mine (fully-funded PhDs-- I was just an MA student) who told me I did the right thing. Many people I knew eventually left. It's less harmful to you to stay since you're getting free tuition, but there is still an opportunity cost to being in graduate school instead of somewhere else. That's particularly true since you don't want creative writing to be your life or your profession. That means you'll have to find some other career eventually, and instead of getting paid to figure that out you're spending time in a degree program you don't enjoy and that won't help you find a job once you start looking. Most often the solution to a bad job is just to get a new job, hopefully after articulating what you don't like and planning for how you'll avoid it in the future, not grad school.

SOPHAS accepts either a resume or a CV and specifically instructs applicants not to tailor the document to one school, because it's a central application and everything but your SOP will be sent to everyone. I used a CV. I already use one in my professional life and since my job is related to my program, it needed very little updating. I use that format because I have presentations and publications relevant to my work. Because I also use it for job searching and because it's at a length where it would take up very little of the third page, I currently keep it to exactly two pages. My recommendation would be that if you don't have research experience/publications, a resume is probably enough. In that case your work/volunteer experience and maybe your major are your best qualifications and you can get all that across in a resume. A CV is more comprehensive, so use it if you have specific presentations/publications, licenses, awards, etc. to get across as well. This is a good overview of the difference that is specific to public health: http://sph.washington.edu/careers/resources/resumes_cvs.asp

I use Google Calendar for appointments, and what I do with tasks depends on my mood-- I can't keep a master task list. I usually find that after a few weeks unexpected stuff has happened to some tasks e.g. they were cancelled or handled by someone else or I forgot to mark them complete, so every once in a while I just make a new task list somewhere else.

School and career counselors: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/school-and-career-counselors.htm Guidance counselors: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes211012.htm# Social workers: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/social-workers.htm If you Google BLS + the job name there are often other reports that break down pay and employment by geographic area and specialty. I also left a low laying job in my field for a related advanced degree, so I understand why you are nervous. Doing a ton of research on employment outcomes and what kind of jobs I would be looking for with my degree eased my anxiety a lot and made applying easier. It also made it much easier to explain my choice to people. You're doing the right thing by trying to get specific information about your career and degree now, before you commit to anything. Best of luck!

I don't know, I personally think there are much stronger examples of racist American media coverage going on right now. I also think you can't infer what topics have really captured public interest, or what public opinion is on a topic, based on how it is covered in the media. Personally the individuals I know who were following the Ebola story closely were doing so before, and I don't really know anyone who started following it as a result of a couple of Americans getting sick. I think it's just human nature to care most about people and current events in your own country, and for the events that concern us outside of that to be very personal. I don't see it as any different than caring more if your family member gets in a car accident than if a stranger does-- it certainly doesn't make anyone a bad person. I personally don't follow this story closely because I have no power to influence it through my work (I am not an infectious disease person), and other issues that I feel I can influence through money, political engagement, and time already have a claim on me. I don't feel obligated to lose sleep in worrying that will benefit no one and make me less effective at my actual work. You have probably put your finger on a divide between public health and global health, though. I see the opinion a lot that global poverty and deprivation are so severe that some people feel they can't stay at home-- they have to go where they believe the need is greatest. I am specifically interested in domestic public health and health disparities, and I feel it's ethically unacceptable to turn away from my neighbors who suffer ill health and early death because of preventable public health problems, poverty, and racism. I wish there were more compassion for and interest in people who experience deprivation right here in the U.S. I'm reluctant to say that either approach is morally superior or that people should feel guilty about where their conscience takes them if they are really doing good somewhere in the world.

OP, you should talk to an advisor at U of I about your situation. Freshman calculus there is notoriously hard-- I know people who lost scholarships or honors over it and I remember being told during orientation not to take it first semester unless my major absolutely required it. There will definitely be other people in your program who are in a similar situation because of those courses specifically. Someone in your department should be able to tell you how grad schools viewed others in your program who had the same experience and what, if anything, they did to successfully improve their applications. An A- at U of I is worth 3.67.

This sounds like way too much of your SOP devoted to focusing on your weaknesses. I could see why a recent undergrad would want to address recurring poor performance, but your BA is too long ago for you to spend much time talking about it. You might want to check out the library science forum for specific advice, but in general when you apply to professional programs you should be talking about your professional preparation and goals. The longer ago you got your BA, the less relevant it is and the less likely it is to be a reflection of your current self. For some perspective, in public health it's really common for people to work for as little as a year or two to compensate for a weakness in undergrad. Since you've been out of school for 10 years, you've probably gained life skills that would prevent you from taking a D in a course because you just weren't getting it. If this were my SOP I would acknowledge in one sentence or one clause that my undergrad performance was uneven then shift back to talking about how my related work experience helped me mature past the performance issue and prepare to serve others in this field. If it feels relevant to you, I would even say there's a relationship one could draw between having once been a student who took a D when they didn't get the material and now pursuing a field where you could be a learning resource to others.

You are qualified to start applying to at least masters degrees. I have a similar background to yours (history major, basic college math and geology only, work/publications in medicine) and did not have a problem getting into epidemiology MS programs. I took a semester of basic biology and chemistry, but at the time I did my applications I didn't even know what specific courses I would get into and just told my schools I'd be taking something in that vein. Different schools-- even different CEPH accredited schools-- sometimes categorize their public health degrees differently, but this is a really good guide to the general differences between them and matches what I was told by admissions people at schools of public health: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/the-public-health-degrees-mph-ms-ph-drph-phd-scd.644314/ Harvard and a couple of other schools reserve their MPH for people with doctoral degrees and funnel others into an MS or MSPH program, but they are the exception to the rule. In general, you should look at MPH programs if you want to do an internship and go into public health practice, an MS if you want to do a thesis and stay in academia or research, and accept that at some schools that are otherwise great your degree name will be unusual. You definitely should not "forget" to mention your graduate certificate. Women's health and maternal and child health are important areas of public health and your interest in that topic would make you a great fit for some programs. You also don't need to choose between epidemiology (which is a marketable concentration and something to strongly consider if you're interested in it) and maternal/child health. Some schools of public health allow you to choose an interdisciplinary concentration on top of your major, and maternal/child health is a popular one. Just that I know of, UIC and Harvard do this. I would recommend reading the accepted/rejected threads here and at Student Doctor to get a sense of what other applicants are like. They can be weighted towards people who are very concerned about rankings-- both the schools' and their own-- and type A enough to assume the process must be hyper-competitive. But if you don't let that scare you those threads are full of lovely complete information about people's backgrounds and where they were successful. It never hurts to contact a department directly and ask if you would make a strong candidate, too.

I don't think every line of your SOP needs to be unique and special for each school. However, readers can tell when you wrote the same thing to everyone and just changed the school name, or wrote 80% the same thing and confined your thoughts about the school to one fit paragraph. The whole SOP should explain your purpose and why you are likely to be successful, at the same time that it demonstrates fit. This means tailoring. Ideally you should have several examples you could use of work you've done or goals you have that would make you a good candidate for training and a career in your field-- maybe even more than you can fit if you were going to fully explain them all. I'd recommend researching each program and choosing which aspects of your background to discuss based on what the school offers. For example, for a school that offered a great opportunity to work with big data I talked about designing a study that sampled anonymized electronic medical records and how my department went on to reuse my method in future studies. For a school in my city, I talked more about my knowledge of the school's community engagement and my own experiences working directly with patients in this city. Specific work groups, studies, or resources you'd want to be involved in or that exemplify the school's appeal to you are good things to reference because they concisely describe your interests to the people familiar with them. They don't require you to rewrite your whole statement-- presumably you have broadly the same research interests no matter whom you're writing to-- but show more thought than just adding the school name or talking only about yourself.

I really disagree that outlining is too slow-- it can save you a lot of time. For a standard 5-paragraph essay, your outline can just be a list of the paragraphs: intro, point 1, etc. It may not sound that helpful, but without it you end up just writing and going where your thoughts take you. It's easy to start talking about a new idea that would have made a great second point as just an aside in your first paragraph, wasting that idea and crowding out the original point. If you are just listing points in favor of your argument, it's also a lot easier to see when they are separate ideas and can each be fleshed out.