gr8pumpkin

How does everybody feel about PBJ? It takes me back to childhood.

I just got here, and I saw this thread before the husband thread and took the OP at her word. Believe me, I know what it's like to be undermedicated and post a lot of erratic things on a message board. Hell hath no fury like me off venlaflexine. Even if OP isn't serious, it could be a serious thread anyway--- it's a topic that is relevant to a lot of people even if the OP isn't relevant.

Exposed to it? Like a disease? Okay, I'll bite. Why do you reject it? Because from where I sit (assuming for the sake of argument that you are for real) you would be a profoundly happier person if you embraced some of its fundamental tenets, like not defining yourself on the basis of whether you have that prerequisite man in your life.

Just turned 40. I have a DMA (there's an old joke saying it stands for "Doesn't Mean Anything"), but found after graduating that I was more interested in teaching music theory than pursuing my original field. But it's nearly impossible to find a tenure-track teaching job teaching music theory without an actual PhD in theory, so I'm going back to school to get one. I'm still waiting to hear from Top Choice (as it says currently in signature), but I'd be perfectly happy at Safety School so I'll be in a program in fall 2014 regardless. I had a non-TT faculty post for three years at a pretty well-regarded school so I've seen both sides of the desk, as it were. Knowing now how professors on the other side of the desk see students, talk about students, etc., I'm going to try to be That Student that all the professors rave about this time around, rather than the smart ass I sort of was last time. I came out of it with my degree intact but without the warmest of relationships to avail upon. One doesn't get many second chances in life but I'm going to make the most of this one.

It's more than that. If they admit a reason for rejection that is contestable, hello litigation.

Let's just say this person gives me the "D.T."s and I don't even drink.

Oh, I don't know, ever heard of Eliezer Yudkowsky? He projects a persona very much not unlike the OP and a lot of people take him seriously.

OP, you say "Aspie" like it's a bad thing, which I'm sure will endear you to disability activists on this site (like, say, me). But, then, Asperger's Syndrome is no longer recognized by DSM5, which I'm sure you knew, since you're so erudite.

I certainly have an opinion on the climate of education in Kansas in general....

Just to clarify, my "snarky" comment was intended as pro-feminist. I think it is a shame that third-wave feminism does not seem to be more widely embraced in "real life" as it is by academics, as is demonstrated by the very existence of this thread. That was the point of my comment.

I see there were a lot of composition applicants rejected by Princeton on Feb. 27. Take heart, rejectees. I happen to find one of their composition faculty very... unpleasant. It may be a blessing in disguise.

The women I've found most attractive in life are precisely the women that conventional beauty standards would not consider "attractive." And by attractive, I mean physically attractive. I find conventional beauty standards very arbitrary and silly. I appreciate deviations from prescribed and imposed norms. But that's just me, I guess. If Corrupted is really as conventionally attractive as she says, I probably wouldn't be terribly attracted to her.

This occurred to me too. It seems a goodly number of MFA playwrights read this board....

I don't think this thread is stupid at all. It's practically an exegesis on the failure of third-wave feminism to gain currency outside of academia and into wider, more varied social strata.

Corrupted, fair enough, but I will also say Effexor has been the single most effective med I've ever been on. I'm not the person to ask about alcohol; I'm a teetotaler so it doesn't come up for me.

Ehhh. I met the love of my life one week into grad school (my masters). I was so serious and so focused. I said to myself a week before, "I'm not going to look around, I'm not going to date, I got into grad school by the skin of my teeth so I'm going to serious up here and make the most of this amazing opportunity that fell into my lap." And then on the first day of class in a remedial class I was forced to take, I met the woman to whom I have been married 14 years. My advice is don't go looking for it *at all*. Just let things happen. Life is full of surprises, sometimes the best kind of surprises.

It's appropriate to feel sad about something that's actually sad, but how long has the sadness persisted? If it's been months on end, then you're depressed.

Yes. They are life-savers in my opinion. Miracles of the modern age, nothing less. Talk therapy alone doesn't quite do it (various studies show). Talk therapy plus meds does the job. The only other piece of advice I have is if you're on Effexor (Venlaflexine), don't even miss a day of it. Withdrawal is particularly nasty on that one. And don't listen to anyone who says they're not addictive. They're not, but only in a very technical sense. They all entail withdrawal and have to be tapered off carefully if you want to get off of them. And: "Risks are low, potential payoff is unbelievably high. It isn't cheating, it's bringing you back up with the rest of the world so you can be the real you." THIS.

I've been through this once before... (I'm currently trying to get a second doctorate). My strongest piece of advice for anyone on comprehensives is that if you have any choice in the matter on *who* is on your committee, get the most sympathetic, we're-practically-pals, hippie-dippy, this-is-all-just-a-formality sorts of profs stacked on your committee as you can. If your committee has to have five people on it and you have a choice of three, then get three of those types, a plurality. Those are the profs that will actually help you out lest you stumble, and will lead you by the nose to the answers they're looking for. Don't be noble and find the most excruciatingly tough profs you can because you think the process will forge you from a piece of coal into a diamond. Get through it first. Then you have the rest of your career to become a diamond.

After I got what I thought would be my terminal degree (heh, another story) my wife and I ended up living with her parents. It drove me absolutely bat-you-know-what crazy. When I was offered a one-semester teaching gig in another city, I jumped at the chance, because otherwise we were looking at a trial separation. That one semester away possibly saved our marriage. I was offered another three years to teach at the same school, and we wound up locating there away from her parents and financially independent (more or less) from them. It worked out incredibly well just when I thought we were at the brink. I guess my point is that everything's relative--- there could be a worse situation, and a certain finite amount of time apart can actually improve things.

I read once a statistical claim on Chronicle of Higher Education (and I apologize that I don't feel up to digging the claim up as proof) that the two main things that make a difference regarding evaluations are (a) how well you did on your very first day (i.e., what first impression you make) and ( b ) what grade the student thinks he or she is going to get. I think the lesson there is put a lot of eggs into the basket of the first day, and realize that if there is a near 1:1 correlation between bad grades and bad evals, you can disregard the bad evals as so much sour grapes. I have taught my own courses in the past and designed them such that any student who actually turned in all his or her work would probably get nothing less than a B- (unless the work was just absolutely, utterly incompetent, which was quite a rare case). The main reason anybody ever got lower than a B- in one of my courses was not doing the work. Students don't do the work either because of laziness, conflicting priorities, or being intimidated by the work and not wanting to share what they think are results that put their stupidity on display. A goodly amount of work not being turned in can be a canary in the coal mine for students who are going to ding you on evals.

I'm not sure I *am* coping, for one thing....

Waiting to hear from my top-choice school. They actually say on the department's web site that acceptances won't go out until March 15, and judging from last year, they are true to their word.