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I belong to 3 national ones: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, American Association of Teachers of German, and American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, and one state foreign language association.

I will join the "mom going back to school after long break and is nervous" club! My younger children will be going to public school, and my two high schoolers finishing up through homeschooling because we are moving for me to go to school. Thankfully I have older children who help out a lot with cooking and cleaning and watching the younger ones. What I am most nervous about is technology! Things have changed a lot since I did my MA (email was a novelty then!).

I was very interested in this program when I first found out about it, but in inquiring about it from others in the language teaching field, they said it was primarily a way for a career public school teacher to get a doctorate during the summers so that they would get the pay bump that comes with having a doctorate.

Can I? I don't know.

For the last several years, I've had an iPad 2 that my school provided. Since I left at the end of the school year to go into a PhD program, I had to return it. There are many things I really like about the iPad and I want to buy another one. The biggest thing is that I love to do jigsaw puzzles, but hadn't in years because they take up so much room (and I have kids who will lose pieces). Obviously, a laptop would not work for puzzles! However, even though I have a case with a keyboard for it, so I can type on it for a while, I obviously wouldn't want to do too much typing on it. I'm entering a PhD program in Second Language Acquisition. As far I as know, I don't need a computer to do anything technical. I'll need to read and write. I don't game, so that is not a consideration. I'll have a desktop at home. I will be carrying this around as my way to stay connected. I intend to walk or bike to school (about 3 miles). I don't have a smartphone and don't anticipate getting one. As I see it, my options are: 1. buy a refurbished iPad 2, if it's not sufficient for what I need to do on campus, then get a laptop and leave the iPad at home 2. buy a decent laptop now, forget an iPad 3. buy an iPad 3 with more memory so that I can hopefully use it for the personal stuff I want but also what I need for school. I'd love any input. I think current technology is going to be a steep learning curve for this returning grad student (I got my MA in 1996). Cost is definitely a consideration here! Thanks!

I'm surprised about how horribly stressful this entire process has been.

Can you tell me more about immersion not being a prevailing theory?

A fellowship is usually more prestigious. You will be able to teach later.

There's actually 2 Food Lions in Carrboro, although they are quite close to each other. One is on Jones Ferry Rd, walking distance to a few apartment complexes. The other is off of 54 at the Carrboro Plaza.

I sent them a message yesterday through their online message system. This morning I got an email telling me a message was there. Why can't they just send an email instead of making me jump through yet another hoop just to find out it was a no???? I got the message at work and apparently their login won't work on an iPad, so I had to wait until I could get a computer to actually see what I thought was going to be a no anyway.

I called them a week ago and was told they were delayed and would be notifying soon, but I've still never heard anything from them. Anyone else? I saw a result on the board but only one.

I'm curious - how can a school be both ranked highly and considered a diploma mill? I don't know anything about Teachers College, but it seems to me that the pros for Pitt are more persuasive and the cons less negative.

My father told me yesterday that I should just get an online PhD somewhere because it's the same thing. When I told him that I wanted to understand my field better, he said it sounded like I just wanted to be a student and that I could learn on my own. Sigh.

Indiana University has an excellent program!

Yeah, one school I applied to said "late February at the latest" and I haven't heard anything.

I applied to both MSU and CMU. I was rejected at MSU but they encouraged me to apply to the German department there instead, which I didn't do. I have heard nothing from CMU, but I never had a good feeling about it. I had a lot of trouble with their online app, and was told this was the first year that they had done the applications online. I always love being a guinea pig - NOT.

I applied to Penn GSE for the Educational Linguistics PhD. I knew I wasn't accepted because I was not invited to the their weekend for potential PhDs. However, I then received an email offering me a spot in MS Ed program in Intercultural Communications with $13,500 in funding. Since I have a family, I was counting on getting some sort of monthly stipend for grad school, and this funding would all go to cover tuition plus I would still have to pay a few thousand, and then I'd have to find a job on top of that. The program itself is interesting and rather flexible, so I think it might be feasible to only have to be on campus 2, possibly 2.5 days a week which leaves time for a part-time job. The part that really scares me, though, is that it is a 2 year program, but the funding is not guaranteed for both years. I don't want to move my family there, have my husband find a job, have to find a job myself, still pay money, and THEN find out I'm not getting any funding for the second year! Since I can't take on debt, I would have to quit the program. I have been accepted somewhere else for a PhD, but I'm still waiting on funding info for that, and haven't heard from a few other places. But this is Penn, it's an Ivy, and I don't want to totally discount the opportunity. My questions: 1. Has anyone here been offered an MSEd instead of the PhD at Penn? Did you accept? Why or why not? 2. For anyone who's done a two year masters at Penn, what happened with your funding the second year? 3. Does anyone have specific comments about the MSEd in Intercultural Communications program? Is it feasible to also have a part-time job on top of 3 classes, 5 hour per week assistantship, and a family? 4. Should I attend the admitted students day, even if I lean towards not going? Thanks for any and all advice/comments!