Roll Right

There is usually a group of sociology grad students (new and old) who go out on the night of orientation for drinks. Anyone who wants to attend is welcome to message me to see about joining us.

I have mixed feelings about the GMU campus and NOVA (Northern VA). I'll talk about NOVA first and then GMU. Based on my personal experiences, NOVA is a suburban sprawl that is expensive to live in and difficult to get around in. It is populated by a great deal of wealthy folks who own townhouses that go for $500,000 or more. You'll see many of these townhouses as you drive or walk around the old city/university area. In sharp contrast to that, there are many neighborhoods that are underdeveloped and decaying, but you'll have to travel outside of the old city and university area to see those. Many of them are located on the outskirts of the city. This makes the search for affordable housing near the university a difficult one. I would start that search ASAP. When I began looking for housing, I started in June and was able to get a place secured by early August. It may help to use the GMU student forums to find roommates to mitigate the high cost of living. I grew up in a rural setting, so the hustle and bustle of the NOVA area is not really my speed. I find the traffic to be a nuisance, and the organization of the Fairfax area is difficult to navigate and negotiate for pedestrians and those who take public transportation. If you own a car you'll be fine. Unfortunately, many of those who walk, cycle, or take public transport are economically disadvantaged and forced to live on the outskirts of the city. This intensifies the disadvantage because travel time, distance, and transportation schedules complicate the trek to work or school. I live about a two miles outside of Fairfax city and my fiance uses our car to commute to and from work. I use a bicycle to get to campus, or I take a George Mason University shuttle which stops near my house. Either way, my trip can take anywhere between 25 and 45 minutes, and I only live a total of 7 miles from the campus. Its about 10 minutes by car. I've come to enjoy my commute though. I'm either reading or listening to music on the bus, and if I'm cycling I enjoy the excersize. Thats one way to deal with the inconvenience of not having a car. There are also fairly reliable bus systems. The City University Ecosaver (CUE) bus system is pretty good, and its free to GMU students. It can get you around Fairfax City, but it will not travel outside of the city limits. The Fairfax Connector is the bus system which takes you to locations that are outside of Fairfax City but within Fairfax County. It is not free to students, though, and I've never used it. I mentioned the GMU shuttle buses: they circulate between shopping centers, the prince william campus, and the Fairfax/Vienna metro station. I happen to live near a shopping center that is serviced by a GMU shuttle, which makes life easier for me. They are fairly slow, however, and the drivers often skip stops. I've been left stranded a few times. I'll say that the entire NOVA area is beautiful. Its well maintained and is very green and lush in the spring and summer months. The temperature can get very hot, though, and the "concrete island" effect really intesifies that heat. The fall months are extremely colorful and characterized by mild temperatures. During the winter, it tends to become pretty grey and dirty, but that is typical of suburban winter life. The people in the NOVA area aren't too pleasant, and there really isn't a community to speak of. One professor told me that Fairfax is really just a working location -- people don't "live" here. They typically split their time between Fairfax (when they work) and some other town outside of NOVA on the weekends. For that reason it can seem pretty isolated here. Even the graduate students in my program (sociology PhD) are dispersed throughout the area -- some living in Fairfax, some in Arlington, some in Alexandria, some in Maryland. There was even one person who commuted from Fredricksburg for a while, which is over an hour away with I-95 traffic. There is a lot to do around the Fairfax area. Tons of parks (and dog parks if you have doggies) and tons of walking/bike paths that span miles. There are a ton of things to do for free in the DC area too (museums, festivals, etc). If you have money, there are even more things to do (five star restaraunts, plays, musicals, concerts, theme parks, etc). The bar scene is ok, but you have to frequent a particular place to really start to enjoy it. If you like local dive bars, check out Fat Tuesdays. Its a New Orleans themed bar. I've had a beer or two in there on many occassions. For anyone who wants to make friends and meet people, I welcome you to join the group of students who usually go out and have a drink on the night of orientation at GMU. Get in touch with me here or through a private message and we can network. The GMU Fairfax campus is beautiful, though. Not quite as nice as my undergraduate (UMaine Orono), but they do a lot to keep the GMU campus looking neat and clean. The student body is pretty cool, too. Everyone is friendly, and the professors are pretty nice (at least in my department). The administration is becoming a bloated organ, though. Funding for graduate students is slowly being syphoned into other projects (probably beautification projects). My tuition waiver (and a colleague's) was almost sucked up into the dean's coffers, even though it was based on money that was donated by a private interest for the purposes of funding student research. Luckily a professor went to bat for us and ensured that we would be funded into the fall at least. Spring funding is still up in the air. At least my coursework is done.... The library system is awesome. I usually find whatever books I need at the Fenwick Library on campus. If I can't find it there, I can order it from another library. They have access to books at George Washington, American University, Catholic University, etc. And, the online subscriptions to academic journals is quite good. I've never had trouble accessing whatever literature I am looking for. Finding a space to work in the library is hard though. The tables on the first floor are usually occupied by 9 am, and the seating on the upper floors fills up fast too. The Johnson Center also has a library and workspace in it, but its so damn loud in there. Its basically the central student hub - with food, IT services, a library, the bookstore, etc. I can't get a bit of work done in that building and I hate having to walk through it. Too many people....but I'm introverted anyway. They have a bar on campus too, which serves beer and wine. I loved having a beer after class. Now that I'm done with coursework I'll have to find other excuses to stop in there. The gyms are awesome, too. One is a basketball/weight and aerobic training center. The other is an auqatic/weights/aerobic center. They can get pretty busy but I've never had trouble finding machines or weights to use. They also offer classes on martial arts and physical fitness routines. I've never taken these classes but I'm considering a martial arts course.

I just read a bit on this issue, apparently Starship troopers glorifies war, may be pro-fascist, and may be racist. This ought to be an interesting contrast to Haldeman's anti-war novel that I just finished...

So I'm starting Starship Troopers today and plan to get to these suggestions after...I keep reading that Starship Troopers is controversial. Anyone know why?

I'm reading for my comprehensive exam on globalization and writing outlines for sample questions. When I'm no doing that, I'm doing research on immigration for my university. When I'm not doing that, I'm hanging with my fiancé and our pup dog. When I'm not doing that, I'm playing on my ps4 and reading SciFi novels and books on historical materialism. And I'll be taking a trip up to Maine, my home state, for a week in August. All in all, its shaping up to be a great summer.

Thank you for these great suggestions!

Hey folks, I'm almost finished with Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, and its an amazing scifi novel. I was wondering if anyone could recommend some other scifi novels that are quite good. I'm generally interested in SciFi depictions of warfare, but SciFi novels discussing social development (i.e. We, 1984) and the phenomenology of time and space are very interesting to me. Thanks in advance!

I don't have a car and I attend GMU. Quite easy if you live in Fairfax city. There is a CUE bus that is free to use for students, a Gunston go bus that shuttles students too and from a few shopping locations and campus, a mason to metro shuttle bus that takes you too and from the Vienna metro station, and there are some bike trails that you can use to commute on a bike. I ride my bike to campus a lot. In short, if you live in Fairfax youll be OK without a car.

Well, I realize that you're very busy, but getting through grad school on a schedule of all work and no play is a recipe for disaster IMO. If you're not taking time for yourself then you will easily get burned out. I'm wondering, why are you doing 30 hours a week of research on top of your classes? Are your classes not a space for you to accomplish your own research agenda? Its obvious you have goals, and that is a good thing. But, you need to include a social life amongst those goals. A social life is something you have to work for, not something that just appears or is there when you have time for it. So in order to deal with your loneliness, I would suggest that you make some time for those people you love. In particular, make some time for your fiancé. It may seem like you have to sacrifice everything in order to get the degree, but you really don't have to do that. Take it from a third year PhD. Things that will help you find more time for your social life include: Not working so often. Carving out a concrete research agenda so as to focus your work and make it more efficient and manageable. Spending less time worrying about maintaining top grades. Its very hard to fail out of graduate school. After studying something for 5 or 6 years, you should not have to stretch yourself too much for respectable grades. Developing more self-confidence. I find that those who work all the time are doing so because they constantly feel the need to prove that they belong in a graduate program. Working constantly will only make you less confident because everything else around you will fall to pieces. Forcing yourself to stop working at a certain time each night so you can spend quality time with your fiance. Making an effort to host parties for your fellow grad students. Offer booze and you'll have new friends pretty quickly.

My SO uses it, loves it. Makes taking care of our budget really simple.

Hey that reminds me... Iron Maiden - Futureal live: http://youtu.be/-pQ7508aRBg

If we are talking about video game characters, I would have to go with Garrett from Theif or Akuma from Street Fighter.

Grad school is the Borg collective.

Graduate school is intensly busy. For that reason, I recommend mixing your healthy habits in with work. I accomplish this in a few different ways. First, I begin my week on Sunday evening by cooking lunch for the week. This is something healthy that I cook in a crock-pot (usually chicken, vegitables, and rice) that I can eat at my desk while writing, reading, running stats, etc. This also saves me a lot of money because I am not constantly ordering my lunch from a local restaraunt. Every morning for breakfast I eat greek yogurt, a fruit, and either granola or toast. I also have a coffee that I'm obsessed with - Carabou Coffee's Carabou Blend. This meal gives me the energy I need to get through the morning hours. I use my commute in the morning to prepare myself for work. Sometimes I ride on public transportation so I can sit alone and listen to music I enjoy. Music keeps me sane. If I'm not doing that, I ride my bike to work so I can keep my body in shape and work out whatever stress I have built up in my muscles. While working on campus I take regular breaks from my reading/writing/analysis. I usually do this after every hour of work to give my mind a quick break. Sometimes I'll do this by reading some video game news, other times I'll go bother a friend of colleague. Sticking to this routine makes me more productive than I otherwise would be. I also make sure that I cook a meal for myself every week night. This is usually a protein (typically chicken sausage or chicken breast), a carb (either pasta or rice) and a green vegetible (usually collards). I follow this meal with a Modelo Especial 24 oz or a Sapporro 24 oz beer. I think its important to fit beer into a regular schedule as long as its not in excess. I never work before 10:00 am (if I can help it), and I never work past 9:30 PM. This is important. Your sanity will suffer if you're waking up and going straight to the books, and it will also suffer if you're constantly pulling late night work sessions. I usually do 10 am - 2 pm, and then take break until 5:30, during which I return home to play fetch with my dog and eat dinner. At 5:30 I hit the books and write until 9:30. After 9:30 I unwind with my fiancee. This allows me to get a solid 8 hours of work in per day while also allowing me to relax in the evening. My weekends are dedicated to my fiancee and my pup dog. I might do a few hours of work here and there during the weekend, but my focus is on them otherwise. This is how I stay healthy and sane. I would like to stress the importance of eating rounded meals in grad school. You need fuel to think and you need fuel to destress. If you're not eating properly you'll have problems doing both.

We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.

I am a cyclist as well. But my real hobby is gaming. I've been playing console games since I could turn on my father's Nintendo by myself. I also listen to and learn about as much thrash metal as I can. I've been listening to that for almost as long as I've played video games. I guess my only "new" hobby is beer, but that's about 8 years old now... I collect graphic novels when I have the time and money.

No, not a supercomputer, just something with more than 4 gig of ram. But yeah, I work with multiple cross sections of decennial cenus data and American community survey data, so its easy to get up to 30 million cases. The 2006-2010 american community survey sample has 15 million cases alone.

Hey folks, I'm expecting my Acer laptop to die in the next year. I was wondering if anyone could recommend an affordable laptop ($600ish) which is windows based and has enough memory and processing power to analyze up to 30 million cases with statistical software (mainly SPSS). Can anyone make recommendations? Thanks in advance.

I've seen nearly all of the east coast (us), visited Texas and Tennessee, lived in northern wales for a bit, traveled to Britain, Ireland, Italy, and Canada.

Hey Folks, I had a thought and wanted to open it up for discussion here. Generally, it can be said that classical social theory regards religion as a product of society. Furthermore, it posits that religion an essence of some sort. This is most clearly seen in the work of Durkheim, but is also clearly seen in the writing of Marx and Weber. And of course, Troeltsch, a lesser known scholar, discusses religion in the same manner. So we have a very secular understanding of religion in sociology. Some have even called it "secularism". I was raised by an evangelical protestant father and a liberal christian mother, but I have not been an active participant in any particular faith since I was very young. In fact, I tend to think of myself as an agnostic now. And, as a sociologist of religion and globalization, I can't say I find much truth content in any of the world's major religions. I think the sociological perspective that I've developed is the cause of that. I was wondering - are there any sociologists here, or budding sociologists, who study religion while also practicing a particular faith? And if so, has the sociology of religion enhanced your faith or challenged it in some way? How do you balance a secular perspective with a religious perspective, if one sometimes contradicts the other?

Anyone else thinking of coming to GMU sociology?

Pretty common throughout the South too. Real tastey.

I used to mix a shot of Bacardi 151 in Budweiser's "American Ale" before they stopped producing it. That was pretty tastey. I also enjoy mixing Strongbow with XXXX Lager, but its hard to find that in the US. I think french fries with cheddar cheese and pickeled Jalapeño slices is bomb. Mayo on top of that is OK. Depends on my mood. Ketchup on Mac n cheese is undisputably awesome. Throw some tuna fish and peas in there to make it really tastey. I think dipping cheddar cheese in a glass of orange juice while eating it is awesome.

Are folks still interested after seeing that list?

Short answer: yes. Slightly longer answer: yes, but you'll need to justify your application in your SOP by explaining why youre moving from economics to sociology.