Eigen

I only have one B throughout undergrad and grad, and it's one of the grades I'm most happy with. Some classes are just really freakin' hard!

In general, how difficult classes are depends a lot on your background, and isn't necessarily indicative of future success. People with strong coursework backgrounds from undergrad will breeze through, people without rigorous backgrounds may not- but honestly, past classes, you're so much in a specific area of work that how you do in your general classes doesn't matter a lot. How much you can "hang" with people during coursework is pretty much meaningless for your future. You need to do "well", but no one's going to be comparing. How well you hang in terms of research productivity in later years? That's the comparison that matters when it comes to getting letters from your committee. I've never heard anyone talk about the first year being easiest- it's almost always the most difficult. The material may be easy, but you're having to balance more things at once then you will for quite some time afterwards.

It's not uncommon for academic references to be bad, it's uncommon for professional references to be bad, primarily due to a worry of lawsuits on behalf of the companies. If you want to get a strong recommendation, it's generally a good idea when you're first approaching people to ask if they feel they can write you a strong letter of recommendation. Definitely don't ask to see it, if I were that professor I'd be likely to refuse, and probably ask you to find someone else to write you a letter. It breaks the intended confidentiality of the letter, which is the whole point of the process- the school wants to know my honest opinion of who I'm writing the letter for.

The norm is that you don't see the letter. There are exceptions for that, but I wouldn't read too much into it.

Since either of those instances would have gotten you kicked out of a graduate program, most graduate programs are likely to consider you too great of a risk to admit. Additionally, as other posters mentioned, you don't seem to really take the misconduct seriously- your first attempt may have been a mistake (and a good learning opportunity as to why you cite even in your notes), but the second attempt you intentionally got someone to write your essay for you, which was intentional academic misconduct. I would think some graduate programs might overlook one instance of misconduct, especially early in an undergraduate program if the individual shows they've grown sufficiently, but I would be very surprised if any reputable program would ignore two instances in the same class- it appears as a pattern or trend rather than an isolated instance.

I really can't tell if you're trolling, or just don't have any idea how to do science research. Either that, or a really clever spammer. Either way, I've removed the website link from your profile, as we don't allow advertising here. Especially shady pseudo-scientific advertising.

Are you aiding someone to summarize the literature? There are literally hundreds of thousands of pages of documented research on each of those topics, your question is extremely broad. Why are you looking for this information?

If you really kept up with the Chronicle, which you linked, and the past several years discussion on adjuncts, the crisis, etc. You'd realize why porn was used, and exactly where "adjunct disaster porn" as a title comes from. Adjuncting is not a career. It is not meant to be a career. It is not meant to pay a living wage, it is meant to supplement an existent full time job or career. When people choose to stay in a transparently part-time job instead of using their education and intelligence to move on and find another career, and then say it is the fault of the system, I have a problem with that. There are many, many available careers out there. Heck, food service will often pay better than adjunction will, as will construction work, roofing, welding, electrical work, plumbing.... Even moving down and teaching K-12 instead of adjunction in higher ed is an option that fits the skill set a graduate degree has developed you for. Staying in a job that is not intended, and never should be intended, to support someone full time, or someone with a family, is the worst of those options. It has been an obvious fact for anyone starting a PhD in the last 30-40 years that there is a slim chance of landing a tenure track job, especially in overcrowded fields. The difficulty in job prospects aren't a recent thing. Going into a career with slim job chances and not developing side skills or planning what you will do to support yourself and your family if the 1 in 100 chance of landing the full time job you want doesn't pan out? It's irresponsible. I realize I may be coming across as overly harsh, but it doesn't seem like a large portion of the people who are thinking about going to grad school, who are in grad school, or who have recently graduated seem to take reality into account with their career plans. They expect that having a PhD should ensure them a good chance at finding employment- and not just employment, but the employment they want in a location they want. Lots of my friends who have been very happy have gone from a PhD to sales, to finance, and in one case, to working for a roofing company. They're all successful, happy, and are able to support themselves and families. None of them spent years trying to magically turn a part-time job into a full time job- when they didn't get the jobs they hoped for, they went to plan B and moved on. I'm in a field with solid job prospects, and I'm still keeping things as open as possible- sales, industry, government research, teaching positions, construction companies, offshore welding, mechanic work, alternate academic positions, machining. They all take the time developing skills, and it's worth looking into and keeping all your options open.

I'm a bit curious what you're asking for here... It sods like you want us to do your background research for you? There are dozens of journals devoted entirely to the type of research you're asking about... Read them?

With a few of my closest friends from my cohort, we have a two work topics per person rule. Everyone needs to rant some about something from their day, their lab, etc. But the two topics helps keep it from getting out of hand.

Apologize, move on. Not the first time they've seen this happen, I'm sure. Take this as a lesson in not using form letters, see if apologizing salvages the relationship, and go from there.

Oh god, not more adjunct disaster porn stories. The old tried and true ones, at that. Those stories frustrate me so much, because it's always someone who had plenty of other job options, but choose to keep working as an adjunct instead of pursuing them, and then wonders why a full career of part-time work didn't go well for them. Adjuncting is not meant to be full time. It shouldn't be. It's not a career path, it's something for people who need a few years of part-time work do, or to do on top of a full time career in the field. People trying to make adjunct work full time is the problem, not adjuncting itself. Also, how taboo private sector research is strongly depends on the school culture- it's highly encouraged at my university, even in the social sciences, as everyone knows how rare the TT job is. We have regular graduate school seminars on how to get out into non-academic or alternate academic careers, and between our graduate association, the graduate school and career services we keep an institutional subscription to Versatile PhD.

Just out of curiosity, it seems like you're looking for what to do while you finish up your dissertation, since you're contrasting a dissertation fellowship with a post-doc. In general, post-doctoral positions require you to actually have your PhD, not be a candidate or ABD. I know at my school they can't hire someone for a post-doctoral position unless they are officially post-doctoral. If I misunderstood and you're looking at post-doctoral fellowships (NIH, teaching, etc) then the post-doctoral fellowship is in general more prestigious than a post-doctoral research position alone. It's very common in STEM fields to do a post-doc to beef up your research portfolio before going on the job market, or in parallel to going on the job market, but it's no an option that you usually contrast with a dissertation fellowship.

The one caveat I have for this is in the case of someone who is a full time faculty member at the University, but on an adjunct appointment in your particular department. It's not a common arrangement, but I have seen it. In that case, you're not really connecting with them as an adjunct, but looking for an interdisciplinary project.

What exactly are you looking for? In general, the best way to find schools is to identify scholars whose work you like, and then look at those departments/programs.

I'm the only french cook in my department. But there are a lot of french cooks in other departments. Being the only french cook in my department has been fantastic in gaining skills applying french cooking to new audiences, as well as learning enough about chinese and german cooking that I can really see the similarities and differences when I look at the big picture. I can also say that I'm a capable chef in 3-5 different nationalities cooking styles when I apply for jobs, and that's an advantage that I can't overstate (to echo Crucial above). In addition, it's important to remember that as a PhD in, say, cooking, if you go into academia you should really be able to teach undergraduate to basic graduate courses in any subspecialty of cooking, and your coursework should reflect that. Similarly, when you apply for jobs, funding, go to seminars and conferences, you'll be largely talking to chefs from all over the world, the majority of whom have the same passing knowledge of French cuisine that you will have of their work. Accordingly, learning how to function in a "multinational" cooking school now will set you up exceptionally well for any future you want to have in that discipline. On an unrelated tangent, I think sub-cuisines of cooking need to become the new standard to replace basket weaving. It's way more versatile of a metaphor.

I've been told by some mentors that when you've reached the point of complete disinterest in your research, you start research alternate careers, and you're advisor and lab mates seem to do nothing but frustrate you, it's a great indication that the time has come to graduate and move on.

I think especially given that you are not planning on this being a long-term relationship (i.e., you don't plan on them being your thesis advisor), I'd just let it go. My experience has been that the PI will likely be the corresponding author, not you- is that correct for this manuscript? I have had friend who have been in the position of either staying quiet or asking to have their names removed from the paper, and neither is a good option to have. In your case, I think the issue is a lot less egregious than theirs were with respect to research ethics, so I'd just let their interpretation as last and corresponding author stand, as they're the ones who will have to defend it primarily.

Just to weigh in, for biomedical sciences/chemistry/biology it's common for the first author to have little say in the final content of the paper. The PI is always last, and everyone considers them ultimately responsible for the content. They are also likely the ones making the final submission and the final call in the conclusions the paper and data draw.

No ranking done by USNWR is really worth anything in regards to grad school. Rankings as a whole are a horrible way to judge, and NEC rankings are the only ones I'd consider remotely sound.

Your boss, the person who pays you, asking you to do a task related to that job, has nothing to do with disrespect.

Just to be clear, it hasn't been the case that a PhD in most fields would reward you with a stable, financially sound job for probably the last 30-40 years, likely even longer than that. This isn't anything new. In many fields, the chances of getting a TT job are more like winning the lottery, and even in the better fields, the chances of getting a TT job are probably around 10-20%, maybe a bit more if you include CC jobs, but a lot of people who wanted a PhD don't necessarily want the low salary and lack of research opportunities that come with teaching at a 4 year comprehensive, CC or SLAC. To be honest, there's never really been a time in the vast majority of fields that you shouldn't have a plan B (and C and D and probably E & F too) before getting any degree- BS, MS or PhD. All of the above degrees are costly ether in opportunity cost, deferred income, or time and stress. And none of them guarantee a job on graduation unless you're exceptionally competitive and have skills outside of the degree itself to offer. This isn't to argue that the degree(s) aren't worth it, they can be immensely valuable personally if you like what you're doing, and most graduate programs are fully funded, so while there's an opportunity cost in deferred earnings, you aren't actually losing money. They're just not usually worth it for actually getting a job.

I think at this point I'd let it be. What you've set up isn't really a "mentor" relationship, but just some help on a specific problem- you gave it, and now they need time to look over it. If this was someone you'd been mentoring for a longer time, or been more involved with mentoring outside the fellowship application, it might be appropriate to check in on them and see if everything was going OK.

Pedagogically speaking, you're *supposed* to give points for correct portions of the answer, rather than taking away for missing portions. The idea is that if you take points away from some total, you're starting from the baseline assumption that everyone has 100 points, and you're taking them away. Alternatively, if you give points for correct work, it fits with students earning the points they are given for something correct. Just to be clear, a technically correct but incomplete answer isn't really a "right" answer. The problem seems to not be the fact that he's grading "correctly", but rather that he's not being clear about what he wants. From what you've said here, I'm not exactly sure what you want to bring up to your advisor? It sounds like you guys aren't used to a different teaching style, and don't know how to adjust? Have you talked to the teacher about it? If you have more concrete complaints (the material on the test didn't match the lectures, his lectures were disorganized/didn't cover the material well/his questions were unclear), then by all means tell your professor. But keep in mind you are also likely playing into a power struggle between a new TT faculty member and a tenured faculty member teaching the same class, and that can be a really awkward position to be in.

I would strongly advise against telling the person who is paying your salary that they are giving you "extra work" that they should be doing themselves. Part of an RA (assuming you're an RA) or working for a PI, is that you work for them. Having them delegate papers for review to you isn't against some unwritten code of ethics, it's pretty common, and it's generally assumed to be a good thing for the grad student. If you, as one of the junior grad students in my group (or department) came to me with something like this, I'd tell you that it's part of grad school, it's great experience, and the fact that you're so upset about it might indicate you should think a bit about why you're in grad school, and what you want your PhD to look like. I'm not really sure why you're so frustrated with it- you'd normally be reading 10-20 papers a week anyway, in your area, to keep up with your field, now you're just adding another 1 or 2 that have not yet been printed? It takes about an hour to read and review most manuscripts in Chemistry, and that's assuming you need to check up on their references and re-analyze some of their data to see if it fits. And since you haven't seen what your professor is actually submitting, it's just a hunch on your part that he's copying your work without any attribution or modifications. There's also just as much of a chance that he's getting you to comment on the paper because it's good practice for you, then comparing your comments with his to see if you noted anything he missed. If you feel strongly enough that you would send that PI an e-mail asking him to stop, I would suggest looking for another group, as I would consider that email to deteriorate the relationship past recovery if it's not there already.