Eigen

The internet, especially sites like this, are not anonymous. They're psuedononymous. I've had people from my school get in touch with me about things I've said here, and I'm not being all that obvious. I also know who several people are that post here. It's something that's really good to get accustomed to if you stay in academia- it's not that big of a field. This pops up from time to time on the CHE forums with people posting about interviews and job applications, and having it come out that the admissions committee members are reading that board, or are regulars there. Don't post things on the internet you mind getting associated with you, it's quite simple.

Glad you asked, and glad it worked out. Hope the moving situation works out as well!

My wife and I are leaning towards "If we feel like we reach a time where we can have kids before the possibility of birth defects comes too high, we will." Otherwise, adoption is always a great option- there are a ton of kids out there that need homes, and you can adopt at any age. Or foster. Or, as mentioned, not everyone has to have kids. And in fact, with the issues we have with general overpopulation..... That said, what I've generally heard is that the end of your PhD is the best time to have kids, assuming you've got an understanding PI and a good relationship with them. You should be stable enough that taking a bit longer to write isn't that big of a deal, and then they're a bit older when you're moving for post-docs and jobs.

Actually, I feel like I've been quite clear about saying that we should all pitch in to help one another. I think I've said that in almost every one of my posts. What I don't like is the idea that those with children are in some privileged pool that are more deserving of help than others. Nor do I like the idea that people be "forced" to help. I think it leads to bitterness and discord down the road. If everyone pitches in and helps out, things go more smoothly for everyone. If some people feel like everyone should pitch in to help them out because they so obviously need it, that's not the case. And if we go back to the post (OP) that started the whole discussion, the statement was "I don't see why I couldn't just be swapped with one of the instructors teaching the course I want". That's not asking people to pitch in and help out, that's saying that because the OP has children, she should be swapped out with one of the instructors and they should be given the commute. There was no question of "maybe they have something that makes it hard on them to drive", but a straight up implication of "I have kids, so I shouldn't have to do it and someone else should". Or at least that's how several of us seem to be reading it. Nice strawman in the last post, though.

The assignment is just as inconvenient. The effect on the rest of the lives isn't. What this comes down to is a difference in fundamental opinion- you seem to feel that, so to speak, we, as a culture, should all pitch in to help out those who have kids, because it benefits society as a whole (referring back to some of your earlier points here). That's just not an opinion I share. I think that all to often, it leads to taking a lot of the personal choice out of having kids or not. If I choose not to have children because I feel like I'm too busy at this point in my life to adequately take care of them, and/or to financially stretched to adequately support them, but then I end up subsidizing someone else's time with their children (and, of course, through taxes their care costs) by taking evening/remote TA positions so they don't have to.... Then that takes away a lot of the freedom in my decisions. I think we've hit the "agree to disagree" point in this discussion, personally. You think that those with children as an external responsibility should be put in a special category, and catered to. I don't. I think most of us in grad school are stretched thin enough as it is with our own responsibilities and holding our lives and relationships together without the addition of extra stressors, whether we're single, married and childless or with children. And since you seem to be getting increasingly patronizing with your treatment of childless people (we're apparently sitting on the couch drinking wine watching TV and playing World of Warcraft) relative to those with children (who are apparently doing the thankless and highly regarded task of raising tomorrow's students for us), I don't think this is going to get anymore productive.

If the point values weren't know in advance, definitely ask.

I don't think anyone's objecting to the fact that the department should try to make it so that those with young kids don't spend the day teaching an hour away from home. I think we're objecting to the fact that it would be "OK" to force that TA on someone more senior, who otherwise wouldn't have had to teach it, when it's just as inconvenient to them, just because they don't have kids. Two of my peers have raised kids in grad school, one of them while he was doing his PhD and his wife was doing her post-doc. I've covered for them, but they never would have expected the department to "force" someone else to do something just because they had kids and the other person didn't.

I completely understand the frustration, but don't think it's out of line to have a problem worth that much, depending on the problem. Were the point values not identified/the value of the overall assignment relative to the others? In that case, you might have an argument to make. Otherwise, sorry to hear about the rent situation- but at least you get to move over break rather than the semester! Much less stressful.

In my field, I probably wouldn't say anything for about 3 mos... I know some of the humanities fields are longer, up to 6 mos-1 year, from what I've heard.

See, I feel like you're making a different point now than you were before. The point I get from your early posts is "I shouldn't have to teach this because I have kids". The point I get now is, "Maybe the department can find someone else who would prefer this section, and we can swap to our mutual benefit". The latter seems much less entitled, and like you wouldn't feel like someone without kids should be forced to work the position if they really didn't want it as well, while the former seems to say you don't really care, someone without kids should just take it. Similarly, both you and SSPI seem to (in my mind) be conflating the organization with the individuals. There's a huge difference between people covering for co-workers to help them out, and the administration forcing people to take a position because of their demographics (have children, childless). In the first case, there's always something of a give and take. You help people out, and make friends, and they help you out when you get in a bind. Those of us that are quasi-local do this with experiments for people who live farther way- we'll cover things over the Christmas break so they can go home. Same with swapping to teach an earlier section if they have to take a child to school, etc. But I would be quite upset if I was called into our department chair's office and told I was teaching an early section because I didn't have kids.

Quite honestly, I think this is a perfectly valid question, and I'm not sure why people are being so harsh. If the discussion devolves past a certain point, you can just stop responding or ignore it, but I see no reason not to respond sincerely up until then. There is a stigma, and I think Grad Cafe exists as a place where people can discuss all aspects of grad school, even those they (or we) might not be especially comfortable with. I wouldn't say I have close friendships with any professors of the opposite sex, mostly because the ones I do hang out with are at other universities- either friends that were a few years ahead of me and are now teaching, or people I've met through local professional organization events. Close enough to hang out with occasionally, but not close friends.

I feel like I'm pretty close to my advisor. He's young, and we're quite similar in temperament. He got married about a year after I did, and both of our wives are in the sciences, so there's that similarity as well. I'm not as close to him as I am to my friends within my cohort, and the same I'm sure could be said with him and his friends who are young professors, so I guess it depends on how you define "genuinely close friends".

So you think that, because of a factor that is completely external to your job, you should be given preferential assignment? That you shouldn't have to be the one to drive 90 minutes simply because you have chosen to have children at this stage of your career, but someone else should have to because they haven't? That really doesn't make sense to me.

Oh, I'm not saying that isn't how it happens. I'm saying that isn't how it *should* happen. I know cozying up to the department chair will get you a better TA assignment, a better office, your favorite beer at department seminars, etc. I know childless people end up with the short end of the stick more often than not. But I usually see there being at least some give and take where those with children try to take on some extra responsibilities mid-day when they "have the time". I was commenting that I don't think it's fair when that happens, nor do I think the accommodations should be so one sided. I actually don't see anyone in this thread saying department politics don't happen... Just that they didn't see direct evidence of that happening in the OPs case.

Actually, I'm very aware of how much time parenting takes up. But that's why we've decided not to have kids until we feel like we have the time to take care of them. And I don't know how you would look at someone else getting shuffled into a TA position with a long drive while you get one on the main campus as anything other than someone else covering for you, especially if the only reason it happened is because you have kids. That said, I'm glad to hear the issue was resolved. Also, I wanted to comment on this: In my experience, this is usually counterbalanced by said faculty taking classes at another time. That's a different situation than someone getting to teach a class on campus, and someone else being forced to make the long drive to a satellite campus. Most of our faculty with kids take the early classes, and the childless faculty take evening classes. No one really wants to do either, so it works out well all around. There's a difference between splitting up unpopular tasks to best fit everyone and giving broadly unpopular tasks (long drive) to someone childless over someone with children.

I moved house to house, so I didn't cut anything in the move. That said, I replaced/added hugely to my collection my first semester, including a quasi-permanent section of the university library that stays in my office. We get check outs by 6 mo periods with unlimited renewals, so I've had some books since my first year. I found I updated and replaced a lot of books really quickly, and most of my undergrad books I've either kept for sentimental reasons, or because I might like to teach out of them in the future at some undisclosed time. Out of 3 shelves in my office, only half of one of them has anything I've carried over at this point.

I have to side with Lewin on this. I'm sympathetic to those who have kids and have tough teaching assignments, but there's a difference between being sympathetic and having to take the less-optimal assignments because of them. Children, like many other things you take on in life are a choice. If my wife and I are choosing to spend our time and efforts on something other than having kids, it's not fair to me to have to "cover" for someone else who made the opposite choice. In this case, I shouldn't have to be the one to drive 90 minutes just because I don't have kids and someone else does. And when I have kids, I wouldn't expect someone else to make that drive for me just because I have kids.

Being successful in grad school and academia isn't about being busy or immersed in work all the time, imo. It's about learning how to do well and make consistent progress *without* having it take over your life. Some of that is learning time management, and a lot of it is learning how to say "no" to things you don't absolutely have to do. You're setting the stage for the rest of your career and life here- do you want the rest of your life to be a sleepless, frantic rush? Or do you want to make profess in your research, enjoy teaching, and still have time for your family and hobbies as well?

Oh, I wasn't trying to say that facilities weren't important- they are, at least up to a certain point. I was just pointing out that there are some lower tier schools with very good facilities, at least in targeted areas.

Our grad students get no choice, at all, over what they TA. Even their PI's have almost no say. And the same is true in most departments for teaching loads for faculty- they're largely assigned by the department chair. The only time I've seen anyone successfully get a specific TA is by going and have a sit-down meeting with the department chair, and that was when it was one of his students. And it still only worked 1 out of 3 semesters. It's not politics, it's about logistics. Balancing a large number of people with a large number of responsibilities and fitting them into course slots that work best for everyone, as a whole.

I think a lot of the people who are talking in concrete amounts are in the lab sciences, and we're talking about how much time we're spending working in lab, running experiments, working up data, writing on manuscripts, etc. Or at least, I am. And there is almost nothing I can really do (or want to do) at home. I hate the trend of working at home. It makes me mix up my off-time with my work time in my mind, and I never really switch off. It's much more effective to work on things I could theoretically do at home while experiments are running/things are sterilizing/I'm waiting on data to collect. Then after 9 or 10 hours at the office, I can come home and be *done*.

While generally true, when you're applying to grad school you should be familiar enough with the facilities and research that you can compare. For instance, while my university ranks quite low, we have instrumentation that is among the best in the world in several areas of experimental physical chemistry.

There are distinct field differences too, even within schools. Most people here in the medical school work much more traditional 9-6 hours, with time on weekends as needed to tend to cultures, etc. Grad students working between the two campuses work a lot more, and most of the uptown biomedical grad students work a lot closer to 80+ hour weeks. In contrast, I'd say most of the physical science and engineering students work much more consistently shorter weeks- 40-60 hours, outside of specific crunch times.

To get back to the original question, for a moment: From my understanding, publishing and doing research as an "independent scholar" is very difficult. That said, it's not impossible. I'd highly recommend you check out the Chronicle of Higher Education Forums, there are a few discussions there on access to resources, how to get your name out, getting into conferences, etc. as an independent scholar, and you might find them quite useful. It would also be a much better place to ask about the realities of the publishing market, as a lot of the faculty and researchers there have first hand experience with the process, many of them on both the editorial and author sides of the table. Some particular threads of interest: Independent Scholars Support Thread Independent Scholar- possible?, Writing for a popular audience, and Independent Scholar Label

This thread has jumped topics really quickly, but I want to clarify something that is unclear to me from the series of posts: Did the professor say that she believed this research, and that black people were less intelligent? Or did she bring it up as a point in a broader discussion? You mention that she said it "neutrally" and you also say that she "sort of said that". I'm wondering if your other negative relations with this professor are making you see these comments with a slant that might otherwise not be there. We had a very interesting talk recently that discussed early 20th century scientific writing and the development of medicine and one of the areas discussed was this exact topic, and how pre-existing racial biases slanted the research towards skull size/intelligence issues. Everyone seems to be jumping from the professor "sort of saying" that research existed on this point "in a neutral fashion" to saying that she never should have brought up such an insensitive topic with a black student in the class. I'm not exactly sure I follow that line of thought.