Eigen

See, personally, I feel that working on one task (school) for more than a certain amount per week (usually around 50 hours or so, depending) has severely diminishing returns. 
 
Keeping other interests in life, relationships and leisure activities gives your brain time to work on different tasks, or have downtime, and you usually end up better for it- your research and studies as well, in my opinion. 
 
That's not to say that there aren't crunch times where you have to work more, but my anecdotal experience is that people working more than 50 or 60 hours a week are usually less efficient than those working less, and tend to spend more time on tasks that could be finished in less. Most European researchers, I've found, are very dedicated at working a short, highly productive week. They get in, take the job seriously, work 8 hours, and then clock out and do something else. It makes their working time more productive, and limits burnout. 
 
You may think that you're the kind of person that avoids burnout, but I have not yet met someone who isn't susceptible to it in some way- you may just be less productive, you may miss connections that you'd otherwise see in your work, or you may just not have as good of a perspective of how your work fits in the broader scheme of things. 
 
There are a lot of discussions on the inter webs about work-life balance, and I have yet to see any convincing data that focussing on your work to the exclusion of all else in your life is ever beneficial, and there are lots of suggestions that it's actually detrimental, both to the quality of your life and the quality of your work. 

20-30 articles sounds like very few for a dissertation. I wrote a review article last year, for which I probably read over 200.

Keep in mind that you'll read a lot of articles that you won't include in the actual discussion, but will help keep it in perspective.

I'll also disagree that you should cite something just because it is cited a lot- if it's relevant to what you're writing, cite it. If you think it's a central concept, cite it. If it's by a central figure in the field, cite it.

I personally like to start a literature review by looking for recent review articles in the field- something that will give me a starting place. Then I track down each of the cited articles in that central review, and keep and reads the ones that I think are relevant. Then I track down the references from each of those articles, etc. After I've gotten a good body of related work through citation trees, I usually have a good enough feel for the field that I can start running keyword-type searches to find articles that fill in the gaps in what I have or to branch out into new areas.

For actually placing the literature review, I like the "by subject, by chronology" organizational scheme. I divide up the subfield I'm writing on into the major parts, and then review the major developments within each of those parts in a chronological fashion, expalining how it built from one itteration to another.

Sounds like a difficult situation to be in. 
 
I would definitely use it as a learning experience for a few things in grad school, though: 
 
1) Rarely, if ever, are graduate advisors responsible for informing you of degree deadlines. Most of them don't know when they are. 
2) Having to track down your advisor is often a way of life. Your work is way more important to you than it is to them, and it's up to you to make sure you're getting what you need from them to keep going. 
3) You can't let harsh criticism on a paper keep you from working on it for 5 months. I've gotten scathing critiques from reviewers, faculty, etc. It's part of academic life. 
4) Degrees often take longer than they should. I know a lot of 3rd & 4th years MS students, because their thesis research just wasn't working out like it should, or as fast as it should. 
 
Good luck finishing up the Thesis this summer!

The irony of that string of uncapitalized text speak in a thread about grading writing assignments just strikes me as hilarious.

You don't mention your discipline, so this may be off base. 
 
But in the sciences, you are largely being paid to forward the goals of the PI and the lab, and being asked to help with another students project is absolutely par for the course. 
 
It would not at all be considered blackmail to get the sort of email you cite in any lab I'm familiar with, it would be considered a reprimand to a graduate student who's not living up to the expectations of the PI and department. 
 
The latter part, the request that you spend at least a few hours in lab every afternoon is also worrying to me, as most PIs would expect (in a discipline with labs) that you're in at least a normal 40 hours a week, either working on your projects or helping with general lab upkeep and maintenance/training junior graduate students/helping with other projects. 
 
Is it perhaps possible that there's a rift in understanding between you and your professor about exactly what is expected of a PhD student?

Good compilation of advice from early career faculty to new grad students. @Gradslack compiled the questions and asked them to the @NewPi_Slack community via Twitter, then compiled the answers. 
Nice range of topics from keeping up with literature, preparation for becoming a PI, and the perennial favorite of dealing with imposter syndrome  
https://gradstudentslack.wordpress.com/blog/

I would be strongly interested to see what you are basing this on. Not having a LoR from your advisor or second reader from your MA will be a huge, huge red flag in any application. 
 
 
The bolded part worries me. A PhD program, and the rest of your academic life beyond that, are likely going to be high anxiety environments. They're kind of known for being anxiety inducing. 
 
The conditions you mention (non-directive advisor, personal problems) seem to be things that are likely to exist in a PhD program. I would say more PhD advisors in the humanities are hands-off than not. Most of my friends have advisors that pretty much sound like your MA advisor. And from what I gather, you've made progress on your personal problems, but that doesn't mean you won't be working through them, or similar issues, in the next 7-10 years. 
 
To build on St. Andrew's post, what you will do in an idealized scenario isn't what matters, it's what you will be able to accomplish in amongst all the pressures and stresses of a busy and packed academic environment. It's what you can do when you have 15 hours of work that need to be done every day, and 10 hours to do them in. Succeeding in a graduate program, and then in a TT position, is about time and stress management as much as it is about the scholarship. I don't know a single person who isn't heavily overloaded. 

Getting an MA when leaving is pretty standard. 
It’s not surprising that the requirements are different than for getting one as part of your PhD. 
As to the summer funding... if the advisor had grant money and was willing to pay, that’s not program favoritism. It’s their money, and they think this is a worthwhile expenditure. 
Many things in grad school (and after) are about networking and convincing people that you need or deserve funding for things. Some people are better at selling themselves and their work than others. 
Take this as a learning experience to advocate for yourself. It might be that you could have gotten your advisor to hire you for the summer, or gotten your MA the same way. Did you ask?

Most of what makes research valuable is not the field/subfield specific nature- it’s learning how to take a project through a longer time period to see ups and downs. That’s usually more about depth (sticking with one area) than breadth. 
You can pick up new techniques pretty fast in a new lab in grad school, most profs don’t care as much about the specific skills (one assay or a type of instrument) as they do a long period of in depth work in a research environment. 

Most of what makes research valuable is not the field/subfield specific nature- it’s learning how to take a project through a longer time period to see ups and downs. That’s usually more about depth (sticking with one area) than breadth. 
You can pick up new techniques pretty fast in a new lab in grad school, most profs don’t care as much about the specific skills (one assay or a type of instrument) as they do a long period of in depth work in a research environment. 

Most of what makes research valuable is not the field/subfield specific nature- it’s learning how to take a project through a longer time period to see ups and downs. That’s usually more about depth (sticking with one area) than breadth. 
You can pick up new techniques pretty fast in a new lab in grad school, most profs don’t care as much about the specific skills (one assay or a type of instrument) as they do a long period of in depth work in a research environment. 

Honestly, only some of this needs to be done before you apply. 
You don't need to know all of the faculty are taking students/have funding when you apply, just before you accept an offer. 
And if you take out those parts, it's easier to contact faculty without "over-selling" you wanting to join just their lab. 
Then you can send a more general email as a student who will be applying, and is reading out to faculty who they have particular interest in. 
My personal advice is... Don't contact someone unless you have specific and relevant questions to ask them.
Ask about possible directions for their work- something like "I'm really interested in the work you did in X paper 2 years ago, and was wondering if you have plans to pursue Y direction?"
You can include some things about yourself and your background as you ask these questions, which comes across less pushy than an overt "sell". 
If you can get a conversation started, you have more opportunities to sell yourself down the road. 
Keep the first email short and make it have a specific point. 

IMO, what start as an innocent request "hey, can you send me an electronic copy of this" turned into a more serious inquiry when you said you didn't have one. 
If I was the professor, the first thing in my mind would be "well, I didn't think this was plagiarized, but I certainly do now". 

See, personally, I feel that working on one task (school) for more than a certain amount per week (usually around 50 hours or so, depending) has severely diminishing returns. 
 
Keeping other interests in life, relationships and leisure activities gives your brain time to work on different tasks, or have downtime, and you usually end up better for it- your research and studies as well, in my opinion. 
 
That's not to say that there aren't crunch times where you have to work more, but my anecdotal experience is that people working more than 50 or 60 hours a week are usually less efficient than those working less, and tend to spend more time on tasks that could be finished in less. Most European researchers, I've found, are very dedicated at working a short, highly productive week. They get in, take the job seriously, work 8 hours, and then clock out and do something else. It makes their working time more productive, and limits burnout. 
 
You may think that you're the kind of person that avoids burnout, but I have not yet met someone who isn't susceptible to it in some way- you may just be less productive, you may miss connections that you'd otherwise see in your work, or you may just not have as good of a perspective of how your work fits in the broader scheme of things. 
 
There are a lot of discussions on the inter webs about work-life balance, and I have yet to see any convincing data that focussing on your work to the exclusion of all else in your life is ever beneficial, and there are lots of suggestions that it's actually detrimental, both to the quality of your life and the quality of your work. 

More than likely, yes. And those won't earn you a livable income, anyway.
From what I know, anyone adjuncting in a law school is usually an experienced practicing lawyer brought in for expertise.
In the other areas you mentioned the job market is so tight that there are going to be dozens to hundreds of people with PhDs willing to adjunct that you're competing against. If you're an exceptional teacher with a good track record, or have connections, it's possible.

This is highly field dependent. Math and languages (for example) fairly commonly have graduate students as the instructors of record, in my experience.

My go to for when I have to write a proposal his Heilmeier's Catechism:
What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice? What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful? Who cares? If you're successful, what difference will it make? What are the risks and the payoffs? How much will it cost? How long will it take? What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success? It comes from a former DARPA director (Heilmeier) and was designed to help both program officers and grant writers think through their proposal. 
Not all questions are applicable to all fields, but I find sitting down and doing a more free-form writing to answer each of the questions helps me get a lot of what I need down for writing a proposal. 

It’s summer, responses are going to be slow. Especially because theres nothing that needs to be done until you’re actually there, it means it’s easy for your requests to drop down on the priority tree. 
Just email again, say you understand things are busy but wanted to check in. 

Definately discipline specific. In chem, our first year is the busiest too... You have to combine research, coursework and teaching. The second year, you're usually dine witn most classes, and are mostly settled in to your lab/research.

I would add that you should do your best to reach out to other students.. Get to know your cohort. If you can bond witn them, they'll be the best support system available to you for the rest of your PhD. Reach out to older students as well... Don't be afraid to ask for help with coursework or research. It's worse to not ask and miss out on a good source of information tha. To look stupid because you didn't know something.

Also realize that everyone in your cohort will have differernt strengths, since you're all coming from different backgrounds. Use that to your advantage! Swap help in one class for help in another.

Keep in mind that grad school is as much about endurance as anything else. Pace yourself! Take time off, take time to go out and make friends/make time for friends. Don't work every evening and every weekend, you'll burn out fast. Grad school is where you start to develop habits that will last for the rest of your academic career... It's closer to life as a professor than undergrad by far, and you need to start looking for a balance that you will maintain for the rest of your life (assuming you want to stay in academics).

See, personally, I feel that working on one task (school) for more than a certain amount per week (usually around 50 hours or so, depending) has severely diminishing returns. 
 
Keeping other interests in life, relationships and leisure activities gives your brain time to work on different tasks, or have downtime, and you usually end up better for it- your research and studies as well, in my opinion. 
 
That's not to say that there aren't crunch times where you have to work more, but my anecdotal experience is that people working more than 50 or 60 hours a week are usually less efficient than those working less, and tend to spend more time on tasks that could be finished in less. Most European researchers, I've found, are very dedicated at working a short, highly productive week. They get in, take the job seriously, work 8 hours, and then clock out and do something else. It makes their working time more productive, and limits burnout. 
 
You may think that you're the kind of person that avoids burnout, but I have not yet met someone who isn't susceptible to it in some way- you may just be less productive, you may miss connections that you'd otherwise see in your work, or you may just not have as good of a perspective of how your work fits in the broader scheme of things. 
 
There are a lot of discussions on the inter webs about work-life balance, and I have yet to see any convincing data that focussing on your work to the exclusion of all else in your life is ever beneficial, and there are lots of suggestions that it's actually detrimental, both to the quality of your life and the quality of your work. 

What I've noticed that tends to give a bad impression in past first year students in our program. Some of these, hopefully most of these, should be really obvious. 
 
Don't focus too much on classes, and not enough on everything else. Courses should be a minor part of what defines you as a graduate student/researcher. When your life revolves around courses, and you spend hours not in the lab because you're "studying" for courses we all know don't need that much study time, it makes you seem like you don't really get what grad school is about. 
 
While it's obvious, act like an adult. Be professional in your interactions with people, own mistakes you've made and move on without too many excuses. Don't be the guy that can't get over the fact that he now knows people who are married/have kids/are in their 30s. 
 
That said, treat your work like a job. You're getting paid to take school seriously and do research. If you show up at 10, go to a class, hit the gym for 2 hours and leave at 3, you likely won't make good impressions. That said, you don't need to make school and your work the entirety of your life. 
 
Along with that, lean how to be at least a little bit social. You don't want to be the new department party animal (well, you might, but that's on you), but you also don't want to be that first year who never does anything social with the department, and leaves all the department functions early/doesn't come. 
 
Don't be too cocky. Sure, you'll hear some of the 4/th/5th/6th year students talk critically about a seminar speaker in their area, or a faculty member deconstruct a colleagues research. That doesn't mean you should always do the same. Don't be the first year who talks about how some of the faculty are deadweight/have bad research/aren't as smart as they are. 

Zillow is pretty decent, in my experience. 

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Honestly, you don't seem to really want to have a discussion. You either call other people's arguments absurd, narrow the field of your arguments so they can't possibly be as much of an expert as you are.... And at the same time want other people to provide sources and then argue that that's an "absurdly high standard of evidence". 
On an academic forum, for a discussion among academics, proper citations and peer-reviewed research with data is pretty much the expected standard of evidence, not "well I've heard" or "I know people who say..."

.....
Honestly, you don't seem to really want to have a discussion. You either call other people's arguments absurd, narrow the field of your arguments so they can't possibly be as much of an expert as you are.... And at the same time want other people to provide sources and then argue that that's an "absurdly high standard of evidence". 
On an academic forum, for a discussion among academics, proper citations and peer-reviewed research with data is pretty much the expected standard of evidence, not "well I've heard" or "I know people who say..."

I think calling those things "masculine qualities" is right at the root of the issues.