mockturtle

Basically, (one) introductory formula for one of these essays is "The position stated in the question is correct/incorrect because of X and Y. Now let me expand upon that slightly with my own argument, Z." So, "Governments should not provide financial support to cities for cultural reasons, both because governmental support is an inefficient way to preserve culture and because, in fact, rural areas preserve more of a nation's common culture. Cities and rural areas are both integral parts of the nation, but because cities are more exposed to change, rural areas preserve more common culture."
Then you give one body paragraph to supporting X, another to supporting Y, and in the conclusion wrap it up by, if possible, returning to a brief mention of Z.
 
This is but one formula, but I've always found that having my introduction be exactly two thoughts long, and usually two sentences long, worked for me. So: Claim is correct/incorrect because of Reason 1 and Reason 2. From this we can see that My Argument is the correct interpretation.

I'm pretty sure if I had initially mentioned organic, gluten-free or paleo diets, your responses would have been quite different. This stems from the idea that our society as a whole is under the impression that we not allowed to criticize religion, that doing so is taboo, that it is perfectly fine for it to be inaccessible to scrutiny from thinking folks. As I've made it obvious, I don't think this is right. In fact, as a society, i think we need to be criticizing it much more than it is currently being done, just like we need to pay attention and be critical of our governments, politicians, domestic policies and foreign relations. It doesn't matter if a religious diet is healthy overall, there are nonreligious diets that are healthy too, what matters is that there is always a differential between the two regarding how often they are criticized and the types of responses to said criticisms, and I'll leave it at that.

I don't think the car is a suitable comparative base. Cars are made by humans, and experimental work has been done to determine the kinds of fuels that are best for different cars. We know how cars work, we know they are real and humans are real. This doesn't translate when it comes to the existence of a god. Organized religion is potentially dangerous because it has the power to enslave the people with its propaganda by telling them what they are supposed to believe, and uses dietary laws as one of the tools to achieve this goal. What baffles me is that the masses are so quick to criticize diets when GMOs or gluten are involved yet it seems nobody says a thing to criticize diets when religion is involved.

And this is why I don't call myself an atheist in public.

Ok. Thanks...I guess?

I am a foodie. I enjoy cooking and trying all different kinds of foods, and one of my biggest pet peeves is diets that are not based on logic and reason but are based on religion (kosher, halal, no meat on fridays etc). I understand someone not wanting to eat something because of animal welfare, not enjoying the taste, or an allergy..but never eating something because some book says "no"? Come on.

sir, I respect that you were angry but i would hope that you can at least understand where I was coming from. 
 
You blatantly disrespected other PhD programs which you felt were inferior, and you made it clear that you conisder a PhD worthwhile simply so that you can claim the title "doctor". Further, this is almost not worthwhile in your mind because you will be making ~60,000 annually, and what a joke that is. 
 
Frankly, I do not think you would say these things (even in a rant) if you did not feel this way deep down in your heart. 
 
I am being judgemental, but I think that you care too much about your father's career. Multiple times you mention your successful, fulfilling career before studying psychology and deciding to pursue a PhD (which you then bashed). Furthermore, you mention your father multiple times as being a reason why you "should have a PhD". These are the reasons I said I do not feel you have the conviction. I do not find it funny.
 
I feel that in times of anger, our true feelings can emerge.
perhaps I am incorrect in your case. I hope that you live a fulfilling life with whatever you choose. 
 
p.s. don't let your father define you!

I just downloaded GRE vocab apps for my phone and turned those into a habitual method of study. My favorite was the Magoosh app, which separates words into different decks and has them appear with a specific frequency based on how well you seem to know them. I would just run through vocab for ~10 minutes at a time several times a day (waiting in line/on the bus, eating a snack, bored in class.. etc). A few weeks after having finished a particular deck I'd go through it again and refresh. My GRE course over the summer taught that the best way to learn vocab is either contextually (reading The Economist is a great idea.. wish I'd thought of it last semester) or in short, frequent bursts, rather than, say, hour long sessions.

I don't mean to defend standardized test questions but I just can't help but defend "math" when its applications are questioned Sorry, but here goes:
 
Cubic roots (or basically, just the concept of inverting the "something times itself 3 times") is useful to estimate volumes, since volumes are something like Length x Width x Height. So if you have a container that you're told is 1000 cubic feet, you might not be able to visualize that easily. But if you know the cube root of 1000 is 10 (since 10x10x10 = 1000) then you know that 1000 cubic feet is a cube that is 10 feet on each side. 
 
Also, for this GRE question, you are not really being tested on what a cubic root is. I think the real skill being tested is the "in between estimation" logic I wrote above. Cubic roots are just something complex enough that you can't just figure out the cubic root of 87 in your head, and therefore must find two answers that you do know (cubic root of 64=4 and cubic root of 125=5) in order to estimate that the real answer is between 4 and 5. Guessing the answer to a complex problem by placing in between 2 previously known (or easier to find) answers is a useful skill in both life and quantitative research!
 
Okay, rant over, sorry for any inconvenience! 

I took the GRE last week and scored a decent 330(V-162+Q-168,AWA-5.5). I know it took me a very long time to write this debrief, but I had to focus on other work immediately after the GRE. 
I thought that I must share my experience in the hope that it will serve to benefit others in whatever small possible way. 

How long I studied?
I studied a total of 4 months out of which the first month was on and off studying and the last month was focused prep. Studied around 2-3 hours on weekdays and 4-5 hours on weekends.

What Material I used?
1. ETS OG: Do I really have to talk about its importance. It’s a must have book for your GRE prep
2. Manhattan 5 lbs books- Comes with 6 practice tests that are worth taking apart from a number of practice questions that you will get in the GRE book.
3. GRE Verbal Grail: Since Verbal of GRE requires you to prepare with a focused approach, it is very helpful. Around 300 practice questions are there and  theory for RC is very good.
4. The 45-day GRE Vocab Book: One vocab practice lesson every day is the way to go. I did one new lesson every day and revised what I have done in the past. Finished it in dot 45 days.

Section Specific Tips:
RC: This section is the most difficult to improve. I think what helped me was I read at least a couple of articles from NYTimes, Economist, Atlantic etc. each day for three months leading up to the exam. Also, like I mentioned, I did OG GRE RC passages too. They tend to be more difficult but will provide you excellent practice.
Moreover, I think vocabulary is really important. Your command over vocab will go long way in improving your comprehension. For instance, if you run into words such as totalitarian, right/left wing and you know the meaning of those words you will instantly know what the author is going for. I would highly recommend you create your own wordlist of tough words from OG passages on quizlet. I never take notes for RC. I think it is a waste of time.
What I do instead is – read the first paragraph and first couple of lines of each paragraph and skim through the rest. Once I’m finished reading I go back to passages only for specific details questions that too only to cross check my answer. I think this strategy saved a lot of time.I essentially treat CR as mini RC. I read the passage really carefully and use Process Of Elimination to get at a right choice. Especially if you are at 99%ile POE will be immensely helpful for those tough passages. 

Vocab: This section is the easiest to improve. Initially I never timed myself. Instead I gave myself ample time to understand why a particular choice was right/wrong. I spent insane amount of time on learning from questions I got wrong.  
 
Microstrategy: I never try to anticipate a correct answer. Why waste your time and energy anticipating a correct answer when GRE gives choices? There are thousands of ways in which you can correct a wrong sentence. Are we going to run all those scenarios w/o reading the answer choices? I think it is just inefficient use of your time. 

Food, Exercise, and Sleep: 
Food- We all have our own unique bio-chemical identities i.e. we all know what foods give us sustained release of energy w/o making us full. I think it is best to avoid processed food, caffeine (red bull), processed sugar during the exam. I carried simple food with me for exam. 

Exercise: There is tremendous body of evidence suggesting benefits of exercise on brain function. I almost never missed daily 30 min brisk walks. I used to listen to wordlist or math tables during those 30 min.

Sleep: I think data on positive effect of sleep on brain function is quite conclusive too. Here is a great TED talk on neuroscience of sleep http://www.ted.com/talks/russell_foster_why_do_we_sleep if you are still not convinced. Consequently, I never cheated on sleep during my months of prep, however tempted I was. I’d highly recommend a 9-10 hours of sleep before the exam day. 

It is a long post so thanks for reading. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have for me. Good Luck!

The part that bothers me here about the professor's actions, and the reactions here, is that there are a lot of possible repercussions for the student here after this. If the partner is censured in some way, that can cause problems between the professor and the student, and potentially other professors and the student. If something like this happened to me in my current program, where most of the faculty is social with each other, and spouses and partners often attend events, I'm not sure I would want to continue in my program.
 
Did the professor have to apologize? Of course not. No one ever HAS to apologize for anything, especially if it wasn't something they did directly, but that isn't the point here. The point is that the OP was assaulted (again, lets be clear that that is what occurred) and publicly humiliated by a faculty member's partner. There was no prior interaction with the boyfriend, so the only connection between the two parties is the professor. I can't imagine a world with the professor would honestly believe that she didn't contribute to his action in some way (either directly, or with inciting speech), and the fact that she's completely ignored the event makes her even more guilty, imo.
 
Quick criminal lesson, as I understand it: If I say "Man, someone should shoot Richard Nixon, he's going to ruin America" in front of a crowd and no one does anything, that's problematic, but not really illegal. If I say "You should shoot Richard Nixon for me" to my brother and then he does it, it's solicitation. If I spend 30 minutes talking about everything wrong with Nixon in front of a crowd and why he should die, then one of them shoots Nixon, the courts would probably rule that as incitement.
 
What the prof did here is either solicitation or incitement, by my reading.

I agree, Crafter. The student-professor relationship changes everything. There's such a power difference, and now that the student fears for her safety? I can't imagine. What happens if the OP has to take a class with the professor? Or at departmental events in which families are welcomed? What if the professor serves on the OP's committee, and the OP needs approval or a signature for her dissertation? Our careers depend very much on our professors. I can't put myself in this professor's shoes, as if my husband did anything like this, we'd be in divorce court the next day.

Does anyone read Ask a Manager? Gah I love that blog. Last week, someone wrote in about her boss's husband verbally abusing her on the phone. There was no question that this was inappropriate. OP, you may want to dig up that post (I'd do it for you, but I'm on my phone). There was some advice and lots of support in Allison's response and the comment section.

The professor sat and watched her boyfriend majorly harass OP and has a history of major student complaints so its a bit deeper than just expecting an apology.
 
OP, I hope you are able to sort this out and have much better advisors/colleagues in the future!

I did not read the original post, but I can say that it sort of bothers me that many people here are talking about how the professor is not responsible for the acts of her boyfriend. Certainly she is not, but let's not forget she is THE PROFESSOR and her boyfriend just assaulted HER STUDENT.
 
She should have stopped her boyfriend's actions immediately. It would have been nice to have an apology right there, but even a late, email apology to the student was the professional and right thing to do.
 
She, as a figure of authority in the whole situation, should have been the one worried the most about the acts of her boyfriend to one of her students.
 
I wonder what the school and the people in this thread who dismissed what happened to the OP if the case were "A professor and her boyfriend where having fun at a bar and suddenly, a student (the OP) insulted and dumped water to the professor's boyfriend". Sure, it was not a fight on campus, sure the attack was not to the professor, but I bet that everybody would be on the OPs case for doing that.
 
Moreover, if the OP after being assaulted had, as a reaction to the slander, kicked the professor's boyfriend in the balls. What the school and the people who has dismissed this awful event would say?
 
The OP posted a bad situation that happened to him/her hoping for some support and what he/she finds is a bunch of lawyer-like comments, dismissing what happened because the professor did not directly engaged in the slander (but permitted it and did not show any sign of shame or regret for doing so).
 
Granted, the OP needs to learn how to couple with negative feedback and bad advise (the whole Title IX was totally out of place, and the OP fell in the trap). But I felt that some posters here were just expecting the moments when the OP dropped the ball to attack her and cast a shadow of doubt in her account.
 
This is the  internet, people posts things anonymously all the time and we decide what to believe and what not to believe. But in this kind of forums, for the sake of the functionality and purpose of the site, we need to take the member's posts as true and offer advise accordingly. We do not know what has been left out or not, but can't just assume the worst.
 
When someone posts that his/her GPA is 3.9 and has 2 published papers (in the infamous what are my chances threads) we all assume this is the truth. Why not believe what the OP of this thread said too? This is not a place to set what is true and what is not and if the OP is lying or not about something, it is just about offering the best response to someone asking a question. What the person asking decides to do is up to him/her.
 
That being said, I would definitely recommend the OP to talk about what happened to the Professor AND the Dean. Maybe nothing will happen, but at least the professor is not left with a free lunch (of roasted student with chips on the side) and thinking that she can have her boyfriend to do her dirty jobs to students.

I agree 100% with bhr. I am actually shocked at how negative some of the responses have been towards the OP. Not just negative, but dismissive, and actually kind of blaming/shaming the OP (as that is how it comes across to me).
 
Clearly the professor is involved to an extent, especially since she was present when it occurred and is maintaining silence. 
If it is possible would you be able to talk to the professor first? (If you choose to, make sure it is over a format like email so you have records, and be careful with your wording).
Otherwise, finding the correct channels at your university to report this is a good next step. 
 
OP, I hope you can get this resolved and regain a peace of mind. 
 
 
*Edited: As a side note, I did read the original post before it was deleted. 

I'm just going to say that the moderators have been real jerks to the OP on this thread. She came on here seeking advice after a really disturbing attack (that's what it was) from someone affiliated with a faculty member, and not only have you been dismissive, but you've 1) accused her of blowing things out of proportion 2) suggested she's a serial complainer/overreactor 3) suggested that her personal well-being is somehow less important than a professor's career.
 
You accuse her of ginning up a Kipnis style complaint, but your comments remind me of why I thought Kipnis was so off-base with her initial article. A professor has a sexual relationship with a student, and when they end, if a student feels that they were taken advantage of due to the power imbalance, they are often counseled to consider the ramifications of their actions on the professors career. "Oh, you don't want him to get fired over this" or "you were a willing participant" or "maybe you read action x wrong". It's terrible advice, and less than what I expect to see from you.
 
No, the school can't punish the professor's partner over an action that took place outside of an organized campus event, but to think that his action occurred in a vacuum, without any input from the professor herself, is ridiculous. If nothing else, the professor should have apologized to the student and taken actions to remedy any trauma, as there is no question that an act like that could have a chilling effect on a student's participation with faculty.
 
I think I've been a valuable contributor in my time here, but, if this is how the moderators and staff treat someone, I think I'm going to be ending my time on this site.

I read your post yesterday before it was deleted. I think you should take some sort of action. The situation you describe was absolutely inappropriate. I think others make good points that the issue is more with the boyfriend than with the professor so you will probably have to take action against him instead of the professor. 
 
Stepping away from legal details of who gets in trouble (which will likely be the boyfriend), I do think that the professor acted completely inappropriately and am shocked that so many people are blowing it off as no big deal. There was obviously something extreme said about the OP to inspire that sort of behavior from her boyfriend. I also think that the PI has an obligation to her students to not let her boyfriend harass them. In fact, at my school professors are by university policies required to report any known harassment issues involving their students. Not only did the professor not adhere to this kind of behavior, she witnessed it (and very likely played a role in instigating it). This is absolutely inappropriate behavior. I do not think you owe this professor any sort of protection. You simply reporting the incident is not going to result in problems for the professor unless the school agrees that there is a misconduct issue. You can simply make the facts known and the university can decide how they want to handle the situation. If the professor gets in trouble then you are not the reason. You are simply stating facts and the university can then decide whether they want this person mentoring students given the facts.
 
Anyway, didn't the whole incident start because this professor has a history of problems with students?? It sounds to me like you are not the first student to have problems with her.

Yes, fuzzy logician, this is an open forum, and I have been down voting your posts because I find them particularly unhelpful. If you were not the one to mention Northwestern, I apologize. It must have been someone else. However, you did tell me that I seemed like I was probably someone who often misinterprets my professors actions, which I think was an unreasonable assumption to make. It did make it sound like you were trying to use my past experience with a harassment complaint to undermine my credibly, which sounded to me like victim-blaming. Also, I was annoyed by the assumption that "experience" with a harassment complaint automatically indicated to you that I was the one who had filed the complaint, that the complaint was deemed unfounded, and that I lodged the complaint against a professor. (In actuality, I assisted in the investigation of a complaint made by several classmates against another graduate student, and the result of the investigation was that the student was expelled.)
 
Thank you to all who have offered helpful comments, though.

Replicability/reproducibility is becoming more talked about in psychology, yes, but not more prestigious - at least in my experience. APS, especially, has spent a lot of time discussing what steps we should take in replicating research, like the registration of data you mentioned, spunky. But there's no reward in it, and that's the rub. Early career scholars need publications in order to get TT jobs and replications are difficult to publish and to convincingly talk about in job talks. Tenure-track scholars need publications for tenure, and the same issues come up there. And tenured scholars aren't going to be spending their time on replicating experiments. Some of them are still interested in promotion, and some of them have to fund significant portions of their salaries on grants, and the NIH and NSF aren't funding huge replication grants most of the time.
 
I think LaCour's story is an interesting entry in current rumbling conversations about academia and the need for reform in the field. I think LaCour lied because he's a lying liar, and the subsequent questions about his dissertation data, other papers he's published, and some awards and grants on his CV pretty much support that. But it does raise some questions about the pressures on young scholars, especially those at high-flying programs. I went to a top 10 program in my field and the pressure and expectation is very much on for you to get an elite R1 job just like the university you came from. It's so unrealistic and stupid - there aren't enough of those jobs to go around, and it's not like they really prepare you for that eventuality anyway. But it's also ridiculous! We hired 3 assistant professors in the time I was in my department, and I got to see the CVs of the finalists they invited to campus (we typically invited 5 instead of 3; don't know why). These people obviously never slept. As graduate students, postdocs, and assistant professors with less than two years of experience, they had 15-25 publications (that's a lot for my field at this early stage), grants, and teaching experience, plus awards. The one guy who had 10 pubs (which is still a lot for a grad student) had a first-authored publication in Science. But they all had some splashy, sexy area of research. None of them were doing replications of other people's work, or anything close.
 
Most people when confronted with the pressure wouldn't completely make up a study and fake some data, so LaCour's on his own. But when p = .06 means the difference between another first-authored publications and years of work wasted...yeah, I think a lot of people massage that data to get it down to p < .05 (which is generally the threshold for statistical significance, and by extension a publishable paper, in psychology). When you want the brass ring of a job at a top R1, or some new grant funding, or tenure - or all of those things - yeah, I think some shady things go down, and I think a large number of scientists probably do those shady things.
 
I don’t think researchers have a duty to verify the papers we cite. First of all, that’s an enormous undertaking - how could I ever? You have to trust that the majority of people are telling the truth (mostly) and that the journals have done their job in peer review. Even in peer review, reviewers aren’t paid - so it’s not like they have time to re-run study results. Journals have to take it on faith that authors are not making up their data and analyses from whole cloth, until we get to the point that we’re banking data on a regular basis. Collaborators are a different story, though. If you’re going to put your name on a paper, you should verify that the results in the paper are correct and valid. That’s why I have disdain for this famous Columbia professor who’s trying to distance himself from the whole thing and put the blame on LaCour. Yes, LaCour bears the most responsibility, but each author on a paper is responsible for the paper as a whole.
 
Would I turn in a fellow grad student? It depends on the extent of my knowledge and what they were doing. If I knew for a fact that they were making up data and I could prove it, and we worked for the same PI or they worked for a PI I felt comfortable with, then yes, I might say something. Otherwise…probably not.

The overall lack of structure and uncertainty that lies beyond the second year.  Experimental setbacks, publication rejections, harsh (at times) criticisms, no clear benchmarks for success, and increasingly looser guidance as you progress.  Kind of like walking through fog that thickens before it clears.  That said, it certainly toughens you up.

Similar to the negative ones listed so far, most grad students seem to have very limited interest in any fun social events/hobbies and just define themselves solely by their work, which is depressing.  Also most people try to avoid teaching work, when I find it one of the most rewarding parts of being a graduate student.
 
I'm also surprised how easy grad school is.  All of the classes seem to be less rigorous versions of classes I took as an undergraduate.  Then again, a lot of my free time comes from the fact that I'm not very invested in research (ultimately the reason I'm leaving with a master instead of staying for a PhD)

Just how much time I am giving up.  I haven't seen my close friends in forever, and I just spend time studying and reading stuff and doing papers.  I suck at time management and I try to just balance going on dates, and writing papers and doing homework.  This semester has been really bad for me I haven't read anything lol I just kind of go with it. Other than that I wasn't surprised by much.  I think I went into grad school with a undergrad mentality, I thought it would be a ton of parties and mingling with people and having fun.... It's not.  People literally just want to do a bunch of work and be boring, everyone is married or in relationships... Basically grad school kind of sucks, don't do it if you don't absolutely have to! It sucks to watch all your friends do fun things with their lives like travel, go to Marti Gras, move to new states, have babies, get married, buy new cars, and just do FUN stuff and you are writing a paper about something that you will likely never use again.  I love grad school, I love what I am doing but I wish my life was more fun than it is. 

Well unfortunately these are not often things you do consciously or that you can actually influence. But, for example, the paper topics you have in your first year and second year seminars will probably determine to some significant extent what your qualifying papers and ultimately dissertation will be about. The people you choose to talk to will inform the theories you will think about. Some of this will be determined by the topics the particular instructors you had in your intro courses chose to cover in the particular year you took the class (and topics and instructors change from year to year) and who was accessible and available to advise you on these projects when you were just starting out. Not to mention the school you chose over other acceptances you didn't take when choosing grad schools. The luck of the draw will determine that some abstract will get into a conference and another might not, and you might pursue the one that was accepted at the expense of the one that wasn't. You might study language X for your field methods class, but if you'd done it the year before/after you'd have studied language Y, and the project that would come out of it would be very different. A lot of projects come out of work in these field methods classes, sometimes leading to whole dissertations and research programs. Same for experimental methodologies - you need to decide very early that you want to be trained in that, and have the luck of having the right courses offered at the right time, and the right advisor being around and available (for example, not on sabbatical or busy with a sick family member), and even the right research question that is amenable to being asked experimentally using the tools you have available. 
 
In the 1-2-3 year most people are not in a position to articulate their research program -- which is ok and makes sense, because to a large extent that is determined by your research experiences. But by the time you get to 4-5 year and go on the job market, there is not too much you can do to "invent" parts of your profile that don't exist but you wish were there. Not too many advisors will actually have a conversation with you once in a while about how your profile as a scientist is developing (and a lot of people may not want that or may be too intimidated) but as it turns out, my profile now as a 1st year postdoc is determined almost exclusively by what I've done in grad school, which in turn was determined to a very large extent by accidents of topics and instructors that happened in my first year. That determines to a large degree the broader research questions I can formulate that encompass (most of) my previous work and the work I want to do in the future (or at least, the work I tell hiring committees on job interviews that I want to do). 
 
This all said, I am of the firm belief that although my research might have been very different had I gone to a different school or had a different independent study advisor in my first year, or if I had not stumbled onto experimental work, etc., it would have been just as good. My character is my character and my abilities are my abilities, so my productivity would have been similar, just that the actual papers and topics (and methodologies, languages of interest, etc) would be different. I think it would have been good either way, just.. different in ways I can't imagine, which is what I mean when I say that early choice points lead to very different possible outcomes.

A Battle Royale with cheese

I'm unclear as to what your issue with Caitlyn Jenner is Crucial BBQ. It's the fact that she's using her platform to raise awareness? Is it that she didn't do it sooner (I mean how dare she not go through her personal journey at a faster rate?)?  that it's been a major news story for a few months? 
 
BTW- please use correct pronouns and call her by her name, which is Caitlyn. Also, it's not transgendered. It's not a verb. Use trans or transgender to show respect.