GCool

And yet you're pushing to get a cheap date or knocked up while you're doing your MSW.
 
To quote The Room, the greatest movie of all time: "Keep your stupid comments in your pocket."

Scream that shit. Us HIMYM haters have to unite. That show is (was) gawd awful.

And yet you're pushing to get a cheap date or knocked up while you're doing your MSW.
 
To quote The Room, the greatest movie of all time: "Keep your stupid comments in your pocket."

And yet you're pushing to get a cheap date or knocked up while you're doing your MSW.
 
To quote The Room, the greatest movie of all time: "Keep your stupid comments in your pocket."

And yet you're pushing to get a cheap date or knocked up while you're doing your MSW.
 
To quote The Room, the greatest movie of all time: "Keep your stupid comments in your pocket."

Guys, I think the discussion will be more productive if we concentrate on the original topic instead of some of the distractions that have been popping up. 
 
OP, I know some people who got married while in grad school. I think the wedding was as stressful as they let it be, but that's probably true for any situation. You'll be in school for a long time so you can't just put your life on hold until you graduate, so this may be a good exercise in fitting your personal life into your professional one. I do like the idea of postponing the honeymoon until the winter break or combining it with a conference, so you don't have to worry about missing classes or anything. You could really decompress without the pressure of needing to hurry back, and it's a nice way to change things up if you end up living in a cold place. 

Well, more than likely some of them feel it's in their best interest to get the degree out of the way now while they're still young. Many people have worked hard through undergrad with graduate school in mind. I agree with you, don't get me wrong; it doesn't make sense for a lot of people who won't receive full funding to continue with school and cross their fingers when they enter the real world. However, that isn't the mentality of certain students who think they have more to contribute in an academic setting before making their cases for industry.
 
And oh man, are some of them in for a rude awakening.

Hindsight's 20/20, bro. A master's doesn't mean an instant job. I had to make resumes for FOUR DIFFERENT STATES and apply to a few hundred companies to get my latest position. I drove all over interviewing for small lab technician jobs. I could blame it on my low GPA or my limited industrial experience to that point or something, but the bottom line is employers went with someone else every time (save one, which is where I've been working for 6 months now). Education is one thing; actually working is quite another. Working isn't just DOING shit, either--you have to have the right attitude and seem like a good fit in the current team dynamic.
 
It's fine to be discouraged, but take some days off from being down in the dumps. Employers can smell it on you like alcohol. Once you get a job, I hope you look at these posts and laugh your ass off.

Hindsight's 20/20, bro. A master's doesn't mean an instant job. I had to make resumes for FOUR DIFFERENT STATES and apply to a few hundred companies to get my latest position. I drove all over interviewing for small lab technician jobs. I could blame it on my low GPA or my limited industrial experience to that point or something, but the bottom line is employers went with someone else every time (save one, which is where I've been working for 6 months now). Education is one thing; actually working is quite another. Working isn't just DOING shit, either--you have to have the right attitude and seem like a good fit in the current team dynamic.
 
It's fine to be discouraged, but take some days off from being down in the dumps. Employers can smell it on you like alcohol. Once you get a job, I hope you look at these posts and laugh your ass off.

Hindsight's 20/20, bro. A master's doesn't mean an instant job. I had to make resumes for FOUR DIFFERENT STATES and apply to a few hundred companies to get my latest position. I drove all over interviewing for small lab technician jobs. I could blame it on my low GPA or my limited industrial experience to that point or something, but the bottom line is employers went with someone else every time (save one, which is where I've been working for 6 months now). Education is one thing; actually working is quite another. Working isn't just DOING shit, either--you have to have the right attitude and seem like a good fit in the current team dynamic.
 
It's fine to be discouraged, but take some days off from being down in the dumps. Employers can smell it on you like alcohol. Once you get a job, I hope you look at these posts and laugh your ass off.

Just want to encourage you guys that you can do it.  Our emotions are not static and throughout this journey I've experienced many highs and lows emotionally.  Everything from "I can't believe I got in!" to "What in the world was I thinking, I can't do this while mothering three little ones!", and I'm sure that roller coaster will continue.  Thank goodness for this forum where we can come and voice how we are doing and be encouraged by each other.  So I'm lifting you guys up today.  I'm here to encourage you and remind you that YOU CAN DO THIS.  Take it a day at a time.  When you are feeling down keep to your schedule and do the little things so that your coursework does not snowball because then you will feel even worse.  I have been so relaxed over winter break I'm am nervous about picking up the ball again and rolling with an intense schedule after being so relaxed.  We can do this! Say this several times to yourself putting emphasis on different words in the sentence.  Good luck guys!     

Hindsight's 20/20, bro. A master's doesn't mean an instant job. I had to make resumes for FOUR DIFFERENT STATES and apply to a few hundred companies to get my latest position. I drove all over interviewing for small lab technician jobs. I could blame it on my low GPA or my limited industrial experience to that point or something, but the bottom line is employers went with someone else every time (save one, which is where I've been working for 6 months now). Education is one thing; actually working is quite another. Working isn't just DOING shit, either--you have to have the right attitude and seem like a good fit in the current team dynamic.
 
It's fine to be discouraged, but take some days off from being down in the dumps. Employers can smell it on you like alcohol. Once you get a job, I hope you look at these posts and laugh your ass off.

Hindsight's 20/20, bro. A master's doesn't mean an instant job. I had to make resumes for FOUR DIFFERENT STATES and apply to a few hundred companies to get my latest position. I drove all over interviewing for small lab technician jobs. I could blame it on my low GPA or my limited industrial experience to that point or something, but the bottom line is employers went with someone else every time (save one, which is where I've been working for 6 months now). Education is one thing; actually working is quite another. Working isn't just DOING shit, either--you have to have the right attitude and seem like a good fit in the current team dynamic.
 
It's fine to be discouraged, but take some days off from being down in the dumps. Employers can smell it on you like alcohol. Once you get a job, I hope you look at these posts and laugh your ass off.

About 50% of people who begin a doctoral program do not finish one.  This is for a variety of reasons, which include - but aren't limited to - not feeling able to complete a thesis.  What the Ed.D thesis will entail will entirely depend on the program, but I think it's safe to say that your assessment of what's necessary is true (although I would say that 50 pages would be too short for a doctoral dissertation.  The shortest ones I've seen have been around 100 pages).
 
The whole point of a doctoral program is to give you the tools and knowledge necessary to complete that dissertation, since doctoral degrees usually prepare you for a research career in which you will have to do similar work.  If you find academic writing and research too daunting to surmount even with assistance for your learning disabilities, then Ed.D programs that emphasize research and scholarship might not be good fits for you.  If you are trying to take the EdD back into practice and work in the education field as a leader/practitioner, then an Ed.D program without a dissertation requirement might be ok.  But if you are looking to potentially go into a research career, I think any hiring committee would be quite skeptical of an Ed.D holder who did not complete a dissertation.  Besides, I have to say that the dissertation is not the only part of the doctoral degree that requires academic writing and research;r your classes and your comprehensive exams will also require those skills.  The doctoral degree - even the Ed.D - is largely a research degree, so if you find research very difficult to the point that you think you can't do it, then I question whether you should embark upon an Ed.D.
 
How many hours?  That's impossible to estimate up front  It depends entirely on the project you pick, how demanding your advisor is, the resources at your particular university, how well and how quickly you write, whether you need to learn new analysis techniques to complete the project, etc.  I think it's more common to think in terms of months or years.  In my field (psychology), a complete dissertation usually takes about 1-2 years to complete.  Roughly 1 year is spent collecting, preparing, and analyzing data, and the other year is spent writing it up.  In my case, I technically only spent 9 months on my dissertation, but that's because the data was largely collected while I was still in coursework and exams.  My dissertation was about 132 pages excluding references.  I spent about 9 months actively working on it - September through May.  I would say that I spent roughly 30 hours on it most weeks. 9 months x 4 weeks x 30 hours is roughly 1080 hours, but that does not include the time I spent writing the dissertation proposal (which took me 3 months prior to actually beginning the dissertation), the time I spent collecting data for the dissertation (that took a long time, but it was part of a larger project that included other papers and supported at least one other dissertation), or the time I spent revising the dissertation after my defense (that took me about a month).  And there were definitely some weeks - especially towards the end - in which I spent more than 30 hours working on the dissertation.
 
Basically, you can see the dissertation as a series of small steps.  It is overall a large project, but you don't tackle it all at once.  I broke my dissertation down into multiple 2-page sections, and so when I sat down to write it wasn't "I'm going to work on my dissertation today" (which feels enormous) but "I'm going to write this 2-page sub-section on XXX today" (which is a doable daily goal).  You set daily and weekly and monthly goals and a timeline for yourself, and you hack away at it a little at a time.

Hindsight's 20/20, bro. A master's doesn't mean an instant job. I had to make resumes for FOUR DIFFERENT STATES and apply to a few hundred companies to get my latest position. I drove all over interviewing for small lab technician jobs. I could blame it on my low GPA or my limited industrial experience to that point or something, but the bottom line is employers went with someone else every time (save one, which is where I've been working for 6 months now). Education is one thing; actually working is quite another. Working isn't just DOING shit, either--you have to have the right attitude and seem like a good fit in the current team dynamic.
 
It's fine to be discouraged, but take some days off from being down in the dumps. Employers can smell it on you like alcohol. Once you get a job, I hope you look at these posts and laugh your ass off.

Scream that shit. Us HIMYM haters have to unite. That show is (was) gawd awful.

Scream that shit. Us HIMYM haters have to unite. That show is (was) gawd awful.

Scream that shit. Us HIMYM haters have to unite. That show is (was) gawd awful.

Scream that shit. Us HIMYM haters have to unite. That show is (was) gawd awful.

It's easy to come down on people who are stressed when you aren't stressed.

That was my thinking. It's not like you squeaked by with a C-; you legitimately put a ton of effort into that class. A professor will learn more about your character if you continued to take his classes and challenged yourself even if you didn't get the A!
 
 
While I'm here in the venting thread: Honestly, I feel like "character" should be given more weight when it comes to graduate studies. Too many good people who can still learn / be taught are snubbed while socially inept robots run rampant in higher-paying jobs. I mean, I get it, but for Christ's sake, why is every person I know coming back from grad school blurting out answers to questions-in-conversation like their lives depended on it?

Well dramaturgy is drama composition, isn't it? Why don't you write some melodramatic monologue explaining your life, ending with "Plot twist: I'm M. Night Shyamalan"

Well dramaturgy is drama composition, isn't it? Why don't you write some melodramatic monologue explaining your life, ending with "Plot twist: I'm M. Night Shyamalan"

I didn't really know what to say exactly. I'm glad you could articulate what I was thinking, though.
 
Try playing drums, ChocoLatte! I need a drummer for my band. We could make a GradCafe studio death metal group.

I feel like you know that what you're doing is more than a little messed up. You want to do social work and therapy and all that, yet you don't feel like you can confide in your own therapist because you might get embarrassed? That's asinine, and it sounds like self-sabotage.
 
Telling your therapist stuff you can't tell anyone else is what makes those sessions so unique and ground-breaking for anxious/depressed people. Holding stuff back during a session is almost doubly unhealthy, since you're probably rationalizing all the stuff you're withholding ("she won't think I'm weird this way", "now I won't offend her") but still feeling better after a session.
 
Let it all out [there, not here, heh]. There's clearly some repressed stuff, here.