hydrangea

some people talking in the next apartment
Damn ancient Parisian apartment buildings!

The soft crackling sparky noise of the electricity flowing through my power adapter into my MacBook Air
Damn primitive European electricity!

That's how it seems to me.

Recalled Vaccination







PS- I am going to kill you, Encomendero

Why did I only apply to two schools!? Why haven't either of them given me an official notice!? Freaking out. Come on March, we've been pals for a long time now, don't do me wrong.

I lived in Pittsburgh about 8 years and have only been away for about 7 months.
Good neighborhoods that you'd want to live in near Pitt or CMU include: Bloomfield/Friendship (avoid crossing Penn Avenue into Garfield if you're new to town/don't know anyone, but on Penn might not be too bad. Garfield is coming up with the strip of art galleries and whatnot, but it can still be kind of iffy), lower Lawrenceville (maybe between 39th and 49th is alright, nice houses and fairly cheap, $500-$600 for a 2 bedroom). I used to live in Bloomfield and total rent for a three bedroom house with a garage and a backyard was $890 a month. Shadyside is nice as well, but more expensive. Squirrel Hill is nice as well and it seems to be a bit of a go-to neighborhood for graduate students. Greenfield is a nice quiet neighborhood that's mostly residential and fairly safe.
That said, yes, like any urban area crime is something that happens. People get mugged, cars get broken into, etc, but in general things like gang violence and violent murders are uncommon (I'm not saying they don't happen, but they're not really an everyday event in most places). Avoid Oakland. Yes it's close to the schools you may be attending, but it's the college neighborhood and so unless you're really interested in being surrounded by undergrads doing their college-student-being-loud-and-living-in-filth shtick, it's probably not a good place to live (also rent is relatively high and most places are in poor condition).
Polish Hill can also be nice, but it's somewhat difficult to escape from if you're using public transportation. The more central East end neighborhoods I mentioned above all have buses that go downtown and to Oakland, decent places to eat and shop, ok places to get coffee and study, and some ok nightlife, but they're also relatively quiet and reasonably safe.
 
Honestly it depends on what you're looking for. As far as "open late", most coffee shop/cafes are open until midnight, most restaurants until 10pm, a handful of diners run all night, and well, bars close at 2am. What you're seeing isn't the recession hitting the area hard, but a city that never fully recovered from steady population decline resulting from the collapse of the steel industry. For a city of its size it's actually alright. There are a lot of arts related events going on most nights, a somewhat thriving music scene, and a decent array of food options. That said, yes it's not LA or NYC. It's not Buffalo either.

I love Etsy. But even more, I love Regretsy.com. If you haven't visited, it's a website that features the the worst (and funniest) Etsy crafts. It makes me laugh every time I look at it.

I bought a cat. I have always wanted one. She is proving to be a delightful distraction.

She will either be celebratory: "yay! I got into grad school AND I finally have a cat!" or consolatory: "I didn't get into grad school, but at least I have a cat."

Wine. (and occasionally whine)

I think it's important to remember... There are only 3 ways to really know where we stand:

1. We get accepted
2. We get rejected
3. We contact them, and ask them what the hell is going on.

All of which come as a result of direct correspondence with the department in question. This web page is like statistics, it will give you an idea of what's happening to large numbers of people, but it will never give you a prediction of what is going to happen to you. A lot of people find statistics useful, and a fair number of people find this website useful. I think it's greatest power is in keeping us from being alone with all of this, and giving us a community of (hopefully) support.

I have a school that apparently hasn't accepted anyone yet, but I sure wasn't invited to that grad recruit weekend. I expect my chances of being accepted there a pretty slim, but they haven't bothered to reject me yet, so who knows. I don't think you can say you're denied until you are actually denied, any more than you can say your accepted until you're actually accepted. The rest is just purgatory (and you're not alone).

I think it's important to remember... There are only 3 ways to really know where we stand:

1. We get accepted
2. We get rejected
3. We contact them, and ask them what the hell is going on.

All of which come as a result of direct correspondence with the department in question. This web page is like statistics, it will give you an idea of what's happening to large numbers of people, but it will never give you a prediction of what is going to happen to you. A lot of people find statistics useful, and a fair number of people find this website useful. I think it's greatest power is in keeping us from being alone with all of this, and giving us a community of (hopefully) support.

I have a school that apparently hasn't accepted anyone yet, but I sure wasn't invited to that grad recruit weekend. I expect my chances of being accepted there a pretty slim, but they haven't bothered to reject me yet, so who knows. I don't think you can say you're denied until you are actually denied, any more than you can say your accepted until you're actually accepted. The rest is just purgatory (and you're not alone).

I think it's important to remember... There are only 3 ways to really know where we stand:

1. We get accepted
2. We get rejected
3. We contact them, and ask them what the hell is going on.

All of which come as a result of direct correspondence with the department in question. This web page is like statistics, it will give you an idea of what's happening to large numbers of people, but it will never give you a prediction of what is going to happen to you. A lot of people find statistics useful, and a fair number of people find this website useful. I think it's greatest power is in keeping us from being alone with all of this, and giving us a community of (hopefully) support.

I have a school that apparently hasn't accepted anyone yet, but I sure wasn't invited to that grad recruit weekend. I expect my chances of being accepted there a pretty slim, but they haven't bothered to reject me yet, so who knows. I don't think you can say you're denied until you are actually denied, any more than you can say your accepted until you're actually accepted. The rest is just purgatory (and you're not alone).

My own cynical opinion about this is that schools may set up the mass email (especially rejections) to send at some time outside of business hours so that they don't get inondated with calls right after they press send.

There's a quota for positive votes??!! That's pretty weak. What's it gonna hurt if I think this is a cool comment? (Maybe they are trying to force me to leave this web page! In that case, thank you all for the lovely weekend. Back to work and being too busy to sit online all day.)

I absolutely think the biggest motivation for email response is environmental, and partially economical. I also REALLY REALLY think they should respond, some way, some how. Official mail is nice for the tangibility of it. You could cherish and frame an acceptance letter, or rip up a rejection letter and watch it burn in the fireplace. There is a certain ceremony to the treatment of the object.

Then again, Berkeley is a pretty big undergraduate school, and they have at least twice as many people applying as they do actual students (very likely more). They must be saving a ton of trees by using online notification, at least at the undergraduate level. And how many times have we all read, 'we are no longer accepting paper applications'? I think it is really a move in the right direction for the environment. As far as checking your online status, I don't suppose it's very much worse than keeping an extra digital clock going during the day.

If i don't include either checking gradcafe results search for any news or checking my application status through the school website, I think that leaves....

1. Beatles Rockband
2. Watching Torchwood
3. Organizing my purse.
4. Learning piano.
5. Trying not to nap. (Unemployed and out of undergrad for nine months, believe me, this is an accomplishment!)
6. Pretending I'm reading "City of Thieves" when I'm really re-reading the Half Blood Prince
7. Accidentally watching Spongebob Squarepants for several hours before I realize my kids are at school, and I can watch anything I want.
8. Painting wood to look like a different kind of wood...(so the threshold matches the wood floor.)
9. Playing Words with Friends on my phone.

Good call on Grad Cafe. I've been obsessively checking postings almost as much as checking my email.

And good luck on the thesis.

I'm going the professional doctorate route in public health, and would love to end up at a health & human rights NGO (more policy focused) or an international/regional organization working on health programming for migrant and/or refugee/IDP populations (ideally in Latin America, though my experience is more in SE Asia and East Africa- so I'm not sure how difficult it would be to transition to a different region...here's hoping).

I'd love to teach a specialized class or two as an adjunct instructor in a school of public health, but I'm not looking to do anything with TT positions.

I want to be a post doc for about ten years of my life, moving from state to state every two years because postdoc positions are not permanent. Eventually I will stop trying to get a TT position at a top university and start teaching at my local community college where all my "loser" friends from high school attended. Those "loser" friends have already made more money than I ever will in my life.

Oh wait maybe I'm being too realistic.

I WANNA BE A PROFESSOR AT STANFORD!!

This topic started out pretty fun, as a place to catch the humor we had missed on the results page (even though that wasn't the intent), but now that it's turned into an argument (with a clear favorite from the audience), I don't think I am going to follow it anymore. Fun while it lasted.

Please stay calm? Sounds like the 911 operators...or maybe I'm just getting paranoid.

Also, 1500 applicants!!?! Holy smokes. It takes me a week to read through 20 student papers of 3 double-spaced pages each, I can't imagine reading 1500 SOPs...