Dwr

Do not take up space in a decent country with your brainwashed canadian background. Stay put in canada.

Ahahaha I'm American too so probably two strikes against me right?? Turned down Edinburgh so Scotland is safe from my North Americanisms for another year.

Do not take up space in a decent country with your brainwashed canadian background. Stay put in canada.

Do not take up space in a decent country with your brainwashed canadian background. Stay put in canada.

Do not take up space in a decent country with your brainwashed canadian background. Stay put in canada.

Do not take up space in a decent country with your brainwashed canadian background. Stay put in canada.

Do not take up space in a decent country with your brainwashed canadian background. Stay put in canada.

I don't want to live with neighbours who make hyena noises at night. I want food. I want to take back time. I don't want any of my life.

Well, I'm not chronically physically ill, but I am suffering from chronic mental illness and I'll be starting my PhD in computer science this fall.
My mental health journey has been...an interesting experience to say the least. It started about 2 or so years ago when I was about half-way through my 3rd year of undergrad (this is my 5th and final year). As of right now my diagnoses are schizoaffective disorder (depressive type, mood disorder dominant), panic disorder, HPPD, PTSD, and Aspberger's/HFA. It's been difficult and there were times when it severely affected all aspects of my life, college and family included. There were times when literally everyone who knew about my condition was urging me to dropout and consider long term hospitalization (this came after, we'll just say, a credible threat to my safety). There were more times than I care to mention when I seriously considered giving up for good.
But I pushed through and now here I am 2 years later about to graduate with a BS in computer science and well on my way to starting a PhD. I know doing a PhD is order of magnitude more stressful and difficult than undergrad, but I feel that now that I have matured some and learned to cope with my conditions I should be able to get through this.

When my supervisor is more busy with going on vacation then supervising. Dude like I get you're moving to a different uni and you want to take your 3 months of vacationdays they still owe you - but you're in charge of data collection on MTurk so just run the shit please - it's not like that complicated to just click '300 participants'.

Hello all,
I am in a bind, more emotionally than anything else, but I need to vent.  I have finished one year of my PhD successfully, but that is only academics.  Non-academically there have been some speed bumps, and I feel as though I have gotten no support from my university or department.  In fact, due to one issue, I feel attacked by my university.  Allow me to explain.
I live in family housing run by the university, and I can't afford to not live on campus.  One of my children has psychiatric issues, which were under control for quite a few years, but resurfaced in the Spring.  One incident required calling police for help so we could get them transferred to an acute psychiatric facility for better help than we were getting from her normal medical team.  Because we called the police for assistance, we got on housing's radar.  Not only did we get on their radar, we were told due to student code of conduct rules that governed me as the student, if we did not find another place for my child to live, we would be evicted.  Naturally, I have been fighting this, but I really don't have money to lawyer up if it gets to that.  As I stated above, I don't have the money to not live on campus either.  

As for my department, of course this incident had affected my program a bit, although not as much as you would have figured.  I had to drop one class, which is not ideal, but I am a family person as well as a grad student, and the department was aware of that from the beginning.  In fact, my background both personally and professionally are one of the reasons they chose me.  Other than that, I had to miss a couple of classes for appointments for my child, but I always told the prof in advance, and any work that needed to be done was done beforehand.  I felt bad for missing classes (it really was not that many, other students missed consistently more than I did), but I was always told it was understood and ok.  So, I ended the semester feeling a bit better about things, I got A's in my remaining two classes, and I was grateful to have made it.  Then, I got my first year review.  In this review I was targeted for having too many outside distractions (keep in mind, I got A's in my classes), I had too many absences, and I didn't complete a full time schedule.  In a five paragraph review, four focused on negatives, and only one said anything positive.  I have a 3.8 for the year, granted not great, but not terrible either, and a 4.0 in the worst possible semester I could have had.  It doesn't help that I have never quite felt that the department I am in is the most welcoming.  Most profs are never around, nor are most grad students.  I can count the number of PhD students I know personally on one hand in a program where it takes many more hands to count them all...the same for profs.

So, I feel unwelcome, and that maybe this is not the place for me.  But, I am also feeling stuck.  I have finished a year, with only one year of full time coursework left, and one class in one semester to make up for the dropped course.  I feel very alone, and the couple of times I brought this subject up with my advisor or the grad coordinator they insist everything is fine, which is not how I feel at all.  Even if I could leave, it is too late to find another ship to jump to for Fall, and how would I explain why I want to leave where I am at?  How would I get recommendations from anyone here, when it seems from my review that none of my profs have much positive to say about me?  I know the most important thing is getting and keeping my child well, which we have made great strides in.  But, my child also feels unwelcome here as we have to "hide" them so housing authorities will not know they are here.  And of course, I keep playing the "what if" game, as in "what if I would have chosen school B over school A, I wonder if they still want me." I just feel lost and alone and I needed to vent.  I don't know if anyone has any words of wisdom, and I understand if not.  Really, I just needed to vent a little anyway.  Thanks for reading, I appreciate it.

https://www.allisonharbin.com/post-phd/why-i-left-academia-part-1
Quite the read, and a fairly concise statement about how intra-university politics work.

Agree with the above! Some advisors will spend a decent chunk of time with their students during big conferences actually (typically during the social events like coffee breaks and receptions). They'll "take" their student along as they meet up with old friends and introduce you to them. Also, like rising_star said, sometimes the change in environment helps prompt the conversation/advising towards a different direction than your typical research meeting. And, it's a good idea to talk to your advisor about the presentations you're seeing, especially if you have questions! 

I know I'm late on this, but I can't sleep and decided to look at some threads.
The answer is good lord, yes. In fact, I would specifically ask your advisor if you can tag around with them at some point ("oh, I'm going to panel X, would you like to have coffee before and then go?"). I followed my advisor around like we were on our honeymoon at my first conference, which meant I got to meet a ton of people I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. Now I'm established enough (1st year PhD, but have met folks a few times and connect with them on social media) that I set up my own coffees with big names. There's a prof that wrote one of my favorite texts that I now have breakfast with whenever we go to the same conference (and basically let her introduce me to everyone).

At big field conferences there are often a lot of private/semi-private parties taking place in the evening. I've gotten two panels put together from folks I met over drinks in a hotel room.
A good advisor will do this sort of thing for you. My department chair once said that she will introduce us to anyone we want, but we better not shy away when the opportunities come up.

In my field it's said to be good to have one publication by the time you graduate. Two and you're in very good shape. Many students won't have any. (Or, they'll only have proceedings papers.) So, these things can vary greatly. I would guess that papers in my field are longer and the publication cycle is (substantially) slower, hence the difference. Also probably at least in part attributable to differences in methodology. 
In any event, I had more than one by the time I graduated, but I definitely made sure to have at least one, which meant starting to submit relatively early, because it's entirely possible for a paper to take several years from submission to appearing in print. My very first journal paper was submitted/revised over a period of about 11 months (which is considered fast!), then was in press for 3 years, so a total of 4 years all told until it was out. I submitted it in the summer after my second year, saw it in print around the time of my defense. I think this is probably sufficiently different from your experience that more details aren't going to help you here.

Thank you so much! Yes it is so difficult and confusing.

You may have to wait until Monday and contact the grad school, if no one has any thoughts. Wishing you the best of luck in this. I also just went through the application season and know how difficult it is waiting, then to receive a message and not be able to access it.

Try using a different browser or computer. Or you might have to wait until Monday (or later) for things to update in some computer system. If nothing works, you may have to contact the ministère for help (though I don't know how helpful they can/will be), or maybe this is something the international students office at your school can have access to. It may just take a few days for this to work itself out.

It must be obvious that there is no such thing as learning all there is to learn. I believe learning and being graded are separate things. Getting review for your work until it is of publishable quality, yes, being given 'assignments' and then being graded on them, no. This also has to do what you start with after undergrad. Undergrads are treated as babies and given clear, dumbed-down solutions where what they need to be trained in is pointing out messy problems. You could take this back a long way. I find a lot of things about formal education bizarre.

I think grading graduate students is weird. I got horrible grades for most of my classes, but once done with them, produced work judged to be of remarkably high quality.  I also find the very idea of a master's programme difficult to understand (at least, in a theoretical field). You are either sitting there and learning (undergrad), or producing work which makes a theoretical contribution to the field. 

So I am finally graduating with my MA after a million years of being in thesis limbo, and am looking at my next step, which is hopefully a doctorate. 
My thesis was on theories of language evolution and whether language and music evolved from a similar proto-musical faculty (looking at a lot of work by Jackendoff, Fitch, etc.), and tested the capacity of both Korean and non-Korean speakers to correctly interpret non-propositional information found in the rising intonation necessary to make a certain type of polar interrogative in Korean (where there is no syntactical or morphological change to indicate it's an interrogative).  Spoiler alert: everyone knows when your voice goes up, you're asking a question.* 
Anyway, I'm interested in continuing that type of work, but am also interested in the semantic processing of late second language learners, code switching, identity performance, and Korean linguistics in general (although I'm about an intermediate speaker).  I speak Spanish fluently, was a Peace Corps volunteer, have a 4.0 in my MA program, a 3.4 in my undergrad (rough), have taught ESL/EFL for a combined 8 years and have been teaching linguistics and pedagogy at a TEFL certification course for the past year.  I also presented a pretty mediocre paper re: Twitter, One Direction fans, and identity construction at a conference where I accidentally got into an argument with Mary Bucholz. 
I don't know how competitive I am as an applicant (haven't been published, my undergrad GPA isn't amazing), nor do I know what my dissertation would be on, but I want to roll around in linguistics research for the rest of my life, and I want to teach it to other people and impart passion into them too.  
So GradCafe people, I'm reaching out to you -- do you know of any programs off the top of your head you'd recommend?  I know I should try for the best program possible with the most funding, but I'm trying to keep it realistic given my credentials.  My professors are gunning for me, but surprise, I'm a millennial woman with major Imposter Syndrome. ?
*you know, barring all the other environments that would force rising intonation

Considering it is now April, if one has not heard a peep from Clarendon or Ertegun, then does this mean rejection? (Posts from previous years seem to indicate this.)
Really, it is quite stupid that Clarendon and Ertegun just don't have a decision date and send out rejection emails. It would be common courtesy and would not be difficult to do.

I didn't think this was going to happen until much later.
I just.
can't.
read.
another.
page.
I sit down to read and I get through maybe a few lines before my brain goes elsewhere, or my eyes are like STOP. JUST STOP READING. And they get all gritty and heavy so fast. My brain is tired of it. It feels like I've been overfed but I am still trying to eat more -- LOTS more, every day.
My courseload is not that rough this term but for some reason I haven't been able to read very well.  I am supposed to be reading 3-4 books a week but can only get through about two, barely. This is with reading for several hours a day!
Part of it is that the material is SO BORING to me.
Part of it is some minor personal stuff going on in the background.
But otherwise, I really have it pretty easy this term. What the heck is going on?
Any advice on how to get through reader's block like this?? This has been going on for about three weeks now, worse every week. I've resorted to some skimming, which I begrudge having to do. 

It's about the same climate. I did not write a post about this to explain to you why I make the choices I make. I wrote because I earned the right to an option that makes me happier, and I cannot really have it because of funding problems. Do you also need colour pens? 

Oh, you deserve to be tired and upset. Don't take anything I said to mean that you shouldn't take some time to heal. The application process can be long and very much anxiety inducing. Take your time, you need and deserve it. And good luck.