td_ny

Ask your department. Without my knowing too much, I have the following suggestions to guide your thinking at this juncture: do you have to do anything other than your classes (such as TA, RA, outside work?) If that is the case, take the minimum permitted full-time courseload. If you don't have to work, take that courseload plus one. Because you know how the semester goes. You start out able to handle it, and then the deadlines start to kick in, or you get the flu... things happen. Grad school is stressful. Don't make additional stress until you see how the first semester goes.

As you're entering your program from a large public university, I recommend that you not take an independent study class during your first semester unless:
you're working with a professor who has a "hands on" approach, your DGS has something resembling a "hands on" approach, you have both the motivation and the skill set to start building relationships in your department, and you're going to be on campus most days of the week. For better and worse, graduate programs make assumptions about the situational awareness of graduate students and professors sometimes justify their desire not to teach or to mentor with pejorative remarks about "hand holding." You may not be told that you're drifting from the path to success until you're standing in a bog and someone yells "Hey, what are you doing over there? You should be over here?"
IRT the sound recommendations that you confer with second and third year graduate students in your department, please consider the utility of balancing the information you receive with the backgrounds of the students giving you free advice. For example, students with teaching duties and/or interests and responsibilities outside of school may have a different idea of a good course load than students who have great funding and a monastic focus.

The linmon desk is too short for my comfort. I'm short (5'5) and I can't get comfortable at it. I find myself slouching over to see my laptop or to read and take notes. I want to get wood blocks or bricks or something to put under the legs to make it higher.