Danger_Zone

That's great to hear! It's exciting when everything becomes more official.

Are there any e-mails or documents from your school mentioning how long it should take? I was told to contact the international students office if I didn't receive shipping information within 10 business days of having my initial information verified, so 4 weeks seems a bit long! But of course this varies, I'm sure. You could always contact somebody about this and make sure there aren't any issues.

I can't move until the end of July, so I am anticipating it way too much! I've been slowly trying to sort through my stuff and think of what I'd like to take with me, have shipped or donate/leave/throw out. It feels strange to leave things behind even if I won't use them. At the same time, I don't want any clutter in my new place so I don't want to take anything I don't need, either. (And I think the thing that worries me more than moving this stuff is the thought of having to decorate my own place! I have no sense of interior design.) I'm glad if moving is going smoothly for others so far!

I received my I-20 in the mail today. Just one step closer to the dream!

Really rusty with my drawing skills lately. My friend asked me to draw him a picture and after endless attempts I finally gave him the least worst drawing I came up with. I can't tell if I'm just being hard on myself or not, because I don't think my friends are going to tell me "yeah you're right that's an awful drawing." With school I don't often feel motivated to draw. I tried to make art my major and it totally zapped my motivation and made me hate doing art, so I know it's only meant to be a hobby for me, but it still sucks to see your talents slipping because you haven't kept up with it. I just feel like there isn't enough time in the day to do everything I want, so I always have to sacrifice something.

@Neist I don't have any sort of social media either. I used to have Facebook but it was just full of drama and high school people I wanted to forget about. But I'm thinking of getting something (maybe Facebook again? I'm not sure) to keep in touch with family and friends when I move away, as well as people I will meet at school. @gingin6789 Congrats, I hope you enjoy yourself! That sounds like a really great topic you'll be working on.

During undergrad, I had one small bedroom for all of my stuff (desk, computer, TV, and of course, my bed) and while attempting to do work I was always tempted to just take a "quick nap" or a "quick break." I spent a lot of time procrastinating because I did not have any dedicated space for school work. I would advice to take the separate room if you can. It may also be beneficial to you to learn to do work with occasional distractions.

What are the scores exactly? And what does the rest of your application look like? How many schools do you plan to apply to? The GRE is only one part of the application package, so if you have a weak application a strong GRE may help, but if you have a strong application I don't think a lower quant score is going to break your application (I'm not the graduate committee though, so I cannot tell you for sure how your GRE score will affect your chances.) If you'd like to take the GRE again, can afford it and have the time to study for it, then by all means do it, but not if you are sacrificing the rest of your application in order to study for it. Also take a look at how you've been studying, because you may need to change things and perhaps seek outside help if you are not able to improve your quant score by much. Are there particular questions troubling you or is it the quant section in general? Try some practice questions/tests and pay attention to what you are doing wrong, and note this for the next question of that type or the next test. A lot of the questions are similar in nature, so you should eventually be able to recognize your mistakes and recognize how you go about answering that type of question. (This is coming from somebody who is terrible at math and managed to improve by 5 points.) If you still struggle then maybe you can seek help from a tutor or another grad student. It may be a waste of time to take the GRE again if you don't recognize where you are struggling and how to improve it. Hope that helps. Congrats on your great verbal score!

I'm most likely getting a dog sometime after I've settled in at school. My boyfriend can't move in with me until he finishes school (has another semester to finish up), so I'll probably wait until then, but we've talked about it and are definitely considering it. I've wanted a dog for as long as I could remember, but haven't been able to get one while living with family. My boyfriend also has a cat he is bringing, so even if we didn't end up getting a dog there's still a cat to take care of. I definitely don't think grad school should get in the way of this - I mean, a lot of people have children and jobs while going to grad school - but if you mean a puppy then this may be another issue altogether. To my understanding they are basically like furry toddlers and need a ton of attention and supervision.

That is so exciting!! Good luck! What was your dissertation on?

I'd say super memory, because I love to read but my memory kind of sucks so I have to study a lot before I know things well enough. My boyfriend's "studying" consists of skimming through notes briefly before tests and he does better on them than I do! Eternal Sunshine-esque memory would be good too for unpleasant or useless memories you'd like to forget. Super speed and flying would be a cool combo too. You could be your own private jet!

I've struggled with math since I was 10, so I honestly have a pretty hard time trying to do mental math. I don't think that's as common though and most students have probably become way too reliant on calculators to do work for them, so they freeze up when not allowed to use them. But there could always be the occasional student who does have a legitimate problem with math and just doesn't realize it (because math seems to make a lot of people anxious so they probably assume that being bad at it is normal.)

I have those too! Is it kind of like a movie dream where you're watching things happen to other people? I try to explain this to other people and they don't know what I'm talking about.

That sounds pretty strange! I constantly have weird dreams as well. Lately I've had so many weird academic-related ones. I think it's my brain's way of telling me I am way too stressed about school (not as much anymore, but during application season I was constantly having surreal dreams about my applications going wrong, or going really well, only to wake up and find it was sadly just a dream.) On a side note, coconut water and rum sounds pretty tasty!

That's definitely true. By no means do I think I'm a great writer, but I've had the opportunity to read papers of other students in my class and have realized that a lot of perfectly intelligent people don't know how to express themselves clearly in writing. I still struggle with this sometimes but I think I've improved a lot. I recently found a paper I'd written from one of my first history classes and I was actually kind of embarrassed at how poorly it was written. I think one thing that helps though is that I love writing. I feel like a lot of the people who don't write well just don't enjoy it enough to improve. I also agree with you about published sources being poorly written as well. Another great way to improve writing would be to read other written works, but really how helpful is this if our sources of information aren't written well either? I think I'm fortunate that my faculty advisor has one of the clearest and most pleasant writing styles I've encountered.

Currently reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. @betwixt&between You may want to search major field reading lists out there on 19th and 20th century US history, especially if they are divided by social history, cultural history, political history, etc. I've been working on compiling a rough reading list and have found these helpful for ideas (my major reading field is modern US.) If I find anything pertaining to the topics you've mentioned I can let you know.

That's great! My worst mark in History was one B+. It was a required course that I wasn't enjoying very much to be honest, and the exam was a pretty brutal one worth 40%. I definitely put most of my effort into papers as well, but never dreamed of getting any marks close to 100%! I was told time and time again by both History professors and TAs that you're very rarely going to get A's in History courses, especially on papers, because it just isn't "possible" to do perfectly on a history paper (not sure if this was something exclusive to our university, or maybe to Canadian universities, but it seems strange to me) but I managed to pull them off in every class except the one. I'm a pretty bad test taker as well I think, so I prefer the formatting of History exams where you usually get some idea of what is going to be tested. I double majored in History and Psychology, so I had the complete opposite experience as well, where in psychology we were mostly tested with midterms and exams and rarely did a lot of writing. Definitely did not enjoy that.

That's an impressive major GPA! I would not be concerned about a B either if I was doing very well otherwise.

Now that's some advice worth taking! My mom actually recommended it. She and my sister go to salons all the time and of course they've never had problems. I just seem to have the bad luck. I'll probably end up going next week anyway, I can't resist a nice french manicure. It actually started to peel/chip off and I didn't notice until most of the polish had come off that way, then I was just sort of stuck with peeling nails underneath. I might at least stay clear of it until my nails get their health back. I should also not be allowed to live by myself. I have managed to burn just about all foods!

I got a manicure with shellac polish for the first time and it has completely ruined my nails. I wanted to get them painted next week before I go on vacation, but they're way too short and brittle to do anything with now. This is what I get for trying to treat myself, huh.

Congrats!! Enjoy your freedom.

I think this would be a great opportunity to really take the time to edit down your paper to the appropriate length. I've had papers I felt were the perfect length and I couldn't possibly take anything out, but I think one of my issues was I spent much more time picking out grammatical and spelling errors, rather than being really thoughtful about the significance of each sentence. So you could try to look through your paper and really ask questions like: what is this sentence saying, and is the sentence after saying something different or am I being redundant? Could I merge sentences together and would they still convey the same meaning? Are there any particularly "flowery" sentences that could be shortened? These are some things you could think about when writing/editing!

Definitely, it's always great to have more time for reading. During undergrad, I rarely ever felt like reading for fun (although a lot of what I read for school was pretty fun, honestly). I'm eager to start my readings for class, though. I've already signed up for classes and they sound super interesting! My boyfriend can't seem to understand why I am so excited to go back to school, so I am glad I can share my excitement here.

It always feels awesome to be finished with your last exam! It feels a bit surreal to be completely done with a place you have spent so many years at. But it also means you get to start a new chapter in your life.

All this talk of healthcare has made me start to think about how I'm going to lose my doctor now. He's the first doctor I've ever trusted and who has actually helped me instead of basically making my life and health worse and not taking my concerns seriously. You don't realize how many things you're actually leaving behind when you move away. I'll just hope I don't need to see a doctor too often anyway!