Bumblebee

I have a safe box in my room (that in theory resists flooding and fires) and that's where I keep my hard drives (when I'm not using them), my passport, and other important documents. It didn't cost much (less that $30) and it gives me some peace of mind.

In my case it was... Now you're going to go back to school? At your age? When are you going to get married? Or... so, you're going to be poor for the next few years? But wait until you take your exams. My MA exam is in less than 3 weeks and I'm tired of hearing people saying.. - Nah! That's a piece of cake for you! - You're going to be fine, I'm sure you'll rock it! - If there's anybody who can pass, it is you! - (Literature student in my department - I'm in the Linguistics track) Oh, c'mon, everybody passes the exam anyway! (Yeahhh!! In the Lit track, people in the Linguistics track do fail and I have several examples to prove it). - (Coming from my parents) Don't be stupid! How can you fail? We have complete faith in you! You're a genius! (Don't they realize that that actually puts more pressure on me and makes me more nervous? I know they mean well, but it only makes things worse)

At the moment I have a 13" MacBook that I can connect to my 42" TV if I need a bigger screen :-) But I work a lot with spectrograms and sound waves and spend too many hours in front of the computer, so sometimes 13" feels small to me. I'm considering buying a desktop to work at home (I'm going to stay where I live now for 5+ years) and keep the laptop for when I work on campus and when I travel back home for the holidays.

For Ponetics/Phonology I use Praat (although my Phonetics professor also uses WaveSurfer, but I like Praat better). As for Sociolinguistics, I usually use GoldVarb, but I know some people in my department have used SPSS or R for statistics as well.

I received a TAship from my school but in Spain there are banks that offer scholarships to do graduate studies in France, UK, USA, etc. They pay for your plane ticket, a monthly stipend, tuition, application fees, visa fees and an additional payment at the beginning of your studies to pay for "moving" expenses (apartment deposit, furniture, books, etc.). They're really competitive, but they're really good. I don't know about the UK, though, but I think it's worth checking.

If you're looking for places for lunch, you can go to 4th street, where you'll see plenty of international restaurants. It's a nice area, too. My favorite are Anatolia (Turkish) and Taste of India. In Kirkwood Ave. there are also some sports bars and if you're looking for good burgers, you can try Upland. It's a little bit further from campus, but both their burgers and their beer are great. I know there's some other place that have good burgers too, but I don't remember the name. If you want good pizza you can try Mother Bear's (third street) and for good breakfasts, The Runcible Spoon.

Hi! One of my areas of specialization is Phonology. For your question about Praat, there's a website that has published a manual about how to use Praat. It's quite useful and it's well written. You can find it in savethevowels.org (http://savethevowels.org/praat/UsingPraatforLinguisticResearch.pdf). As for places where you can go for information, it would help if you specified what kind of phonology you're working with (generative or laboratory phonology) and what kind of specific information you are looking for.

When I was doing my applications I had a similar situation. One of the schools told me they hadn't received my results. I contacted ETS about it and they submitted the results again. They did it very fast and they did it for free since it was not clear if it had been their fault or if the school had misplaced it. Fortunately for me, the school told me that they considered my application as complete since it wasn't my fault.

I'm a Mac user and the linguistic software I use (Praat, GoldVarb) works fine on it. There were a couple of months were I couldn't use GoldVarb because it was not compatible with Lion, but they released a new version and I'm back doing statistics in my laptop. My plan is to get a Mac desktop next fall because I need a bigger screen for my spectrograms and because, since I've just been admitted to continue to the PhD, I predict many hours in front of my computer and having a bigger screen will make it easier on my eyes. As for class, I always have my iPad with me, to have access to all the articles/chapters we're discussing in class and a notebook for taking notes.

I work with Spanish but I will be working with some Basque as well (I would like to do research on phonological consequences of the contact between Spanish and Basque in the Basque country)

I didn't do anything special. Some schools had a special form for international students where you could write down your GPA in your country's scale, but there was no room for writing comments about the grading system. However, when I did the campus visit to my current school, one of the professors in the ad com told me that they knew exactly what my GPA meant, that they already had experience with them. My guess is that schools with a large international student population like mine are familiar with the different grade systems, so I wouldn't worry about it.

As a non-native speaker of English, I don't think I should be treated differently from the rest of the students. When I decided to stay in the US for my degree I knew that it included being able to write research papers in English. My first papers were hard, since I had never studied real academic English and my English was considered too informal. However, I have worked hard to improve. I've read tons of research articles and I have asked fellow students to help me with my writing. I still make mistakes, but I've noticed that now I'm much better than when I started my degree. Nobody has treated me differently for having a different native language and this has pushed me to improve. If I had had special accommodations or if the professors had been more lenient with me, I'd probably play the not-a-native-speaker card often and I'd be too lazy to improve. As I am pursuing a degree in Hispanic Linguistics (I'm a native speaker of Spanish), some of my courses are in Spanish and some in English and I write papers in both languages. But I have a professor who teaches in Spanish but when it comes to writing the final papers, he always makes us write them in our L2. Native speakers of Spanish have to write them in English and native speakers of English have to do it in Spanish. He always says that we should all be able to write proper academic papers in both languages. At the beginning I didn't like the idea very much, since the class was already in Spanish, but I now thank him.

No, they keep your DS-160. When you travel to the US all you need is your passport with the visa sticker and the I-20.

@radioalfredio I'm not sure about the General Linguistics program at IU, but at least the Hispanic Linguistics program offers an AIship with tuition remission and stipend

@elizabethrose14, there are several Hispanic Linguistics programs you might want to look at (that I can think of): Arizona, New Mexico, Penn State, University of Florida, Georgetown, Ohio State, UMass Amherst, Texas, Urbana-Champaign and Indiana University, among others. I know Indiana University does a lot of Sociolinguistics (mainly variation both through the Spanish Dept. and the Linguistics Dept. and some language contact).

In my first J-1 visa they stamped "cancelled without prejudice" when I went for the interview for my second visa. Since that first J-1 visa I've had another J-1 (that I extended, so I had two visa stamps in my passport) and an F-1. I've never said that my first visa was cancelled, since it was cancelled because it had expired, not because I had done anything wrong. I've never been questioned about it and I've never had any problem with it. I hope that helps.

I take the bus to go to campus (a 15-20 minutes ride), which is not bad, but buses don't work on Sundays and on Saturdays the bus runs every hour, so I'm going to move to a place which is slightly closer to campus and, more importantly, much better connected (more frequencies on Saturdays, bus on Sundays). It's a pain when your classmates want to create study groups/hang around on Sundays and you have to say no because there no way to can go (there's a limited amount of times that I can ask for rides, I don't want to abuse).

This is from last year's application season, but I wanted to share anyway. I was supposed to go on a field trip to Ottawa accompanying the French department of the school I was working on. The day before leaving for Ottawa (a Thursday) I was rejected from a school and the trip was cancelled because of a snow storm. So on Friday I was feeling a little bit depressed with the rejection and my cancelled trip. I started cooking lunch (curry chicken - I will never forget) and went to check my e-mail for the 187th time in the day. I had received an e-mail that read something about admissions and thought it was a mail from the school that had rejected me (they said they would send an official notification). But then, I saw it was from a different school. The first too lines said something about me getting a hard copy in the next days. And then... the magical word: CONGRATULATIONS!!! My heart stopped for a few seconds. I started screaming out of excitement. Then I started reading the e-mail and had another mild heart attack: full ride. But that was not all, the third heart attack came when I read that I had the opportunity to teach in my own home country during the summer. I had to run to turn off the stove so that I could start calling my family and sending e-mails to my recommenders and friends. Two hours later, I could finally finish cooking and had lunch (although I was not hungry with all the excitement).

Last year I was admitted at a program with full funding, I declined the offer since I was more excited about another school and in September (when the semester had already began) they sent me a rejection letter. I couldn't help but laugh. So I guess they don't take rejections as well as we do. Are you rejecting me? No, wait, we'll reject you instead. Nobody says no to X school!!!