Adelaide9216

Your employer (i.e. the school/department) should provide you with all necessary supplies (e.g. textbooks for the course, etc.).
But I find it's fun (for me, as a TA) to have some non-necessary things to make the job easier. For example, I get a nice pen that I like using so grading feels less tedious. I also get stickers for my students' homework.

Chiming in to third what @fuzzylogicianand @ZeChocMoose have said. Throughout my graduate degrees, I was encouraged to choose topics for course papers which would help me as a worked on my thesis/dissertation/comprehensive exams. Sometimes that meant writing a lit review, other times a grant proposal, and still other times what largely became a chapter of my MA thesis. The latter was written while in a class with one of my committee members who encouraged me to use my final course paper as a draft thesis chapter.

I went to the gym and ran for an hour. I only burned 300 calories but I'm proud of myself for taking these steps to enhance my physical health. 

Thanks. So @Adelaide9216 you would need to literally reject the regular SSHRC, not defer.

No--you will hold SSHRC this summer and FRQSC in September.

Hi! I discovered this forum last week and found it really helpful in managing anxiety for funding!
I've also received the FRQSC doctoral scholarship and currently hold the SSHRC masters scholarship until the end of August. Do you know if we are allowed to receive both FRQSC and SSHRC masters this summer?

will keep my fingers crossed for you!
All my documents needed to enroll arrived in the US. Hopefully will get my documents for visa soon  

I applied to my first TA position. Will know in July if I got selected!

I just checked, in your portfolio, results are online!!! I got funded, it says "retenu pour financement"!!! 

Congrats! I received funding, too! 

I agree with @Psygeek. I try to take the same approach and I feel that my science does improve when it's legitimate criticism (i.e. not #5) and I take action to improve it. At the very least, even if there is no net gain, or the time invested to address the criticism is not worth the improvement, you usually get something else out of it that makes it worth it, e.g. appease a coauthor/colleague/referee.
But I think Psygeek's point #1 is important: something that is not personal, i.e. relevant to my work, not my self. I work in a field where it is much easier to separate the identity of the researcher with the work they are doing. So, I actually just ignore all criticism that isn't only relevant to my work, unless I know for a fact that the person offering feedback is acting with good faith. 
For example, if scholars criticize my non-research-related* community involvement, I just ignore them. When an instructor criticized my accent during a presentation of my research, I also ignored them (I did my best to push back to let them know that this is not an okay thing to say to me but I didn't change it for them).  (*Again, for me, all of my community involvement is unrelated to my work). 
Just want to clarify two things:
1) I'm definitely not advocating for an actual separation of self and work. That is, we should not regard each other as scholars only, but our human sides are also important. We should be aware of the impact of our research on other people (in my field, one major impact that few astronomers seem to care about is that we have built some of our telescopes on the sacred territory of other peoples). And, we should not ignore/excuse a scholar's bad behaviour (harassment, etc.) because they are brilliant/produce great research. I'm just saying that some people have no right to criticize aspects of my life unrelated to work (e.g. whether I have a family, my accent, etc.)
2) From your other posts, it sounds like your field and your work is much more related to your community involvement/activities than mine, so separating criticism like I have may not be possible. Hope this idea is still useful though---I have no idea if your situation would count as valid/legitimate criticism or not. But I guess that's up to you anyways. So my point is similar to Psygeek's #5: you have to decide whether you care about this particular feedback or not. As students, it's easy to feel like you're expected to absorb every piece of advice and feedback, but the reality is that people aren't all well-meaning (and sometimes well-meaning people make mistakes). So an important thing to learn is to filter out the useful/good criticism vs. the bad.

I just checked, in your portfolio, results are online!!! I got funded, it says "retenu pour financement"!!! 

I just checked, in your portfolio, results are online!!! I got funded, it says "retenu pour financement"!!! 

Criticism is an essential part of academics I say. I always approach it as:
1) something that is not personal - just because they don't like my idea/research on whatever grounds, that doesn't mean I'm not liked or valued as a person. My advisor is the type that gives very hard criticism, yet we've always been great on an interpersonal level, no matter how hard he was on me. Although he criticizes my ideas and approaches, I know he has the best intentions and his opinion of me is not any less. It's also because he knows I'm trying to always 'push' things in new directions or just come up with some crazy idea. But I know he's doing this to help me. Never suspect that people are out there to get you, always assume they have the best intentions, not the worst.
2) It was at least worth having an opinion on - Yeah my idea may have been crazy or bad, but at least people took the time to think about it and talk about it. Still better than going unnoticed haha
3) something I can learn from - Maybe I should have framed my argument better, missed something important, or my argument/thesis can have better development. And sometimes we try something new and it doesn't work. That's OK. 
4) an opportunity to improve my argument - In line with 3. If I believe I'm right for whatever reason, I need to find a way to rebut the criticism I got. I always like this challenge.
5) something I don't always have to agree with. Sometimes it's just unfair and unwarranted. 
 
But let's face it - criticism ALWAYS sucks. I just try not to get emotionally attached to my work. And no project is perfect. Yeah, it sucks to be the one to be called out on, and sometimes the amount of criticism is unfair, but take it with grace. 

New hairstyle.

My graduate school had a Communications/Media department (not the academic department, but like a press office) that would help researchers do things like this. Their main priority is to help researchers write and distribute press releases about their research, but they will help with things like this too, if nothing else higher priority was on their project list. Is there a similar resource at your University?

I understand your discomfort and many English speakers do not choose to attend schools in Quebec because they prefer to speak in their native language. But as fuzzy said, there are tons of students who do choose to be evaluated academically in their non-native language. I would say about 25% of grad students at my US PhD program were not native English speakers. I also agree with fuzzy that in graduate school, classes/grades don't matter very much and it's such a small part of your graduate school experience! 
In the end, there must be a reason why you are considering schools outside of Quebec right? Do these reasons outweigh how you feel about evaluations in English? No one will "make" you go to any particular school, so you should choose the schools that best fit your own goals and needs! 

I got free pizza today. Yum yum 

Hello,
so I have met with my supervisor. It went pretty well. We've decided together that I'd keep the same research project but that I would broaden the population that I wanted to study. So my target population are women in general, instead of women of a marginalized community. And instead of doing multiple interviews, I'm going to conduct two to three focus groups with workers who intervene with survivors of sexual assault. We believe I should be able to finish it all within a year. It sounds like a good plan to me! 
 
 

I got free pizza today. Yum yum 

I got engaged yesterday! 

I slept until 12:00 today. I am heading out tonight for a dinner with a few friends. I am grateful for the amazing friends I have in my life. 

I slept until 12:00 today. I am heading out tonight for a dinner with a few friends. I am grateful for the amazing friends I have in my life. 

@CrazyPugLady you are absolutely right, and yes, I have started working on my application! (I have three applications for scholarships on top of my Ph.D. application so it's better that I start early).

I think part of it is being known for your research so that outlets seek you out for an op-ed. Beyond that, I find the Shorenstein Center's (out of Harvard) guidelines for op-eds to be really helpful.