rheya19

Hm, I'd say that people of color are often underrepressented in the work that is being produced in academia. They are underrepresented in academia as a whole. I'd say also that when they are actually being studied, it's often by "outsiders" (meaning White people studying people of color). I'm no expert on this topic, but I could give you a reference of a scholar in my city that actually studies topics related to what you've just described.

You answered your own question here. He misread your tone, maybe you're misreading his. Or maybe he was being immature and snapped in an unhelpful way, but would take it back if you had a conversation when you're both calm. As a general rule, if up until now things have been good, and you independently know that he's stressed out with things that aren't about you, it might be best to simply wait this out. Everyone has more difficult times; he really should be better about handling it in front of students, but unfortunately he's not. It's up to you to decide if this is a deal-breaker and you want to work with someone else, or if you can let this go. But I think it's important that you not continue working with him and *not* let this go, because it'll impact your relationship in negative ways. It's okay to be upset and to take time to work things through, but at the end of the day, you have to find a way to move on. 

Frankly it just sounds like he's busy and under a lot of pressure, and isn't handling it terribly well. It's probably got nothing to do with you. I understand that you don't like his tone when he's in this mood, and I can imagine that I would be the same. So that much I think is justified. That said, people aren't always good at taking criticism in real time, and especially when they're under pressure. Sounds like your conversation just pushed his buttons at a time when he wasn't ready to listen. Just like in other types of relationships, there are people who want to work things out immediately as they happen, and there are people who need to calm down and think things over before they have a conversation about what happened. If he's the latter type of person, you insisting to hash things out when he is telling you to let  them go might cause this kind of blowback. I don't know you or him, but I think that it'd probably be best if you ease off and try to have this conversation again at a later time, hopefully when whatever is on his mind is over. 
Meh, I don't know what led up to this and what he meant exactly, but again, things that are said in the heat of the moment might be things we later regrets. You might also not be in the mood to interpret him generously, given your interaction. In any event, the fact that he would be okay with you working with someone else does *not* mean he doesn't respect you. I think that good professors should always be happy to have their students meet with other profs, and if a student ends up choosing to make someone else their primary advisor, a good professor can understand and accept that and not be offended. Unless he told you he is no longer interested in working with you, I'd avoid over-interpreting anything. 
Wait, there's a long time between qualifying exams and graduating. And usually an even longer time between graduating and no longer being dependent on one's advisor (as in, unless you get a job immediately out of grad school, you'll need LORs from him for a while longer). I don't think suffering from a non-functional relationship over years is advisable. For quals, I think you don't want to touch anything at this point. I guess there are practical questions about the track record of this person and the department, but unless you have some specific concerns, I'd just leave it and concentrate on prepping for the exam. After that, when it's time to concentrate on your dissertation, there are ways of gently rotating people off the committee or replacing the chair. But I think this may be entirely premature. This sounds like out of character behavior, so why don't you give your advisor the benefit of the doubt and trust that there may be outside Life factors (or Work factors) affecting him that have nothing to do with you. It's a shame that he's not better at handling it, but this can happen to anyone, and maybe at this point you should just wait a bit to see what happens. 

Is it possible to hook it up to the back of a UHaul truck when you move the rest of your stuff?

Totally forgot I started this thread! (That seems to be a recurring theme for me...I often see a post title and think "Wow, I have that same problem," only to realize I started the thread several months back. I need to work on checking gradcafe more regularly, but I digress). 

Interesting to hear everyone's perspectives. As it turns out, I corrected the student in question, who had a really teachable attitude about the whole situation and wasn't defensive at all. She started meeting with me more frequently at the latter half of the semester to talk about her paper topic. After that, I better understood where she was coming from (SUPER Catholic family/upbringing) and really enjoyed getting to know her as a person. (Would my reaction have been different had I known her as an individual before midterm when she first wrote "JMJ" and might I have been less harsh in my reaction? Maybe. In some ways I fault myself for reacting so strongly when she was really just a nice person who was clueless on this issue). 

Thanks, xypathos, I think you're right. When I was applying 6 years ago, the chair of Syracuse's department did tell me my project was "too theological" in my initial conversations with her (which is funny since Caputo was a member of their department for years and they produced people like Jeff Robbins and Clayton Crockett, but I digress...) So you're right that they are definitely not that interested in projects or prospectives that are seen as too confessional.
Busut, I think you'd be fine at a top div school. I would honestly just apply to all the top div schools/seminaries (Chicago, Vandy, Princeton, etc.) if you can afford the app fees. Then you can pick the school that gives you the most money. Some of the schools on your seminary list would be fine for PhD applications, but others not. I wouldn't bother with Talbot for instance or anything in that ballpark. TEDS is probably on the edge of being too conservative to be able to get into any RS PhD programs. I went to Fuller Seminary for an MAT and ended up in a secular department for my PhD, but that degree likely kept me out of other programs I applied to (at least in part.) You would be much better off going to a major div school or Princeton though because 1) You'd simply be more competitive in PhD applications and 2) There's a good chance you would end up paying far less than at an evangelical seminary or maybe even nothing at all. 

@rheya19 I definitely see where you are coming from. I used to be really sensitized to this with everyone around me. It felt like my personal and professional lives identified me first as a girl (not even woman) to talk down to, pat on the head, and say "you're pretty" before dismissing whatever point I made.  About 5 years ago, the constant derision drove me nuts. That was one part of my decision to re-make my life. The sexist problems in my life did change with the rest of the re-make. As I'm in a sector of health care, most of my co-workers are women, and the CEO is even a woman. My social life became a lot less sexist (which is ironic because a lot of those friends from before are gender non-conforming).  Now my 'female-ness' is about as inconvenient to me as my 'left-handedness' - and I'm not worried about humanizing my hand preference...
Contrarily, I am aware that this is still a social problem that women deal with every day whether in America or globally. Which is why I'm fully willing to say "oh, I don't see it that way, but I can see why someone would. I'll need to be more aware of this going forward."
 

LOL I've been putting far too much time into thinking about this, but I think I figured out why I feel like the term "female" (as a noun) is subtly demeaning: because so much of the world is constantly trying to either infantilize or objectify women. Women have so many fewer fair representations in the media; women have difficulties finding equality and respect in many, many relationships throughout our lives; our experiences in scholarship are "feminist scholarship" whereas men's perspectives are "scholarship;" etc etc. I mean, I get that to most of the world, my main characteristic is "female," but I also know that I am not just my plumbing and someone to sell cosmetics to, and I'd really like everyone else to catch on. Maybe other women here have similar or different opinions. 

LOL I've been putting far too much time into thinking about this, but I think I figured out why I feel like the term "female" (as a noun) is subtly demeaning: because so much of the world is constantly trying to either infantilize or objectify women. Women have so many fewer fair representations in the media; women have difficulties finding equality and respect in many, many relationships throughout our lives; our experiences in scholarship are "feminist scholarship" whereas men's perspectives are "scholarship;" etc etc. I mean, I get that to most of the world, my main characteristic is "female," but I also know that I am not just my plumbing and someone to sell cosmetics to, and I'd really like everyone else to catch on. Maybe other women here have similar or different opinions. 

LOL I've been putting far too much time into thinking about this, but I think I figured out why I feel like the term "female" (as a noun) is subtly demeaning: because so much of the world is constantly trying to either infantilize or objectify women. Women have so many fewer fair representations in the media; women have difficulties finding equality and respect in many, many relationships throughout our lives; our experiences in scholarship are "feminist scholarship" whereas men's perspectives are "scholarship;" etc etc. I mean, I get that to most of the world, my main characteristic is "female," but I also know that I am not just my plumbing and someone to sell cosmetics to, and I'd really like everyone else to catch on. Maybe other women here have similar or different opinions. 

I also prefer the term "woman" to "female." I'm a female human being, i.e. a woman. I don't think anyone I've met is purposefully trying to demean me by calling me "a female," but it is strangely, subtly dehumanizing. It doesn't feel right. 

I also prefer the term "woman" to "female." I'm a female human being, i.e. a woman. I don't think anyone I've met is purposefully trying to demean me by calling me "a female," but it is strangely, subtly dehumanizing. It doesn't feel right. 

If you were a colleague, I'd take you out to coffee and have a serious conversation with you about implicit bias and the obstacles I've encountered in my career that you probably don't even see. Since you're not, I'm going to simply hope that someone else will perform that service. 
 
Edit: Don't message me about this. I have exactly zero interest in having private conversations with oblivious men. I posted my comments for the silent majority that reads these posts, in the hopes that some of them will actually learn something, and for the women who might not feel empowered enough to interject themselves.

This is my last post on this particular point because it seems like a waste of time and I didn't mean to derail the conversation. If you didn't know there was an issue and didn't mean offense, educate yourself, accept that there was something you didn't know, and don't try and defend it. All you had to say was "thank you, I didn't know that." I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't mean anything by the original post, but your latest replies, @BunnyN and @samman1994, using a term I just told you some women find offensive and mansplaining why you think it's not? Please. I find it very telling that the original post in question had the poster referring to himself as an "old man" and his potential love interests as "younger females". 

You might want to educate yourself about respecting women, yes. Why is it surprising that women want to be treated as human beings that have value beyond their reproductive organs? 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/tracyclayton/stop-calling-women-females?utm_term=.dvW7DZ2vz#.wszZdPxe9

Where did I say anything about "going out to bars"? Oh, that's right. I didn't. My concern is more that someone who is singlemindedly focused on coursework and research misses out on some of the key learning that's necessary to succeed in academia. As much as I loathe drama and politics, academia is full of them and being able to navigate these successfully is crucial when you're junior faculty. Even outside of academia, every workplace has its drama and it pays to pay attention, even if only so you can avoid getting caught up in it. You don't have to take my advice but, maybe someone else on this thread will find it of value.
@SarahBethSortino, I did plenty of socializing (both with my cohort and with others) in grad school that didn't involve going to the bars. We would go out for coffee, have work sessions in local coffee shops, work out together at the gym, watched sports together (live or on tv) etc. A lot of what I did with people was driven by our shared interests. I know that others would go biking, hiking, or rock climbing together, for example.
Looking back at my PhD, I had two good friends in my cohort (one MA/PhD student and one PhD student) plus two good friends (one each from the two cohorts ahead of mine*). As others have said, those are the people who have reviewed my grant, fellowship, and job application materials (yes, even when we were applying for the same thing!), given me feedback on drafts of journal articles, etc. In my case, we all have similar-ish research interests, which makes some of those things easier. I've never actually published with any of them, though I also wouldn't rule it out as something that might happen in the future. Those in the cohorts ahead of me were useful for thinking about exams, committees, coursework strategies, navigating weird institutional policies, etc.
Here's what I've noticed about those who were from the city where I did my PhD and had a network outside of campus. They didn't make close friends with anyone but then would all of a sudden become very friendly when they needed something. This meant that they were a lot nicer to others when they wanted a copy of your successful fellowship application, for you to share a syllabus and set of assignments you developed, or wanted your feedback on their fellowship/grant materials. I... dislike when people do that. It's one thing to share with your friends and another to share with someone who is basically a stranger that you've seen in the hall sometimes. So, regardless of whether you make lifelong friendships, I'd encourage everyone to cultivate collegial relationships with others in the program so you gain these informal benefits.
*BTW, when I say "cohort", I'm referring to when we started our degrees. For any number of reasons, several of us finished around the same time, despite not starting in the same year.

You're assuming you'll be the only one who isn't the traditional age, or that doesn't fit in easily to the culture. 
Graduate school is largely a bunch of people with really divergent backgrounds and interests and experiences that can make for some really great friendships, or at least acquaintances. Not always the case, and there's definitely a slice of grad students that are "traditional" heavy partiers just out of undergrad... But I can guarantee that anywhere you end up that will not account for all of your cohort. So find the people that are unusual or interesting, and make friendships there. 
My officemate was ~10 years older than the average grad student, and married with kids. We had one guy in our cohort that had been a professor in Russia for quite some time and was swapping fields, and another that was in his late 50s.

FWIW, even though I had a number of friends already in the city where I did my PhD.... the very close friends I made in my cohort are at least 30% of the reason I made it through sane and graduated. Even with my wife as a grad student at the same school, people in my cohort were going through what I was, when I was, and I trusted them to give me advice about what I was going through. 
Your cohort mates (in a non-dysfunctional cohort) are the people who should act as a safety net. The people that will know when you're going to have a bad day, or who can read the signs part way through and make sure you take time off in the evening to blow off steam. Also, as mentioned, they are your future colleagues. Not all of them are people who you want to keep up with after grad school, but getting to know your department enough to know which ones you do is key. My two close friends from my cohort and I still try to get together a few times a year (conferences or otherwise), and have gone on vacations with our significant others now that we're out and actually making decent salaries. They're the people I trust to look over manuscripts, give feedback on grants I'm working on, and help me through tough career decisions. 
I definitely saw people who got "over involved", but I think keeping a healthy balance of fun intermixed with grad school is crucial. For you, that may not be with your cohort or going out to bars (not really my thing either), but making sure you have time that you spend doing things that are not productive is important. 

I think it's important to also consider the context/reason why these grad school websites suggest making an effort to make friends with your cohort. In my opinion, the reason is that you do not want to be isolated in your program. Grad school can be a tough time and having a strong social support network is important. 
So, building good friendships in grad school is one (maybe the most common) way of getting this support. However, for you, @SarahBethSortino, since it sounds like you are already going to be in a good place in your new city, with friendships already established, then this might not be as relevant to you. If you find your own support elsewhere, that's great. 
I would say that friendships in grad school can serve other roles too though. Briefly, here are some reasons to try to make friends with your cohort and/or other students in your program (in different years):
1. They can provide support specific to your department/school and look out for you. For example, when I was starting out, if I have a weird interaction with a prof, I can go to my older friends to see what it might mean. Or, now that I am almost done, I help my younger friends navigate things like picking a committee, preparing for quals, etc. My friends and I, of all years, also can share school-specific resources or help each other out because if one of us needs to know about X, another one might know someone who knows a lot about X.
2. If there's something difficult going on in your life at some point, your grad school friends can help you out. Maybe they can take notes for you in class. They can make sure you're not falling too far behind. They might be able to submit homework/paperwork on your behalf or do random things that you might not be able to be physically present for. And of course, they can still do all of the other stuff that friends do for each other, this is mostly a list of reasons why friends in your department can be helpful that non grad school friends might not be able to do.
3. Friends in grad school (whether it's your department or another school) can relate to your grad school experiences more directly and sometimes it's easier to talk to other students about difficult situations involving grad school. Friends outside of grad school are also great though, as they help put things in perspective.
4. Finally, if you want to continue in academia, your cohort and other grad students will eventually be your future colleagues. At least in my field, they will be the ones reviewing your papers, your grants, deciding who gets invited to conferences etc. They will also be your future collaborators, potentially. A lot of people think about networking only in the context of going to conferences and meeting people, but you can build some of the strongest networks within your own department because you have way more time/chances to create a strong relationship. And your colleagues are also going to go on and do great things and meet more people and they can be the link to someone you need later on in your academic life. This is more related to the second reason why I think these websites suggest you make friends to succeed in grad school (and beyond). 
That said, I also don't really think it's necessary to go bar hopping and to do all of the partying stuff in order to make friends in grad school. Sure, depending on your department's culture, it might be a really good way to do it, but it's not the only way to do it. Friendships take time to build and I actually spend most of the time building friendships during the work day and on campus. You don't have to be uncomfortable in a bar if you don't like it, and you'll find people that share your feeling too, in grad school. It's not like everyone thinks that going to bars is the only way to socialize. Some of my best friends in grad school don't drink at all, or very rarely.
I do think that spending time with your friends outside of work, i.e. when you both choose to invest your personal time into the relationship, is an important part of creating stronger connections though. For me, I do go to an occasional party, play on intramural teams with my friends, participate or plan in fun outings once in awhile on the weekends (e.g. Disneyland one year). There's lots to do that doesn't revolve around drinking, bars, partying etc. I personally take the strategy of saying yes to everything at first, meeting everyone, and then being a little more selective and choosing to spend more of my personal time with people I click with better.
And also as @AP pointed out, you don't necessarily have to make friends with only your cohort. You might click/have more chemistry with some of the older students, or the more mature younger students!

As a 26 year old married to a 37 year old, I'd probably say you could be a bit more open-minded. Not all 20 somethings are straight out of college. You might find it difficult to connect to someone whose life thus far has included going to high school and then straight into the US college system (which, to an Australian who spent a semester at a US college in 2010, seems very much like a continuation of high school). But that's not going to be every single person in your cohort. I guess these are the types of things you can't really know until you're there.

Getting hung up on wording isn't all that important, and there's also some variation in how these words are defined and used across schools and fields. 
Scholarships and fellowships are often (but definitely not always!) institution-internal funding sources for supporting students. They usually don't come with any strings attached in the form of service -- that is, you're not required to complete a certain project in exchange for the money. You have flexibility in the research you want to do. They  can be merit-based or need-based. Graduate fellowships are not usually need-based, that's something that's a lot more common for undergraduates. Grants are also funds that are used to support student research, but they are often (a) institution-external (e.g. come from the NSF or NIH), and (b) are there to support a particular project with an already determined outline of predicted deliverables. Fellowships can sometimes (in some fields, very often) simply support the student regardless of the particular project they choose to work on. A stipend is what we call that part of the funding that actually goes to the student, as opposed to parts of the money that might go toward tuition/insurance/overhead... 
Assistantships are money you get for work, either an RAship or a TAship. When you TA, you are responsible for some combination of sitting in the lecture, giving office hours, grading, and leading one or more lab or discussion section. Responsibilities vary. RAships would usually entail doing work on a project for a professor, where they have money that's been earmarked for paying students to do work related to their (already approved) project. Their money might come from external grant or an institution-internal pot. It shouldn't really matter for you, with two exceptions: (a) some grant money is designated as for use only for US citizens or permanent residents, so if you're international you might not be able to get it; and (b) again if you're international, you aren't allowed to work more than 20 hours a week, so the official designation of the source of the money might matter so you don't exceed this requirement. 
Now, to make life even more confusing, sometimes the official designation of where the money comes from could be different from the actual work you're required to do. For example, in my PhD department, money from all funding sources was pooled into a large pot, and everyone was payed the same amount every semester. There was some amount of money whose source was fellowships and some whose source was earmarked for TAships, but where your money actually came from was independent of whether you happened to TA a certain semester or not. (Everyone had to TA some number of semesters, and you could choose which ones to do it in.) This had tax implications for some (international) students, but otherwise was basically invisible to the students. But as an international student I always made sure I would be on fellowship money*, because that would allow me to work for extra pay (as opposed to TAship money, which automatically assumes I'm working 20 hours a week and can't work any more), and for tax reasons that matters because of a treaty my country has with the US, where fellowship money got a larger exemption than TA money. 
* And so this is yet another reason why being good friends with your grad secretary is a good idea.. 

If students are too young for you, you might try to find events that target postdocs and junior faculty, who are more likely to be in the right age-range for you. Not all events will be open to grad students, but some social events might be. 

One of the best options in that case is attending as many mixers and events as you can. I live in a place with several colleges and universities so I cannot completely relate. Yet, I was in my early 30s when I started grad school and I met my bf in a grad school event (he was a postdoc in another department, nothing to do with my discipline so it was the only way our paths could have crossed). Also, getting a campus job that has high interaction with people may also help!
Edit: I realized you were not looking for suggestions, but these are the thoughts I've got right now... 

Don't do that. If you've taken the time to look up the grievances against Manning, then you've seen that she uses feminine pronouns.
 
But, I understand your point and I tend to think in the same way. It makes a difference if it's an institutional issue or if it's a smaller division of the university.