a_sort_of_fractious_angel

Hi - it shouldn't be a problem at all. I never stayed the full length of any of the 5 conferences I attended. 
Conferences are very much "get out what you put in," in that no one is taking attendance and you're not required to do anything but give your paper. 
Although, if there are panels that could be relevant to your work, it would behoove you to attend them (it's also nice to have an audience as a presenter - I've seen some morning panels with 1-2 people aside from the participants which can be a bit of a bummer.)
It is also nice to network if you're able (there's usually a big reception at the end or the beginning and smaller ones throughout that can be fun.)
That being said, it's fine to structure the conference around your time/financial constraints - I had to arrive and leave the same day for one conference, so I was only able to give my paper and then listen to one other talk, and no one cared. 

Hi - it shouldn't be a problem at all. I never stayed the full length of any of the 5 conferences I attended. 
Conferences are very much "get out what you put in," in that no one is taking attendance and you're not required to do anything but give your paper. 
Although, if there are panels that could be relevant to your work, it would behoove you to attend them (it's also nice to have an audience as a presenter - I've seen some morning panels with 1-2 people aside from the participants which can be a bit of a bummer.)
It is also nice to network if you're able (there's usually a big reception at the end or the beginning and smaller ones throughout that can be fun.)
That being said, it's fine to structure the conference around your time/financial constraints - I had to arrive and leave the same day for one conference, so I was only able to give my paper and then listen to one other talk, and no one cared. 

There's nothing wrong with tattoos in academia. They're super common, and they don't necessarily read as unprofessional or off-putting. I think you should feel free to expose them if you want, even while teaching.
Your professor's comment was inappropriate and pretty creepy...but it's not your fault, and there's nothing you should do in reaction to it. The problem is with him. Commenting on people's bodies is always dicey, but even then there are still so many ways he could've given you a compliment on your tattoo without making it creepy (e.g., as you mentioned, without the wink and the 'on you.')
I know it's difficult not to be self-conscious, but try not to let this incident make you self-conscious about your tattoo or your body, much less make you cover it up.
 

@jrockford27 and @indecisivepoet are right - lean hard on the Princeton Review and it'll get you where you need to be. 
Also, I didn't get a perfect score but I had success with apps.
I've heard (from profs who sit on adcoms, profs who don't, and others tuned into application life) that the verbal score - out of all 3 - matters the most. You may be required to have a baseline Quant score (part of a cumulative score of 311 or whatever they want), but the AS score is, like, whatevs. 
A kick-ass SOP and WS outweigh all 3 by leagues, so don't fret if you've a decent AW score (my $0.02).

Hi - wanted to drop a line. All of the above is excellent advice and I'll just add (again) that the WS & SOP (in relation to fit) are the most important parts of this application - the other parts matter, yes, but they will never outweigh a "fitted" SOP & WS. 
I'm happy to read or look at the SOP and/or the WS for any of the 2019ers. Granted, I am an internet stranger, but I had some wonderful people here on GC look at my materials during my application season and I found their perspectives very helpful precisely because they were strangers and could point out things that peers and faculty perhaps didn't see. 

Hi, could I take you up on this as well? I have a History background and applied to schools for PhDs in Literature this past fall and am trying to assess my application before I go in to another round and would really appreciate it if you had time to look at my SoP. Thanks! 

bumping an old thread, but the GRE. SUCKS. my fee waiver so very generously covered 50% of it, but 50% still makes the test 100 bucks. and there were technical difficulties. i lost a paragraph of the essay and two/three minutes due to the server crashing. thanks, gre!
poor website design and poor wording on said websites are absolutely maddening. if it takes me more than three or four clicks to get to graduate funding, or at least a preliminary explanation of the funding, i get a little nervous. 

This is the right advice. Widen your scope beyond what you think "makes sense" (within reason - don't apply to places where absolutely none of your interests are pursued.)
Anecdata: the PhD I'm entering in the fall & and the 3 faculty members I'll likely work the most closely with --
One has a similar transnational/historical methodology to mine but works in a related but very different region.
One has a similar interest in diasporic literature but focuses on another related but largely different region and looks at media I don't currently consider.
One has a hemispheric approach that takes my region of study into consideration. However, they are centuries away from me and don't study novels (which I do). 
When I went to visiting days, I was told that the program - while excited about my app - paused before saying YES because they wanted to guarantee they could support my scholarship. 
They decided that they can , and I get the sense that they are interested in taking the dept in a direction that I'm also interested in. Bully for me but, more importantly ... 
I would have NEVER known this as an applicant. My letter writers didn't know this, either. Essentially, no one that I knew understood that this dept was the perfect fit for me.
In some ways, I think it was a case of "right place, right time" - if I'd applied 3 years earlier or 3 years from now ... I don't know what would have happened. 
All to say - tailor your SOP and WS to you and what you want to spend 5-8 years studying. And be open to depts wanting you, even if they're depts that (on "paper") don't make a perfect fit. If you can see a way through and if you like the dept --well, really think about giving them a shot, even if you're unsure about your odds of success. 

This is the right advice. Widen your scope beyond what you think "makes sense" (within reason - don't apply to places where absolutely none of your interests are pursued.)
Anecdata: the PhD I'm entering in the fall & and the 3 faculty members I'll likely work the most closely with --
One has a similar transnational/historical methodology to mine but works in a related but very different region.
One has a similar interest in diasporic literature but focuses on another related but largely different region and looks at media I don't currently consider.
One has a hemispheric approach that takes my region of study into consideration. However, they are centuries away from me and don't study novels (which I do). 
When I went to visiting days, I was told that the program - while excited about my app - paused before saying YES because they wanted to guarantee they could support my scholarship. 
They decided that they can , and I get the sense that they are interested in taking the dept in a direction that I'm also interested in. Bully for me but, more importantly ... 
I would have NEVER known this as an applicant. My letter writers didn't know this, either. Essentially, no one that I knew understood that this dept was the perfect fit for me.
In some ways, I think it was a case of "right place, right time" - if I'd applied 3 years earlier or 3 years from now ... I don't know what would have happened. 
All to say - tailor your SOP and WS to you and what you want to spend 5-8 years studying. And be open to depts wanting you, even if they're depts that (on "paper") don't make a perfect fit. If you can see a way through and if you like the dept --well, really think about giving them a shot, even if you're unsure about your odds of success. 

No, your friends should not do that. They don't need more teaching experience. They probably need more money and should do what @a_sort_of_fractious_angel did. Adjuncting is horribly exploitative and should be avoided if at all possible, not just for their sake but for the profession's sake as a whole. And as @a_sort_of_fractious_angel points out, additional teaching experience will NOT help their application. 

I can't speak to successfully getting an adjunct or alt-ac position, but I see you mention non-ac employment - that is what I did after my MA. 
For context: My MA didn't have a teaching component. I worked 4 semesters as a writing center tutor, 2 semesters as a research assistant on a digital humanities project, and 1 semester as a grader (I split grading essays with the professor). I also applied (for my second time) to PhD programs during my MA and assumed that I'd just go straight on - alas, it was a shut-out.
So, I first looked into adjuncting but my lack of TA & teaching experience made me a poor fit for those jobs and I didn't have the time to buff up my teaching skills. Additionally, a percentage of the adjunct jobs made it clear that the PhD was preferred and I was worried that the market would be already flooded with people who had teaching experience & a PhD in hand.
So, I took a non-ac job at a small online sales company - I'm still there now and do copy writing & social media marketing. 
A few months after starting this job, I applied to about 25 alt-ac jobs (student affairs positions, alum relations positions, learning resource/writing center positions, general university staff positions) and I had zero luck. I didn't have the necessary training/knowledge/experience - most of the alt-ac jobs that interested me required someone with a M.Ed and all required at least 2 years (sometimes more) of specific types of work experience. **
There are positives to the adjunct and alt-ac route but I'll leave that discussion to those who actually work/have worked those jobs. So far as the pros to working a non-ac 9-5 job while applying to PhDs ---
(1) The money is nice. It's not 6 figures but I make considerably more than I would have made teaching and I've been able to save up as I've worked - this means that PhD applications weren't a huge financial burden this season and I'll enter my PhD program with a modest but stable financial base.
(2) The structure of a true 9-5 is great - I never take my work home with me, so my evenings and weekends are all mine. I spent June through Dec working on PhD apps and, while it was stressful, I never felt that my job interfered with getting the apps done (granted, it did help that I had 2 seasons of application experience behind me.) 
FWIW, I applied to 14 schools this season and got 5 offers. While I don't know exactly why I didn't get into the other programs, I can guarantee my non-ac job had nothing to do with the rejections. And I was accepted to a program that requires teaching in year 1 - I even asked the DGS if my total lack of experience would be a problem and they said not at all. 
I do have a few friends who went the adjunct route during the gap year between the MA and PhD - the advice they got (which I consider sound) was to not just take any adjunct position for the sake of having a teaching job. Teaching experience won't get you into a program - the SOP and the WS will.
Final thought: it's hard to get adjunct jobs and it's hard to get alt-ac work and it's hard to get a non-ac job. I think the best approach is to find a a job that doesn't take more time than a job should - long commutes and unexpected time commitments and extreme financial worries won't help you out during the application season. If you can minimize stress and maximize time spent working on the SOP & the WS, it'll pay off.
I'm sorry for not having better advice on adjuncting itself but I hope what I do have helps someone - good luck! 
** I searched for adjuncting and alt-ac jobs in a metro area that spans 3 states and which has a large number of community colleges, suburban private colleges, satellite campuses of large state universities, and a slew of inner city colleges & universities.

Bucknell University offers a non-competitive, fully funded, two year MA program. Carnegie Mellon offers a partially funded one year MA program.
Bucknell is a great dept - supportive and collegial - and has done very well with placing their MAs into PhD programs (Harvard, UPenn, Vanderbilt, Temple, etc). CMU, while different in the details of its academic strengths, is also a very supportive and friendly place, and their MAs also do well with both PhD apps (I know they placed someone at Virginia but I don't have as much knowledge about what other programs - which there are - at this time).
Both depts have scholars doing work in modern and contemporary literature and, depending on your specific areas of interest, one (or both!) might be a good to consider.

Good advice on finding the person that will best help you. Just a note for the OP that this depends on each department though. At my PhD department, the grad coordinator is the faculty contact for administrative things related to academics (e.g. signing a form for going on leave, adding/dropping classes etc.) However, for things like reimbursement, there is a small office of admin assistants in the department. Each assistant is responsible for a few faculty members so the current students are supposed to go to the admin assistant assigned to their advisor. One of the admin assistants takes charge of the recruitment visit process and prospective students should go to that person for reimbursement help if you aren't a current student. 
In the OP's case, it sounds like they already found the right person to talk to. But I thought this might be helpful to others in similar situations.

Involve the coordinator ASAP.  Whenever I've run into bureaucratic hold-ups, I just go back to my grad coordinator and tell him that the bureaucracy is being a nuisance and explain my timeline.  He then contacts the right place.  That's the job of the graduate coordinator in your department: they take care of all the administrative needs like reimbursements.

^agreeing with the above. Be polite, but you are entitled to the money they owe you. For what it's worth, this happens all the time. You need to stay on top of them and on occasion, you need to cc more than one person on your email to get anything to happen. It's annoying, but that's the way it often is. Don't give up; follow up periodically. 

Like others said, schools are often very slow. 
This is money that you are owed, so I would not give up on it. It makes sense to be smart about how much you want to push them, but you should continue to check in every few weeks or so until this is resolved. Graduation also has very little to do with anything. Most schools have fiscal years that match their government (i.e. US schools Oct 1 - Sept 30, Canadian schools Apr 1 - Mar 31) and even if the deadline is passed, most schools have processes to finish up slow claims as long as it was started / committed prior to the budget closed.
By the way, in grad school and other parts of academia, you will constantly have to maintain good positive relationships with others, especially those in power over you, while consistently holding firm to your own beliefs and what is rightfully yours. If you don't then you will be taken advantage of and trodden all over. So consider this a good first step.

The University of Pennsylvania has a Call For Papers (CFP) website - you can find it here: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/
I've only used it to look for ones that were close to me (US Southeast/Northeast) but, if I recall correctly, I think they offer international conferences as well. Might be helpful to you?
Totally. I was accepted to one of the big, int'l conferences in my field as a first year MA with no publication history. I still have no publication history but have been to three other professional conferences (and co-chaired a panel for one.)
I would guess that certain huge conferences are (obviously) going to perhaps be a bit more competitive than others, but if your proposal is exciting and understandable (they're usually pretty short, so try to be super clear about what you want to do), and it aligns with the panel's theme, you shouldn't struggle to get yourself accepted.
When I co-chaired a panel, we tried to get papers that touched on the same broad topics so that the presenters (who were working on different texts) had something in common and could talk to one another. So, if you happen to get rejected from a panel, it may just be that your paper doesn't fit with the others for that particular session. 
 You don't need to have a fully polished paper to take with you - some (most) people I know use conferences to get feedback on a project that is in its early stages. I've taken a couple seminar papers that I knew needed a lot more work and I've taken papers that were (at the time of applying) more of an abstract + lit review + outline. Conferences are great for bouncing ideas off of people in a (relatively) low stakes way. 
Usually, conferences have a meet-and-greet / drinks & food on the first night (or over several nights) and a thing to do (like a round table or another mingling kind of event) during the day - you can go to those and just mingle with people. You can also speak to people who present & attend your session. And you can go seek out other panels that look interesting to you and introduce yourself to people there. I like using the last two approaches since you will be armed with something to talk about (which, for me, makes networking feel less like awkward in-person cold-calling and more like genuine conversation.) 
Nope. I presented at a conference the fall after I'd graduated from my MA program. I was an "independent scholar," if I recall the ID tag correctly. No one cares, IMO. 
**My experience is as an MA in the US, but I'm pretty sure all conferences (generally) work the same. If I'm incorrect, I apologize!

Hey, @indecisivepoet - I'm not punctilious but I have some info/opinions that might help you. 
I found the NRC rankings more useful than USNews precisely because they don't have one definitive number (like USNews does with the rank number and its corresponding 1-5 score.) The more holistic score gives (I think) a better sense of how programs are perceived IRL. Granted, the NRC rankings are now, what - ten years old at least? Bear that in mind. Also, USNews is not "updated" for this fall (it's the 2017 rankings, I believe.)
When I first started thinking about programs, I looked most closely at the S-Rank, Research, and R-Rank columns. What I found interesting is that there are programs that score well in Research but not so much in R-Rank. I paired that info with the dept's strengths (which I learned from the websites/etc.) 
Doing so made me realize that some programs are generating powerhouse scholarship BUT - for myriad reasons - maybe aren't viewed that way by other programs. Could be that faculty at school A don't really know anyone at school C, so they don't have a favorable (or unfavorable) perspective on scholarship (so, like, if a 19th century scholar is asked about a program that really doesn't do 19th century scholarship, they probably won't have a high score to give.) Could be a handful of other reasons. 
So, if you're going to go down the rankings rabbit hole, I think the NRC is better than USNews because you can use it to learn a bit more about strong programs that you might not have otherwise considered. Beyond that, both of them are pretty much useless. 
My advice would be to skim both lists to see if there are any programs you hadn't thought about looking at, but then turn your attention to what kinds of info the programs themselves are offering and what kind of work the faculty/and students are doing. 
Re: handbooks - @Warelin is spot on. The handbooks explain what milestones you need to meet by when. And it gives you a sense of what kind of support is offered by the program beyond "we will fund you."

Hey, @indecisivepoet - I'm not punctilious but I have some info/opinions that might help you. 
I found the NRC rankings more useful than USNews precisely because they don't have one definitive number (like USNews does with the rank number and its corresponding 1-5 score.) The more holistic score gives (I think) a better sense of how programs are perceived IRL. Granted, the NRC rankings are now, what - ten years old at least? Bear that in mind. Also, USNews is not "updated" for this fall (it's the 2017 rankings, I believe.)
When I first started thinking about programs, I looked most closely at the S-Rank, Research, and R-Rank columns. What I found interesting is that there are programs that score well in Research but not so much in R-Rank. I paired that info with the dept's strengths (which I learned from the websites/etc.) 
Doing so made me realize that some programs are generating powerhouse scholarship BUT - for myriad reasons - maybe aren't viewed that way by other programs. Could be that faculty at school A don't really know anyone at school C, so they don't have a favorable (or unfavorable) perspective on scholarship (so, like, if a 19th century scholar is asked about a program that really doesn't do 19th century scholarship, they probably won't have a high score to give.) Could be a handful of other reasons. 
So, if you're going to go down the rankings rabbit hole, I think the NRC is better than USNews because you can use it to learn a bit more about strong programs that you might not have otherwise considered. Beyond that, both of them are pretty much useless. 
My advice would be to skim both lists to see if there are any programs you hadn't thought about looking at, but then turn your attention to what kinds of info the programs themselves are offering and what kind of work the faculty/and students are doing. 
Re: handbooks - @Warelin is spot on. The handbooks explain what milestones you need to meet by when. And it gives you a sense of what kind of support is offered by the program beyond "we will fund you."

Hey, @indecisivepoet - I'm not punctilious but I have some info/opinions that might help you. 
I found the NRC rankings more useful than USNews precisely because they don't have one definitive number (like USNews does with the rank number and its corresponding 1-5 score.) The more holistic score gives (I think) a better sense of how programs are perceived IRL. Granted, the NRC rankings are now, what - ten years old at least? Bear that in mind. Also, USNews is not "updated" for this fall (it's the 2017 rankings, I believe.)
When I first started thinking about programs, I looked most closely at the S-Rank, Research, and R-Rank columns. What I found interesting is that there are programs that score well in Research but not so much in R-Rank. I paired that info with the dept's strengths (which I learned from the websites/etc.) 
Doing so made me realize that some programs are generating powerhouse scholarship BUT - for myriad reasons - maybe aren't viewed that way by other programs. Could be that faculty at school A don't really know anyone at school C, so they don't have a favorable (or unfavorable) perspective on scholarship (so, like, if a 19th century scholar is asked about a program that really doesn't do 19th century scholarship, they probably won't have a high score to give.) Could be a handful of other reasons. 
So, if you're going to go down the rankings rabbit hole, I think the NRC is better than USNews because you can use it to learn a bit more about strong programs that you might not have otherwise considered. Beyond that, both of them are pretty much useless. 
My advice would be to skim both lists to see if there are any programs you hadn't thought about looking at, but then turn your attention to what kinds of info the programs themselves are offering and what kind of work the faculty/and students are doing. 
Re: handbooks - @Warelin is spot on. The handbooks explain what milestones you need to meet by when. And it gives you a sense of what kind of support is offered by the program beyond "we will fund you."

Hey, @indecisivepoet - I'm not punctilious but I have some info/opinions that might help you. 
I found the NRC rankings more useful than USNews precisely because they don't have one definitive number (like USNews does with the rank number and its corresponding 1-5 score.) The more holistic score gives (I think) a better sense of how programs are perceived IRL. Granted, the NRC rankings are now, what - ten years old at least? Bear that in mind. Also, USNews is not "updated" for this fall (it's the 2017 rankings, I believe.)
When I first started thinking about programs, I looked most closely at the S-Rank, Research, and R-Rank columns. What I found interesting is that there are programs that score well in Research but not so much in R-Rank. I paired that info with the dept's strengths (which I learned from the websites/etc.) 
Doing so made me realize that some programs are generating powerhouse scholarship BUT - for myriad reasons - maybe aren't viewed that way by other programs. Could be that faculty at school A don't really know anyone at school C, so they don't have a favorable (or unfavorable) perspective on scholarship (so, like, if a 19th century scholar is asked about a program that really doesn't do 19th century scholarship, they probably won't have a high score to give.) Could be a handful of other reasons. 
So, if you're going to go down the rankings rabbit hole, I think the NRC is better than USNews because you can use it to learn a bit more about strong programs that you might not have otherwise considered. Beyond that, both of them are pretty much useless. 
My advice would be to skim both lists to see if there are any programs you hadn't thought about looking at, but then turn your attention to what kinds of info the programs themselves are offering and what kind of work the faculty/and students are doing. 
Re: handbooks - @Warelin is spot on. The handbooks explain what milestones you need to meet by when. And it gives you a sense of what kind of support is offered by the program beyond "we will fund you."

A program's handbook usually has critical information regarding the specific department at the school. It might contain information regarding stipends, conference funding, program layout and expectations. The stipends might help you decide if you'd be able to afford to live in that city on that stipend alone or if you'd have to have one or more roommates. Some people have no problem sharing an apartment while others would prefer living alone. Conferences are an important part to your career. You'll want to make sure to know how funding works at that school. Some schools offer guaranteed funding; others have you compete for it. Some provide none. You'll want to know if you'll have to set aside money for those expenses. Program layout and expectations can provide a general timeline for when everything is expected in order to graduate on time. It'll also show you how many electives you can take outside the department. If your project is more interdisciplinary in nature, this is more important because there might be classes outside the department which can influence at how you look at your research that interests you. Looking at classes offered in recent years can also help you determine how well your interests align with current faculty interests.

This is officially my favorite thread on this forum! I applied and got in!!!!!!!!!!!!! ?

Hi - wanted to drop a line. All of the above is excellent advice and I'll just add (again) that the WS & SOP (in relation to fit) are the most important parts of this application - the other parts matter, yes, but they will never outweigh a "fitted" SOP & WS. 
I'm happy to read or look at the SOP and/or the WS for any of the 2019ers. Granted, I am an internet stranger, but I had some wonderful people here on GC look at my materials during my application season and I found their perspectives very helpful precisely because they were strangers and could point out things that peers and faculty perhaps didn't see. 

I think you've gotten it perfectly @a_sort_of_fractious_angel. If a tuition waiver isn't guaranteed, some people have been kind enough to include that in the notes section! With so many schools and programs now covered in the document, it's impossible to verify 100 percent of them so updated information is appreciated even if the school's information has been entered in a previous year.
While not all schools offer mandatory fees, there are some schools that do. Tuition waivers and health care coverage aren't included under stipend because the amount isn't paid to you. Sometimes, information regarding conference funding can also be found in the departmental handbook if it isn't included in the acceptance letter.