Roccoriel

Is there some special setting I need to accomplish this? because I just checked an email I sent this morning and it still says "sent on behalf of ridiculousname@gmail.com". I'm not too worried about it, but it would be nice to know my future advisor isn't having to stifle a snicker when my emails come across

I live near Philly, and in my apartment complex, there is no choice but Comcast for cable TV and internet, so i use them. The service isn't horrible. I've been able to call in and resolve problems I've had, and while the wait on the phone was often long, most of the time the people i've spoken to have been very nice (of course, I am not confrontational and this usually helps to get me nicer service). The pricing is horrific, though. I pay about $130 a month for cable and internet, and while I have a few movie channels (not like HBO or STARZ or anything that has good movies) and ondemand, I still feel like I'm getting ripped off somewhere (maybe because I used to get HBO before I moved and the changed their prices and now I don't have it and pay more?). Internet is slow, but not terribly so, granted, I don't play games or download much.

I do have some money in savings, so I feel pretty okay with that, especially since I will be making more that I previously was and shouldn't have any new expenses. The school won't care whether I take the loans out or not, correct? I just don't want to step on toes

The only problem I've found with forwarding to gmail is that you gmail name can sometimes show up on your emails sometimes, so if your gmail is something silly, I'd use them separately, unless you don't care My gmail is something silly, and I was forwarding school emails directly to gmail all through my masters and no one said anything, but I probably will keep 'em separate for my PhD

So, I received a TA for this year, but because I filled out FAFSA, I also received loans. Now, the TA-ship will allow me to make more than I've made in previous years (as I was working more-or-less part time as a Masters student). If I know I can eat properly and remain in my apartment on the TA-ship, is there any reason I should take the loans? I have a lot of money out in loans already, and I would seriously like to not take any more out! Thanks for your help!

I'm starting my first year in the fall and fully intend to start reading when I know what classes I'm taking. I'm nervous, and I'm sure I'll feel more comfortable if I have some idea regarding course topics going in! I have an otherwise chilled-out summer, so it wouldn't be to difficult for me to at least review my test books. In a similar vein: should I contacted my future advisers and find out if there is anything they recommend me doing this summer? I will also be a TA, is there something I should do about that over the summer?

Okay, thanks everyone, less confused (and worried!) now. It seems there is no rush in most cases. The admin I contacted replied that the dept. sends out a packet on the course offerings, and if I have any questions from there, I can contact my adviser. So I can just chill out until I get the packet

I'm just starting here this fall, but have lived in the north DE, southeastern PA region all my life. I currently live in a suburb of Wilmington and intend to stay there, it's a cute, if older apartment complex and my bf already works in Newark, so I have a free ride or can take the train if needed, so I'm not a lot of help on housing, unless you want to be quite off campus and then I can maybe help. I've been out a few times in Newark (a friend is dating a guy at UDel) and the main street is pretty nice with a lot of bars and restaurants. I've eaten in a few and enjoyed them. It's also not far from Wilmington or Philly (I'd say 15-20 minutes Wilmington and maybe 45-60 minutes for Philly). If you like the country side, there is a lot of that around, along with a few state parks and if you're into the beach about an hour away. The area around Newark may be country, but if you're a foody, there are some amazing restaurants within a 45 minute drive (if pricey, I only go on super special occasions). I grew up riding horses, so i can also tell you that there are a lot of horses and horse events nearby if you're into that (like shows, pony polo, etc). :-)

I am just able to register for classes, and while this is super exciting, I have no idea what I should register for as this fall will be my first semester. I received an email from the university which told me to contact my department secretary to find out, but my department has no secretary and the admin I contacted yesterday morning hasn't gotten back to me. i plan on giving her another day, but if she doesn't get back, should I contact my adviser? I have seen several posts here saying that advisers sometimes don't know which courses one should take, and i don't want to bother mine necessarily, but I do need to register! There are two required courses, so i assume I should register for those, but I need one or two courses in addition. Thanks!

This is extremely important for me, since my boyfriend's entire family lives in France, and we both enjoy visiting them. I imagine its best if I can schedule my trip around school shutdowns then, so i am not missing a big chunk of days? We usually go for 2 weeks once a year.

What exactly is considered a casual hat? I buy hats like some people buy shoes or purses and would like to start wearing them more. Obviously, big ones with feathers and ribbon are out (as is my Victorian riding hat), but fedoras, berets, and the like...can I get away with them if I take it off before class starts?

I'm just graduating from Penn with my Master's, so just wanted to say have fun New Deck Tavern has amazing onion rings and make sure you go to Magic Carpet for lunch, their falafal wrap is amazing (as the block long line attests to). It's a great area with a lot to see and do.

haha, I did finally just decide to do it one way, did it that way, and sent it out. no one said anything, so I guess I'm okay!! Thanks for the advice on changing from roman numerals to arabic ones, too. I couldn't even find that searching in the help section for word.

Now that I know what I'm doing this fall, I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do this summer. After all, it is possibly the last summer I'll have where I don't have a lot I have to do. It's like a last hurrah! of sorts. So this summer, since I won't have classes, I plan to: Devote 3 hours a week to learning French. I've been meaning to, but with courses, papers, work, and exams, I never seem to have time. My boyfriend's entire family is French, and some don't speak an abundance of English. It would be nice to be able to talk to them, plus I felt like a giant idiot when I visited France and can't speak French!Get back in shape. I used to run track, exercise horses, and be more active. Pulling 12-15 hour days due to work, class, etc, put an end to that. I'm tired all the time, and think it's likely due to not being active. I'd like to get some sort of exercise in every day, even if it's just a walk.Learn to sew. I have a sewing machine. I'd like to make some outfits for the fall.Cook something new once a week.Travel. I go to France after graduation, and to Williamsburg just before starting in the fall. I may also do a few days at the beach at some point. After all, I probably won't have a lot of travel time for a while!I am also continuing to work at the place where I did my master's thesis, on various projects, but having free evenings is so exciting! Anyone else have any big plans for the summer?

I have one! I will be a TA in my department. I understand that I don't take classes in the summer, so will I simply continue to TA and work on my research? How do summers generally work out?

I was accepted to a school that's a 20-30 minute drive from home. I hate moving, so we're not. From our current apartment, I can either drive down, ride down with my boyfriend (who happens to work in the same town I'm studying in) or take the train (if I can find a way from the station to the school). So I have several options as to how to get to school. I suppose it would be easier to live a bit nearer to campus, but tbh, my master's program is a 1 hour train ride (each way) from my apartment, so 20-30 minutes seems a good deal!

I've never had to write a paper with a table of contents, so I am a little confused by it. Since the abstract comes first, followed by the table of contents, I assume I put the abstract in the table of contents. What has me confused is whether I'm supposed to include the table of contents. stupid question, I know, but I just don't want to mess this up! Also, if anyone knows how to make word label some pages with small roman numerals and some with regular numbers, I'd love to know!

When I got accepted to the first school, without funding, my mom was like "Well, even if you don't get funding and can't afford to go, I'm still proud you got in!" She, like, was ultra excited that I even got accepted (which shows she understands how hard it is even to get to that point!). She was even more excited when I got into the other school with funding When I got accepted w/ funding to the school I'm attending, it was general congratulations and excitement via facebook. As far as real-life people, LOL, my adviser for my Master's gave me a hug. My dad and step-mom took me out for dinner. My step-mom is psyched b/c the school I'm attending is her alma mater for undergrad. Actually, the school where I'm doing my Master's is my Dad's undergrad alma mater (which means I can give an informed opinion on the pluses and minuses of each...).

Thank you all again for your advice. I am actually passing (whew!), so I am going to work on improving what I need to improve so that maybe I can bring my grade up even higher (so I don't just barely make it). But at least I know that I am currently doing well enough to get my B.

I think that would be an option, and I would probably do so, if needed. It's just so frustrating that I've been just fine with every other class I took and now, in my last semester, I'm having a hard time with a class that I am taking as an elective. I'm sorry if I sound like I'm freaking out (even though I am). I'm just super frustrated that a class I didn't even have to take might prevent me from graduating on time, especially because I could have taken an extremely easy class instead. Yeah, I definitely want to avoid that, but at the same time, I would learn how to do back flips, train tigers, and build a rocket ship to pass this class so I can graduate. I just want to let the professor know that I will improve anything that needs improving and do additional work, if need be, to pass. But I also need to understand the scale of the class, because my grade isn't too far below a percentage B, there's a chance that I am already passing and going out of my mind for no reason. I don't want him to hand me a passing grade, I want to earn it, but at the same time, I need to find out what I'm doing wrong, because I haven't been slacking and feel like I am actually putting extra work into this course (because it is outside what I normally do) and doing worse. I won't say that to him (that I'm putting in extra work and doing worse), because I realize I shouldn't, but it makes the whole situation even more frustrating. Ah, well, I guess I'll see how my meeting with the prof goes. Thank you all for your advice EtA: Another thing I'm not sure if I should mention is that my department requires a B to pass, whereas his department requires a C, on the off chance that he gives me a C, thinking he's passing me, and he's not. Is this something I should mention subtly (as in "I need a B to pass, and I was concerned that I currently seem to be a bit below that. What can I improve or do differently on my assignments, etc")?

I will not miss getting up at 6:30 to get the train by 7:45 to get to work (which is technically my Master's thesis) by 9 so that I can leave at 4-5 to get to class by 6. I don't get home until 11PM, at which time I still have to eat dinner. I do this 4 days a week. The other days, I rush to do homework, papers, etc while doing all the other errands I can't do when I am pulling a 10-15 hour day. Nope, won't miss that! While I know that my PhD will be lots of work, it's closer to where I live and I won't waste 2.5 hours a day trapped on the train! I expect to maybe even make it home by 8 most nights I also will not miss taking out loans! I will miss working on my Master's thesis. I love it! On the bright side, my advisers at the University where I am working on my PhD may have come up with a plan where I could consult my current adviser, which would be excellent

I was just guessing, based on them wanting my final transcript from the school I am currently attending. I just assumed that if they wanted that, there was a chance that they'd see the bad grade and boot me out. Plus, I need this course to have enough credit to get my Master's...so I'm not sure what the PhD program will say when I send my transcript and am all like "Yeah, so you know that Master's I was going to receive this spring....yeah. Not so much." I think I've learned my lesson about taking tricky electives in other departments. I'm going to talk with the prof today, explain my situation, and ask where my work needs improvement and if there is any additional work I can do to improve my grade. Although, I am also not sure where the rest of the class stands, grade-wise, so for all I know, I could be okay... Is it fair to ask him if it looks like I am a likely candidate for a B (my dept's required passing grade)? I know percentage doesn't always equal a specific letter grade.

Thank you for your good wishes. The PhD is actually at another school, so I really need to do well for this class. I am going to go to the professor and explain everything tomorrow. I hope he is understanding, like you say, but I am nervous, especially after I emailed him and he told me the best way to improve my grade is to do well on the homework, which, while true, isn't extremely helpful... I've also looked at the second project and it seems to involve more calculating and less writing, so I imagine my partner will be able to help a bit more than she could in the last one. I took the portion of it that involves writing, so she could do the calculations rather than the writing. *fingers crossed* that my meeting with the professor goes well tomorrow, he offers better advice, and my partner is good at math!

So, I was finally accepted into a PhD program, with funding, and was totally excited. Until now. I'm graduating from my Master's program in May, which would be awesome. Except for one little problem. Instead of taking the final thesis course, which was basically how to write and such, I took a more difficult course to feel like I was getting everything I could out of the program. And now, halfway through the semester, I am not passing it. There are multiple reasons for this, the top two being that a. it's really broad, but the homework tends to involve specific questions which weren't necessarily well covered and are hard to find information on (and sometimes aren't clear) and b. my partner for the major projects is not the best at writing in English. We have a second project to work on together, and I'm not sure what to tell her, because I literally had to spend more time re-writing her sections of the first one than I did writing my own sections. What also didn't help is that, while we answered the questions, the prof thought we should have read more papers, and took off close to 10 points for not using enough sources (and there wasn't a requirement about this stated in the assignment). If I don't get my grade for this course together, chances are, they'll revoke my admissions to the PhD program. I am meeting with the prof tomorrow (though, when I emailed him, he told me his best advice was to "do well on the rest of the assignment", so I don't know what I will accomplish with this meeting). What should I ask him? Should I say anything about my partner, since I ended up doing a ton of extra work so that our paper made sense? I feel awful because she did help out as best she could, but because she doesn't write English well, I basically wrote the whole paper myself (and didn't have time to fill it out as much as I would have liked to). I don't want to throw her under the bus because she's not an English speaker, but it's not fair that I should have to submit lower quality work because I spent my time correcting her either. I feel terrible about the whole situation, like I feel ill about the prospect of hurting my partner AND about possibly losing my chance at a PhD (in a totally different subject than this, no less). Any advice?

So I was planning to reject admission from one of my schools by midweek (it has to be in writing, so I need to mail it, write it, etc). But they called me today and told me about how much they enjoyed meeting me and asked for my decision. So I told them like it was and thanked them for the opportunity and said how nice it was to meet them too. And I really liked both schools, but it was a combination of factors, funding vs. no funding being far from the least. But I feel like a big jerk anyway. *sigh* I guess it's normal to feel this way, but I still feel like a big jerk, particularly because I really did like everyone I met at both schools.