TheSquirrel

To reinforce what some others have said:
Learn to cook. Not just "prepare" or heat up pre-packaged foods; that's just as expensive as dining out. Take something like Mac and Cheese for example. One box costs between $1-$4 depending on brand. You can go to Target or Costco and buy 2 pounds of noodles and cheese for that much and feed yourself for a long time. Keep a bunch of spices on hand to season things. Buy beans in bulk. Buy frozen veggies in bulk, esp. when on sale. And actually prepare the food. It takes more time, but it's MUCH cheaper and healthier. Make your own coffee. Cook in bulk and freeze meals so you're not tempted to eat out for convenience.
I also canceled DVR/Cable in favor of the basic network plans, though I might cancel that as well since most of my shows are available online anyhow. I reduced my Netflix to the 1 a month plan.
Examine your cell phone plan. See if there's a better one for your uses.
If I think of more I'll post. But the biggest thing is cooking.

Strict budgeting. I spend $45 a week on groceries, have a yearly book budget (and separate budget lines for research costs, conferences, etc.), and at the beginning of the month I take out $100 cash from the bank which is all I allow myself to spend on luxuries (this includes going out, buying lunch and coffee, purchasing personal luxury items, etc.). The key is to figure out a yearly budget, cut what you don't need and create mechanisms to force you to stay in that budget like avoiding the use of your debit/credit card on luxuries. If you can see how much you're spending its a bit tougher to over spend.

Three key things:
1. Learn to cook if you don't already know how to. By this I mean learn how to do more than just throw something frozen in the oven. Chinese takeout is cheap and awesome, but what costs you six bucks at a greasey chopsticks place be made at home for $1.50 to $2. I can make two portions of mushroom risotto for $5 if I want to be real fancy.
2. Be smart about groceries. For health/environmental/cost reasons we only eat meat once or twice a week. I never, ever buy meat unless its on sale. Then I break it down into individual servings and freeze it in bags when I get home. Chicken breasts are affordable if you buy them at half off. The only pre-frozen food we have is "good" quality frozen pizzas that we buy eight of at a time when they go on sale for less than $2.50. It's not a replacement for cooking, it's a replacement for ordering a pizza.
3. Investing in some decent but cheap coffee making equipment is crucial for me. At home we use a stove top moka pot and a stove top milk frother. The end result is the ability to make something that approximates a latte on the cheap. At my office I have a driver (Abid sells them as "Clever Coffee makers" I think) which lets me make coffee in my office without having to go buy it for $2 or waste beans making an entire pot that either won't be drunken or will be drunken by someone who won't chip in. Coffee station coffee always ends up being so bad since people go cheap with it that half the people on a floor go buy coffee elsewhere whenever they want it and go broke. If coffee is important to you it's worthwhile to just drop the money on good beans and equipment from the get go in order to save money on getting it from a coffee shop.

I guess this thread really links up with my post in one of the other threads, about profs looking at PhD students as soon-to-be-colleagues, whereas MA students are typically viewed as, just out of undergrad, or, at best, as aspiring PhD students. My profs talk to me differently than the way they talk to MA students. It's quite obvious that they consider us as almost their equals, whereas MA students are mostly seen as, well, students.

Superior in what way? Superior in rank? Absolutely. If MA and PhD were one and the same, they wouldn't be called different things. There's a reason why, in my field at least, people are rarely if ever accepted into PhD programs straight from BA. In science fields that may be the case, but in my field, where you're supposed to have done tons of reading, yes, there is a huge difference between MA and PhD. And, for that matter, between a PhD student and a PhD candidate. If you think hierarchies don't exist in academia, you're mistaken.

And yes, there is a reason that profs interact with undergrads one way, with MA students another way, and wih PhD students/candidates yet another way. Whether you like it or not, it all changes, depending on where you are in the field. So I've been wondering if part of the disrespect dished out by some MA students has to do with the fact that they saw me as too desperate for socialization.

I really admire MA students who want to hang out with PhD students, and I view them as equals. Other MA students who are engaged in petty fights and gossipping? Not so much. Call it condescending, it doesn't change the fact that those MA students shouldn't have chosen academia anyway. Actually, most of them have not, because they just view grad school as a stepping stone to a government job (the ones who do the internship option in my program). Your MA crowd might be different than mine -- I'm wondering if anyone whose program has a similar internship option for students not interested in continuing further in academia, has any input on this?

Well, for those who accused me of elitism even though I clearly pointed out I was not talking about all MA students:

I have a friend who was, until 2 months ago, an undergrad student at my university. He's 30 and just finished his undergrad and is starting his MA at another university in the fall. I don't think I have any elitist views toward him, or that I think of myself as smarter than him. I used to hang out with a small group of students from my department (none of whom are PhDs, btw), two of whom were undergrads (including that guy who just finished his undergrad), and we played board games once a week during the summer, and every now and then during the fall/spring semesters.

It's not like I'm gonna stop being friends with my undergrad and MA friends. My question was really about whether or not I should continue hanging out with the broader MA crowd because experience has shown that *most* of them happen to be busying themselves with gossipping and badmouthing more than with writing those papers they ought to be writing. Those who are busy being grad students are not around campus often enough, and, by the looks of it, prefer not to socialize with *that* MA crowd either.

Hi rising_star,

Well, I don't have a problem befriending MA students per se. I'm good friends with two MA students who are in the thesis option and are very serious and intend to apply to PhD programs. My beef is with MA students in general, and how immature many (if not most) of them are/can be. I feel that being too involved with them, yes, diminishes my standing, because it drags me into fights/drama that I think serious PhD students would avoid.

I remember how, during my undergrad years, my TAs (all PhD students) were very serious and based on what I saw at my department back then, never really hung out with MA students, and actually mostly kept to themselves when at school. To me, that's what PhD students are "typically" like, and what I saw at my current university is entirely different than what I had expected to see, and somehow, it feels strange / not right. I don't know if my TAs were different outside the school environment -- could be. My question was about both hanging out with MA students while at the department as well as socializing with them outside the academic environment.

My strained relations with a few MA students has left me wondering if it was because I stooped to their level of immaturity in hanging out with them? I don't know, just thinking out loud. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the elitist kind -- if I had been, I wouldn't have befriended them to begin with. But some of my experiences with some MA students has left me wondering if it's better off being disliked for not being social enough, than being disrespected and laughed at and badmouthed, after being too social?

I don't know -- I just wanted to hear other peoples' views about this, and their experiences with it.

Well, for those who accused me of elitism even though I clearly pointed out I was not talking about all MA students:

I have a friend who was, until 2 months ago, an undergrad student at my university. He's 30 and just finished his undergrad and is starting his MA at another university in the fall. I don't think I have any elitist views toward him, or that I think of myself as smarter than him. I used to hang out with a small group of students from my department (none of whom are PhDs, btw), two of whom were undergrads (including that guy who just finished his undergrad), and we played board games once a week during the summer, and every now and then during the fall/spring semesters.

It's not like I'm gonna stop being friends with my undergrad and MA friends. My question was really about whether or not I should continue hanging out with the broader MA crowd because experience has shown that *most* of them happen to be busying themselves with gossipping and badmouthing more than with writing those papers they ought to be writing. Those who are busy being grad students are not around campus often enough, and, by the looks of it, prefer not to socialize with *that* MA crowd either.

and I'm sure hes also the type that puts PhD behind everything anyone will ever read about him... its people like him that gives other humble folks with this degree that actually do it for the science a bad name =/

You never miss an opportunity to badmouth people, do you? How does that indicate elitism? I wanted to see what other PhD students think about interacting with MA students, not what MA students think about interacting with MA or PhD students. If you don't like my question, don't take part in the thread, as simple as that. I think you're just trolling.

Rising_star,
And that's the sad reality of academia -- people who think they can do all that (gossip, badmouth, etc.) and then come home and write papers, and then get a professorship, and continue doing all that (gossipping, badmouthing). That's exactly why, sadly, academia is such a place of backstabbing and badmouthing, rather than collaboration.

As for your comparison with racists -- I frankly knew that was coming, but decided to write it anyhow. I have never seen a racist who *actually* has a black *friend*. A black person they may have talked to once or twice? Maybe. But that hardly makes people friends. So I think you're just as guilty of jumping to conclusions about my alleged elitism as I allegedly am of jumping to conclusions about MA students.

How do I know that profs view MA students differently than they view PhD students? Because I've been with them in the same room, and have seen them interact, and have also talked about MA students with my prof (I recently asked my prof if he had a RA opportunity for my friend who is a MA student), and he told me that, frankly, he doesn't want to hire a MA student, even though they get paid much less compared to PhD students. That they (the ones at my department, that is) are mostly not efficient time-wise, and not as reliable when they are needed ASAP. Again, that might be different at other universities, given that my university has a non-thesis MA option (internship), which is what most MA students do.

I've gone out for drinks many times with said MA students. I know them well enough. I'm not close friends, obviously. But I think I know what they're all about, judging by their actions. Having some of them around is just like having a walking-talking tape recorder that records everything you say about anything, and then uses it against you when you "stray" from their childish agendas. That's not exactly in tune with my definition of maturity. Maybe it is in tune with your and others' definitions of maturity.

Superior in what way? Superior in rank? Absolutely. If MA and PhD were one and the same, they wouldn't be called different things. There's a reason why, in my field at least, people are rarely if ever accepted into PhD programs straight from BA. In science fields that may be the case, but in my field, where you're supposed to have done tons of reading, yes, there is a huge difference between MA and PhD. And, for that matter, between a PhD student and a PhD candidate. If you think hierarchies don't exist in academia, you're mistaken.

And yes, there is a reason that profs interact with undergrads one way, with MA students another way, and wih PhD students/candidates yet another way. Whether you like it or not, it all changes, depending on where you are in the field. So I've been wondering if part of the disrespect dished out by some MA students has to do with the fact that they saw me as too desperate for socialization.

I really admire MA students who want to hang out with PhD students, and I view them as equals. Other MA students who are engaged in petty fights and gossipping? Not so much. Call it condescending, it doesn't change the fact that those MA students shouldn't have chosen academia anyway. Actually, most of them have not, because they just view grad school as a stepping stone to a government job (the ones who do the internship option in my program). Your MA crowd might be different than mine -- I'm wondering if anyone whose program has a similar internship option for students not interested in continuing further in academia, has any input on this?

I think the thesis option does make a large difference- for us, a non-thesis option can be as short as one extra year of coursework- and the MS students that take that really don't separate much from the undergrads/4+1 MS students. The thesis adds a research dimension that gets them into the lab, and working with the rest of the graduate students, which helps a lot. I'll also say there's a difference between those that you get to know in your lab, and those that you don't. The undergrads that work in my lab come to happy hours and stuff with us too- we work 8 hours in the lab today, I'm going to invite them to do some of the fun stuff as well.

My points were more on the general overview that MS students, depending on their goals/work ethic would either be viewed as more/less serious, and that I found there tended to be a large divide between the two groups.

In my department, we have almost no MS students- there's a program, but applications are not really encouraged. I work pretty closely with several other departments (we share lab space, floors, etc), and those are the students I'm commenting on. All the MS students in my department hang out with the rest of us.

I think some of it also depends on how many students you have, relatively, in the two groups. If you have large MS cohorts as well as large PhD cohorts, and especially if the two take fairly large portions of different coursework, it can serve to striate the "graduate" population into two groups.

For the university overall (combining sciences with social sciences) we don't make any distinction when it comes to social events- when we host "graduate" events, they're for all graduate students regardless of level, and no one seems to care.

I think people seem to be taking this from a "general observations" on students that fall into one group or the other, and turning into hard-and-fast "one is better than the other" or "they should be treated differently". I find, generally, the MS students I know are less separated from undergrad than the PhD students. That doesn't make them lesser, and it certainly isn't a rule- it's an observation. Making general observations is a completely different thing from taking those general observations and trying to apply them as some sort of predictive model to that population- something I'm not trying to do. I feel this important to clarify, because it seems like my previous posts have made it seem like we have strict rules against socializing between "ranks"- something that doesn't really happen.

As (I think) has been mentioned, you should hang out with the people that you get along with and that you have things in common with... Whether undergrads, MA students, post-docs, professors, etc... You just sometimes have to be careful (as starmaker points out) to be professional and mindful when your personal and professional lives intersect.

Hi everyone,

I am doing my PhD at a university that has a rather small PhD student population overall. My department itself has less than 10 PhD students, most of whom are not in my subfield (so we take mostly different courses, attend different talks because of our divergent interests, etc). And we are also outnumbered by a relatively larger MA program (most of whom do not end up writing theses, but doing an internship option which allows them to get internships in the government).

As a result, there are very very few opportunities for me to socialize with PhD students in my field (and the same goes for socializing with PhD students in other fields -- since there are very few inter-departmental events, etc.). I've often had to hang out with MA students. But lately, I've been feeling that I'm kinda "above" that crowd. There's been a lot of drama among the MA students, and I have had strained relations with a few of them myself. I feel that they are, in general, rather immature and childish, and that we really don't get along all too well. Most of them are still in that childish / undergradish partying/gossiping/badmouthing phase (actually, one of the PhD students still is, too), which really is not my kinda scene (I prefer hanging out with friends and having discussions and debates over beer, etc).

Do you hang out with MA students in your program? Should I avoid them in general? Do you feel like a PhD student who hangs out with MA students in general, gives the wrong impression to faculty, etc.? I mean, I don't mind hanging out with serious MA students. There are 2 MA students who have told me they don't like hanging out with their MA peers because they're immature, and prefer hanging out with the more mature/serious PhD crowd. What are your thoughts on hanging out with MA students? Also, what are your thoughts on getting involved in the department's graduate student association? Is that something that MA students usually do and PhD students don't? I'm kinda involved in that, but I'm wondering if I should withdraw from it? Do you think PhD students should distance themselves from MA students, and act more formal with them?

I'm aware that it varies by the kind of university one is attending, the nature of the program and the size of the department, etc. My department is fairly small (not counting the undergrads, of course) compared to other departments. My university is in a big city, located downtown, so yes, there are opportunities for socializing outside the university, but I'm interested in socializing with the university crowd.

Anyhow, your thoughts are appreciated.

My question was about exactly that , and what others' experiences have been like. There was no need for that hypersensitivity on the part of some. Your input is much appreciated.


Yes, sure, seeing as I have only lived in this city for a year now, I have a fairly good number of friends, from all walks of life. Some of my friends have vocational degrees, and others PhD degrees (or in the process of getting them). As I also stated, I have undergrad and MA student friends, too. I have a certain dislike for those who do the internship option of the MA program in my department (btw, for some perspective, there are only three thesis students in the entire MA program), but that is only because of my not-so-great experiences with them, and not because of their career choices (in fact, I've often said that they seem to be smarter than the rest of us who have chosen academia, because they will definitely have better job prospects). Anyhow, I do talk to them on a day to day basis, and often socialize with them, but after strained relations with quite a few of them, I was wondering if I made the wrong decision, and if I should've kept my distance.

Goes to show that some students never grow out of their immaturity. Really dude, grow up, and stop seeing things that aren't there, and picking fights for no reason. It's not fitting for a grad student.

Yes, I do think they're separate from me. That's why my department has a MA and a PhD program, and that's why my profs have different requirements for MA and PhD students in the same courses. If you have a beef with the fact that there are MA and PhD programs, take it up with universities, not with me.

The gist of my post was about how a good chunk of the MA students (as opposed to PhD students) at my department are immature. I have noticed that this is not so much about individuals, but about career choices -- the people who are doing the thesis option in the MA program are serious, the ones who are doing the internship option are the more immature/gossippy kind. Like I said, I indicated that it might vary from university to university, since my university has that internship option (and in my field, that's very rare). I'm not sure why this seems to be the trend among internship students. It might be the fact that they don't take coursework as seriously as thesis students do. At any rate, I think I made it fairly clear that I am biased in favor of thesis students for that reason. I was not portraying MA students as inherently evil, and PhD students as the good. Geez. As I said, PhD students, too, have demonstrated similar immaturity, but it's been rather rare compared to MA students.

You never miss an opportunity to badmouth people, do you? How does that indicate elitism? I wanted to see what other PhD students think about interacting with MA students, not what MA students think about interacting with MA or PhD students. If you don't like my question, don't take part in the thread, as simple as that. I think you're just trolling.

Can you show where I said that I said anything about fellow students to a prof? Let alone badmouthing them?

Hi everyone,

I am doing my PhD at a university that has a rather small PhD student population overall. My department itself has less than 10 PhD students, most of whom are not in my subfield (so we take mostly different courses, attend different talks because of our divergent interests, etc). And we are also outnumbered by a relatively larger MA program (most of whom do not end up writing theses, but doing an internship option which allows them to get internships in the government).

As a result, there are very very few opportunities for me to socialize with PhD students in my field (and the same goes for socializing with PhD students in other fields -- since there are very few inter-departmental events, etc.). I've often had to hang out with MA students. But lately, I've been feeling that I'm kinda "above" that crowd. There's been a lot of drama among the MA students, and I have had strained relations with a few of them myself. I feel that they are, in general, rather immature and childish, and that we really don't get along all too well. Most of them are still in that childish / undergradish partying/gossiping/badmouthing phase (actually, one of the PhD students still is, too), which really is not my kinda scene (I prefer hanging out with friends and having discussions and debates over beer, etc).

Do you hang out with MA students in your program? Should I avoid them in general? Do you feel like a PhD student who hangs out with MA students in general, gives the wrong impression to faculty, etc.? I mean, I don't mind hanging out with serious MA students. There are 2 MA students who have told me they don't like hanging out with their MA peers because they're immature, and prefer hanging out with the more mature/serious PhD crowd. What are your thoughts on hanging out with MA students? Also, what are your thoughts on getting involved in the department's graduate student association? Is that something that MA students usually do and PhD students don't? I'm kinda involved in that, but I'm wondering if I should withdraw from it? Do you think PhD students should distance themselves from MA students, and act more formal with them?

I'm aware that it varies by the kind of university one is attending, the nature of the program and the size of the department, etc. My department is fairly small (not counting the undergrads, of course) compared to other departments. My university is in a big city, located downtown, so yes, there are opportunities for socializing outside the university, but I'm interested in socializing with the university crowd.

Anyhow, your thoughts are appreciated.

Superior in what way? Superior in rank? Absolutely. If MA and PhD were one and the same, they wouldn't be called different things. There's a reason why, in my field at least, people are rarely if ever accepted into PhD programs straight from BA. In science fields that may be the case, but in my field, where you're supposed to have done tons of reading, yes, there is a huge difference between MA and PhD. And, for that matter, between a PhD student and a PhD candidate. If you think hierarchies don't exist in academia, you're mistaken.

And yes, there is a reason that profs interact with undergrads one way, with MA students another way, and wih PhD students/candidates yet another way. Whether you like it or not, it all changes, depending on where you are in the field. So I've been wondering if part of the disrespect dished out by some MA students has to do with the fact that they saw me as too desperate for socialization.

I really admire MA students who want to hang out with PhD students, and I view them as equals. Other MA students who are engaged in petty fights and gossipping? Not so much. Call it condescending, it doesn't change the fact that those MA students shouldn't have chosen academia anyway. Actually, most of them have not, because they just view grad school as a stepping stone to a government job (the ones who do the internship option in my program). Your MA crowd might be different than mine -- I'm wondering if anyone whose program has a similar internship option for students not interested in continuing further in academia, has any input on this?

Goes to show that some students never grow out of their immaturity. Really dude, grow up, and stop seeing things that aren't there, and picking fights for no reason. It's not fitting for a grad student.

I think it is more field specific than United States vs. Canada. In science, there does seem to be a distinction between those who pursue a Master's vs. a PhD (as Eigen pointed out) because you generally don't pursue a Master's if you are interested in the PhD. In social science (however), it is more common for people to earn a Master's at one school and then pursue a PhD at another school. Sometimes you may take some time off in between Master's and PhD, but sometimes you don't. I can't speak to humanities though as I am not sure what the norms are for that field.

You seriously don't know what differences in where we are in life means? Often, it means relationship or parental status.


I was thinking of outside the work/study environment. I go to coffee/lunch with people, out to happy hour, to just grab a quick beer, go to people's houses for dinner, etc. And, for the record, the profs do join us at times. Our department goes to happy hour on Friday after colloquium, and that consists of faculty, grad students (both MA AND PhD [i make the distinction only because you do]), and the speaker for that week's colloquium.


You really want hypotheses now? Okay, I'll bite. For the same reason grad students talk amongst themselves about when and where to go for dinner or drinks. Because they want to? Because faculty want to hang out without grad students around just like grad students want to hang out without faculty around? Because they need to discuss a work-related issue in the evening? Because they want to form a band together? Because they like each other's company?

Was that enough wild guesses for you? If not, I'm sure I--or someone else--can come up with a few more.


I'm drawing a distinction between professor-undergraduate student relationships, not between professors and students more generally. Personally, I don't treat MA students any differently than I treat PhD students. All of them are my colleagues and are potential collaborators on research or conference papers.


In my department, PhD students do not grade the work of MA students. Professors grade the work of graduate students, regardless of the student's level. PhD and MA students serve as TAs and they grade the work of undergraduates only.

Honestly, I feel like this thread has taken a massive detour because of your questions, TheSquirrel. People have already answered your original question and given you feedback on how you might better present such an inquiry in the future. I really do think you should make decisions about friendships based on what it is you want, not what other people think, which you seem hesitant to do for some reason. If you are need additional opinions about whether you can or should befriend MA students, I recommend you consult more advanced PhD students and/or a mentor in your field. They should be able to help you with this.

OK, so I read through most of the thread.



Considering you explicitly use 'in general' a number of times, and it's implicit in the rest of the paragraph, I'd say the 'criticism' of generalization is warranted. It goes from being about your specific situation (which, as I said in my first post, seems very irregular) to about an abstract PhD student and abstract MA students.



Again, your situation doesn't define the world of possibilities. I have not found such differentiation as you describe to be the case, and I'm sure others concur.



First, yes, there are distinctions between MA and PhD, but there's a reason another term exists, namely, graduate student. The gulf between MA and PhD students is, in my view, much smaller than, say, that existing between graduate students and faculty. Yes, hierarchies exist: by that token, would it make sense to ask whether faculty should socialize with graduate students, in general, or assistant professors hang out with associate professors? Professors with Professors Emeriti? Some users called you elitist. I wouldn't necessarily say that's the case (I'm actually an unashamed elitist politically, i.e., against populism, but that's a different story), but your implicit connection between academic 'hierarchy' and social relationships certainly can be seen as an aspect of what might be called 'social elitism'. You've expressed worries that socializing outside your station might be detrimental to your prestige or status ('in the eyes of faculty', and so on). That seems to me textbook elitism.

Second, it's simply untrue that, in your (and my) field, people rarely get accepted straight to PhD programs from undergrad. That happens all the time, and is the regular route to doctoral programs, in a small, obscure country I like to call the United States.

Questions
Is the gossip among the MA students different than the gossiping you do in the OP?
What "phase" of development are you in (other than being "above" your peers)?
Have you shown character by addressing these behaviors with your fellow students?
Have you demonstrating leadership by conducting yourself in a manner worthy of emulation?
Or do you just gripe about your peers behind their backs?

RecommendationsLook in the mirror to see if you're part of the problem you're experiencing.

You are feeling isolated for a reason.
You are getting hammered in this thread for a reason.
And I don't think that reason is because you're being misunderstood.
[*]Keep in mind that your professors may have the same doubts about you that you have about those whom you feel "above."
[*]If you don't want to participate in the activities of your peers, then opt out but keep your options open. (It sounds like they're blowing off steam.)
[*]Seize every opportunity to build the skill set you'll need as an academic.
[*]Do not post anything on line about your peers that you'd not say to their faces.