ExileFromAFutureTime

Rutgers is also unionized and they are militant- just authorised a strike vote. Mobbies in the best way.

Just secured housing!! It is all starting to feel so real in the best way. My DGS has been out on parental leave so there has been mostly silence from my program, but having a cute little house is making things feel much better.

Hi everyone, 
Would anyone be able to provide me with any encouraging words about moving to Ann Arbor? I'm starting my PhD there in the fall and am really having a hard time looking forward to moving to a small town. 
For reference, I'm Canadian and I've lived in Toronto and NYC, and am currently living in London. I don't drive and am not really in a financial position to buy a car and start doing it. I'm really used to being able to take super easy transit all around a city and having lots of interesting cultural things to do or tons of different restaurants and nightlife destinations, and just generally being in a big city. I've visited once last year for a few days, and found the whole thing a bit claustrophobic. I'm just really not a small town person. 
I'm trying to do research into it and I'm not really finding much to work with. The internet just keeps telling me it's a family friendly place (I'm finding this hard to take as anything other than it's boring, things close early and there are a lot of children around), easily walkable (this did not seem to be the case when I was there--there were so many highways and roads with no sidewalks and I swear 1/3 of the land was just parking lots), and better than other small towns in the Mid-West (which I can't help thinking is a bit of a low bar in this respect). Unfortunately I'm not really in to college sports either, so that whole thing is lost on me. It also seems difficult to get to other place around Ann Arbor without a car. The only option to Detroit was the Greyhound? And none of this seems to be made up by cheap rental prices either, given the captive market of students. 
People seem not to hate Ann Arbor though, so I feel like maybe I'm missing something. Is there an arts scene at all? What are the bars like (that aren't sports bars)? Are there areas that aren't crawling with undergrad frat boys? Is the food scene any good (I'm vegetarian)? Any good places to go dancing? Does everyone just take ubers and they're super cheap or something? 
I mean, I guess it's only a four hour train to Chicago, but that's hardly commuting distance. 
Does anyone have anything to say that makes the next 5+ years of my life seem less like a yawning expanse of boredom and me trying desperately to spend time elsewhere? 
Would really appreciate any tips at all! 
 
 

Accepted and committed to UT Austin! Anyone else going?

Eleventh hour acceptance off the UPenn waitlist on Monday!! Grateful. 
When I got the news, I was stranded in O'Hare after having been bumped from four (!) consecutive flights standby following Sunday's surprise snowstorm. I can now cross spending the night in the terminal off my bucket list. Eeks. The moral of the story is that this amazing news almost, almost made O'Hare tolerable. 
I forgot my GC pword for a while, but I want to say congrats to everyone--no matter what acceptances/waitlists/rejections you're left holding at the end of the cycle--bc this process is brutal and can be so heartwrecking. Last year at this time, I was bracing for another tenuous year of adjunct teaching. Academia is something, but it is not everything. 
 

Accepted off the waitlist at UC Davis. First acceptance out of 5 applications. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

Accepted UNC Chapel Hill’s offer today. You can take the girl out of Texas but apparently not too far out of the south!

Just accepted UNH's Ph.D. offer. Exhale.

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I accepted the University of Michigan's offer, PhD in American Culture. Feeling strangely ambivalent about it; it's a great program with tons of resources and I'm excited to begin the journey, but I do not like the location at all. Hoping to make the best of it as no offer had everything I was looking for.
Now to have a glass of wine. I'm relieved that this part of the process is over. 

I received an email from director of admissions at NYU stating that they won't be going to the waitlist. 
Well, damn. 

Eek! Accepted to WUSTL off the waitlist! 

Removed myself from the Emory waitlist. Fingernail biting time.

I committed to CUNY today. NYC here I come!

Officially starting at Columbia in the fall! 

accepted off the waitlist at Virginia!!! screamed when I saw the email, to the horror of everyone else around me on the train...

Also on the NYU waitlist and hoping to hear something positive by the end of this week! My partner and I would love to be in the city because we absolutely hate the idea of having to get a car and organize our lives around driving. We currently live in a city and are finding it difficult to imagine the next five or six years in a college town. 
A question in a similar vein: how is NYU healthcare?