fuzzylogician

Any reason not to share the fact that you're moving to a new lab, and say which one? I think it is totally fair to say that you have found a paid position in another lab and have decided to accept their offer. I don't think anyone can blame you for taking a paid position over an unpaid one. Say it's a great opportunity, you really appreciate the PI helping you get the research experience that got you this job, etc. If you currently have a good relationship with your PI, I would thank them for investing in you and giving you the opportunity to work in their lab, and - if appropriate - say that you are happy to stay involved in advanced current projects or to help train/turn over new projects to someone who can take them over. Being honest and thankful, and willing to help in the transition so nothing is lost when you leave, is the best course of action.

1. I'm not sure what you mean by a proposal. An abstract? It would normally look exactly the same as an abstract you write for a talk. You can find links to accepted poster abstracts on a lot of conference websites these days. Since I see you're also in linguistics, here is a recent one: http://nels45.mit.edu/program.html (you'll also find some version of a poster guidelines there). 2. I use powerpoint. You define the slide dimension to the size you want the poster to be, then you work from there. There is a lot of advice out there if you search for "poster guidelines" on google.

They don't know. It's a standard rejection letter.

Scheduling, as others have said. I am an evening person, so some time in the afternoons is dedicated to writing, and I try and make sure that the day is not otherwise overbooked so I'm not too tired by that point in the day. For the non-research portions of my work, I try to have quotas -- no more than X hours spent prepping for teaching, no more than Y time spent reading, grading, responding to students' emails, etc. I also schedule in my time off, and if it comes to that, my sleep. It's important to me to keep balanced and stay healthy, and it's much easier this way to look at your calendar and say "sorry, I am not free at that time" when someone wants to schedule something at a time when you were going to meet up with a friend or go to the gym. I have a policy that I only read and respond to emails once, so I try and resist the urge to check my email when I can't actually take care of it, so I don't do things twice. My inbox holds only emails that I still need to take care of, other things are filed away as soon as they are taken care of. I also keep lists so I don't need to keep stuff in my head. That frees me up to do research. My lists include everything I need to do, broken down into small achievable tasks. (I like crossing things off my list. It gives me a sense of achievement and it's a good way to have some accountability for your time.) For writing, I do outlines before I write any actual text. The outline goes at least to the level of subheadings, sometimes keywords for paragraphs. You can then fill the text in one paragraph or chunk at a time. I like meeting with people often, that kept me motivated. I also present fairly often in reading groups at my university. Also, as others have mentioned, sometimes you can not do all the reading, or solve all the most difficult questions on the problem set. You need to figure out what is actually expected of you. Finally, to be quite honest, everyone gets more done over breaks than during the semester. You are not the only one who is slowed down. It's normal, but there are ways to manage it to increase productivity somewhat.

I'd suggest running a search on previous questions like yours, concentrating in particular on the Interviews subforum: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/84-interviews-and-visits/. There are lots of relevant advice threads you could learn from.

What matters most is that the letter is the strongest it could be. That means choosing the writers who know you the best. The tenured/non-tenured thing doesn't matter, as long as we are talking about tenure-track faculty. It might matter a little if we're talking about visiting faculty or postdocs, who have a greater chance of disappearing from the field and/or being unknown, but they would also be people who normally wouldn't be around for that long because by their nature their jobs are transient. If your writers have connections at the schools you are applying to or they are famous, that is great. People tend to trust the word of someone they know. It's of course not a requirement, you can get into grad school without a letter from someone famous. I would only think of that as a secondary concern, if you had to choose between two possible writers, one well-known and one not, who are otherwise identical.

Please do not post the same request multiple times. Your other posts have been removed.

This. At least at my school, students on a F-1 visa didn't get a SSN for TAships and the like, but they got one if they had some external job (e.g. I was involved in managing our department's small publishing company and was paid for the job, so that allowed me to get a SSN). Regardless, it was possible to do all the necessary arrangements to live in the States without the SSN. See more information here: http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10181.pdf

Unless things have changed, you don't get a SSN as a student on a F-1 visa. However, you also don't need one. You get a ITIN number the first time you do your taxes and that's what you would use for that; you can get a liquor/driving license without the SSN, you just need to fill out some form that says you can't have one; you can open a bank account without the SSN or ITIN (but you may want to try a large bank or one with branches near the university, because smaller ones might not know how to deal with international students). Same goes for university functions, a phone contract, etc. It makes life more difficult, but everything is still possible. If you are dealing with a system that requires a SSN you may have to call or email to ask about your situation. I bet you they'll just tell you to input some fake number to get past that screen.

How independent you'd like to be changes from person to person. Personally, I wouldn't like the setup you are describing. I'd much prefer someone close whose office I can stop by once in a while to just ask whatever is on my mind. I also think it's important that someone is around to check up on you because sometimes things can go wrong and people can spend a lot of time feeling lost and unproductive; if no one is watching, it can take a while to recover. That said, I know other people who like to be very independent and don't meet with their advisors very often at all, which wouldn't work for me but seems to work for them. A related and very important question is if there is any kind of guarantee that your professor will still be around and active 4-5 years from now, when you are working on your dissertation, and if there is anyone else who could advise you on a more day-to-day basis. This is important both because you will need to form a committee and it's generally nice to have someone around to talk to whenever you need it, but more generally you may end up in serious trouble if your potential advisor is the only person that can advise you and he ends up not being able to do so for whatever reason (this is true not only for emeritus professors, but it's kind of obvious why it's a relevant concern in their case). If the only person you are interested in working with is an emeritus professor, I'd think twice before going down that route.

In addition to the above, it also depends on your goals for the postdoc and where you want to go. If you want a job in the US, it's often advisable to stay in the US and not move to another country. If you want a job in Europe, on the other hand, it's probably a good idea to find a postdoc there so you can solidify connections and be more visible (and of course, the same goes for the Far East, Australia, the UK, etc.). That said, I think that depending on your field, there are probably a few great schools in Canada that would allow you to remain visible and competitive for US jobs, and probably also some European schools like that as well. For my field, for example, I could easily list 4-5 good places for a postdoc in Europe that would certainly look good on your CV if you want a job in the US (or Europe for that matter) and also 2-3 good programs in Canada. However, this is very field specific and therefore probably difficult for a career center to advise on. It's something you would want to consult with your advisors about, taking your career plans and subfield into account.

I mean, there is no better advice we could give. Still, it's important to have these conversations so you go into this with a clear understanding of the job market and what you can do to better your opportunities. Prepare yourself for a hard time on the job market, even though I think it's very hard to imagine what it'll be like until you're in it. Consider the possibility that you will fail to get a job or that after a few years of trying you'll decide it's not worth it, and plan for that eventuality -- think about alternative careers you might enjoy and try and gear your education also towards them, not solely towards being a university professor. Network, publish, work super hard, get very lucky. Easy.

I know nothing about your field, so this is just a general rumination. I attended a school that has a very persistent reputation for being competitive and unfriendly. You hear it said all the time by professors and students at other schools. When I visited, I kind of thought I perceived it too. Since I started there, it's been a recurring theme in conversations with prospective students: are people really always trying to one-up everyone else? can you make any friends there at all? When you expect to see something, you find it in places where it doesn't exist. Because let me tell you, my program is anything but competitive and unfriendly. It is full of wonderful friendly and supportive people who became very close friends. So, the moral of my story is, rumors have wings, and people at other programs have good reasons to try and convince you to come to their school and not others, and besides how can they really know? I'd suggest actually talking to people who are attending now or recent alums to get the true story.

This is important yet I fear very difficult to achieve or even know about oneself ahead of time: Just to add my voice to the discussion as someone who's been on the job market a couple of times now: it sucks. It hurts. It's full of rejection. It's a full-time job you have to do at the same time as doing the actual job that you are being paid for (which, for most people, will involve a lot of teaching in some visiting capacity, post graduation). And if you are to remain competitive, you also have to maintain your research profile, in addition to teaching and applying. That means finding the time to do new post-graduation research, and travel to conferences to present it, as well as write it up, at the same time as prepping new classes, teaching and grading, and creating dozens of applications, and going on interviews (in the event that you are so lucky). You have to be ready for several difficult years and I think it is very important to think about back-up or alternative plans early in grad school so you can build your CV and profile to be competitive for those jobs as well. It's also important to sit down and think hard, alone or with loved ones, about when enough is enough. How many years are you prepared to be uncertain at any given point about where you'll be this time next year? Not having a guaranteed income, having to uproot yourself and your family, etc? The OP expresses this kind of raw emotion, my guess is probably right after the last rejection of the season or after a particularly painful one. That's an emotion you have to deal with, but it's worth weighing that against how you feel about your life and work on some better days. For me, it's still worth it, but I completely understand people who have decided that it's just not.

So you're concerned that they dropped the ball and that it may be a recurring problem? That's something that's worth figuring out. But if it's a one time thing, I'd just move past it and make a decision based on the relevant facts: will you be happy there? is it a good research fit? can you afford to live there? Re: independence at school A, that's great but the question is if they can guide you in work that they are not experts in, and what their placement record and perceived prestige is in your sub-area. Would you be at a disadvantage coming from there and doing your kind of work compared to school B? Of course, you also want to end up fairly independent even if you go to school B, as your goal at the end of the day is to become an independent researcher and not a derivative of your advisor.

I had a offer from a "program A" as you call it, which offered me a fellowship and overall stipend that would have been roughly $10,000 higher per year than what my "program B" offered, with a significantly lower cost of living at program-A-city. It was also clear that it would be impossible to negotiate with program B to bring my stipend up. I went with program B, and I don't regret it. The research fit was much better than program A, and at the end of the day that's what I was doing a PhD for. I did make sure that I could live reasonably well (student-style) on my stipend from program B. If that had not been the case, that would have probably changed things because my number one rule before starting exploring grad school options was that I was not going to go into debt for my degree. I guess the question for you are what are your priorities? How much better is the research fit / placement rate, etc. at program B? Can you live reasonably well on your stipend from program B? Overall, where will you be happier? That all said, there is no reason to be offended or upset about not being nominated for a fellowship at program B. I assure you that it's not personal. Moreover, you had better get used to there being other smart people around who may get some award over you. There will always be someone smarter than you, and what's more, more often than not, it's not just about being smart. It's about working hard and also about being lucky. So you didn't get this one; so what?

In general, one way to make up for a low GPA is with work experience. The farther removed you are from undergrad, the less relevant your grades are. Instead, programs start to look at what you've been doing since you graduated and your grades are looked at in that perspective. More specifically, in your case, I would suggest going about this in the opposite direction that you have been so far: find some programs that you might be interested in, read up on their admissions requirements, and see how you can go about meeting them. In addition (or, alternatively), seek out people who hold the kind of job that you would like to have in the future, and find out what path they took to get to where they are. It's possible that you'll have to do a second Bachelor's degree, but I think there have to be other options too, like volunteer experience, post-graduate courses, or work experience. Either way, though, you are definitely not doomed for life. There are many opportunities for you out there!

FYI they just emailed that registration is now open: https://lsa2015.uchicago.edu/register

If applying for a PhD program, prefer letters from people with PhDs. Someone who doesn't have a PhD (=a TA, for example) can't really comment about your potential to succeed in a PhD program, since they've never been through one themselves and have not advised anyone who has. Sometimes you can ask to have your letter co-written by the professor and TA of a class, so you get both the perspective of the person who knew you better and the perspective of the person with authority. Also, if applying for PhD programs, prefer letters from academics over ones from industry. If you have to mix, do two from academics and one from industry, or look into the possibility of having all 3 letters from professors and an additional supporting letter from a boss from an industry job. If applying for a more applied program or a Masters, you could consider having more letters from industry or people who have the kind of job you'd like to have in the future. Anyone who can say something about your potential to carry out the job you are hoping to be trained for. In general, prefer someone who knows you better over someone who doesn't, the reasons for that should be obvious. Also, prefer someone in a position of authority over a colleague. A letter from a colleague won't carry more weight than a letter from a friend or family member. You want a letter from someone who is in a position to evaluate your work and speak about it positively as it compares to others carrying the same role. A colleague is just not in that kind of position. Like above, you could look into having a letter co-signed by your direct supervisor and someone higher up, to combine the benefits of having types of perspectives in your letter.

Creation, it doesn't really sound reasonable to be asked to analyze a corpus if you are lacking even the most basic skills to put one together. Is this an assignment for some class? I have to say that it doesn't seem like there could be an easy way for someone here to help you without basically doing the entire assignment for you. That would both be a lot of work, and unfair/unethical. I would suggest that you reach out to your instructor or teaching assistant for help with this, or that you choose a different project that you have the necessary skills to carry out, if this is a topic that you chose.

I don't know what your situation is like. Sometimes you have a conversation with someone - they say something, you say something, then they pick up on the thing you said and develop it into a project of their own, or incorporate it into their already ongoing project. In that case, if it were me, I don't expect much of them, maybe an acknowledgement that I suggested they look at X, but it's really their thing and I don't now forever expect to be a co-author on their work or anything. If that's the kind of situation you are in, the best I can say is don't get into that kind of exchange of ideas with this guy; but also, that's really how advances are made in science so that's too bad. If we're talking about a more serious situation where you are working on a project and have some results which you discuss with this guy, and then he takes over and pretends he did all the work, then there should be some kind of proof that you did the work. In that situation I'd ask to speak to the PI confidentially and try and approach it as gently as possible given the circumstances, but try and get the situation clarified so he can't just go on and claim my work. Or, if it's not worth the trouble, I'd let it go but keep better records of my work that I could use to prove who did what if anything like this ever happened again, and stay the hell away from this person as much as possible.

Please don't cross-post the same question in multiple forums. Your other post has been removed.

3 years is particularly bad, I think. I chose this journal because it is known for having a fast (for linguistics) turnaround time for reviews, usually around 3 months as opposed to the more common 5-6, which I've experienced with other journals (so the slow process I described above is unusual for this journal). I wasn't aware of the backlog issue when I submitted. But for me, at least, having a paper sitting longer in the queue post-acceptance is better than having a paper be longer in revisions and then officially published quickly, since accepted is as good as published for my current job market related purposes. If these things are a concern, it is definitely something to consult with your advisor about. They will have a better idea about turnaround time and time to official publication for different publication venues that might be appropriate for your work.

Oh man, where do I sign up for that? I have a paper out for review right now that I originally submitted in October 2013. It's been a hard and slow process. If it gets accepted this round (and my god it really should), it'll probably end up being published in 2018, judging based on another paper that came out with the same journal in 2014 and was accepted in 2011. In the meanwhile I post my papers in my field's archive, but it's not quite the same thing.

In my field accepted for publication is as good as published, at least as far as admissions and hiring decisions go. Some journals have a backlog of 2-3 years of papers waiting in queue. You can sometimes get screwed for tenure decisions because of that, but the OP doesn't need to worry about that quite yet. Whether you can go from submitted to accepted in one year depends to a large degree on luck. If everything goes fast and well - your reviews are back within lets say 3 months (=fast for my field, you need to find out about yours), with just one R&R with nothing too major you can't actually address (so say it takes you say one month to do all the revisions), then basically an accept after the second round, then under this timeline you are done in under 8 months. That is super optimistic. I'd say double that and add a cranky reviewer for a more realistic process. Also, this doesn't take into account the actual research or writing stages. Those can take anywhere from a few months to a few years, longer the more inexperienced you are. So overall I'd say the chances of having a project you haven't even started yet accepted for publication by ~December are very close to zero. However, just having a serious enough project that you have been able to submit to a good journal will be helpful on its own. It'd allow you to have a strong LOR (and your writer can indicate exactly what you did on the papers you co-authored, so there shouldn't be any doubt about your contributions), and it'll help you write a better more focused SOP. Generally, having a submitted paper is not bad for someone who is just applying for grad school, even if it's not accepted yet.