fuzzylogician

I'm not gay and don't have any personal experience of anything similar to share, but I have friends who are gay and family members who are gay, so I've watched people struggle with this. What St Andrews Lynx says above is very true -- the more you wait, the harder it'll be to come out. People will have adopted preconceptions of you that will be hard to change, and some people might even feel that you've deceived them by maintaining those preconceptions. I'm trying to think about how I came to know that some of my not-so-close acquaintances were gay. I think the most common ways were either through posts on social media that mentioned the SO or showed pictures of the person and the SO together, or the person just brought their SO up in casual conversation, using a gendered pronoun that made it clear that the person was of the same sex. This involves sort of acting like people already know, and just being very natural and matter of fact about it. If you don't make a big deal of it, most people will just take it for granted that that's how things are. In that kind of situation, I tend to assume that I should have already known this and just accommodate this new information. I think I prefer this approach much more than a direct 'coming out' conversation, which can be uncomfortable for some, and puts in the center of the discussion something that should just be taken for granted and no one should get to judge or question. If/when you're feeling more comfortable with your friends, I think you should ask whether you could bring your SO to social events (or just do it, if that's the norm others have been adopting!)--you should not be missing out because you don't want to leave your SO home! Re: your advisor, being from a country where gay people are discriminated against or even persecuted by the state does not by any means entail that your advisor shares those beliefs. I would not assume anything about him just because of his origin. I would still not have a formal 'coming out' conversation with him, though, because that might put him on the spot and have unintended negative consequences. Your private life is not really any of his business, though not something to hide either.

LOL to the tone bit. I'm sorry but I can't help but think that you are over-reacting. No one except for you said there was any need to let the instructor know that you'll miss class more than a week in advance. Again -- since you emailed the grad coordinator, she can't just tell you it's ok to miss someone else's class so she said she'd email the instructors. She also said not to worry. The whole 'common courtesy' vs. 'permission' thing is just taking things to literally. The way you describe the handbook rule, it doesn't say that they will deny you credit for a course for justifiably missing one class (and even if it did, it'd have to be a crazy program to actually do that, and in that case the conference travel here is the least of your worries); what is probably meant is 'if miss lots of class for no good reason, you won't get credit for the course.' I'm willing to bet that you'll have to search hard for a case where this clause from the handbook was actually invoked. With that said, I am not against people opening threads to ask whatever questions they want, but you can't complain if the answers you get aren't exactly what you wanted to hear. People who disagree with you don't have a 'tone,' they just have a different opinion. I do hope things work out though; I don't think there is anything to worry about here.

I read this as an extension of the "normal reaction" TakeruK and bsharpe269 describe to a case where the student hasn't started school yet and is asking someone who is not the instructor of the class they'll miss for permission to miss class. The grad coordinator can't give a student permission to miss someone else's class but they basically said there should be no problem. I don't think there is any reason to worry -- the OP can go ahead and make plans for their conference. I don't see the issue here, but I also didn't see the issue in your original post either. It's common courtesy to let an instructor know that you'll miss their class, especially in smaller grad classes. You can "feel like a baby" if you want but why not just interpret it as being a cooperative adult and showing respect to the person who is standing in front of the class? From my reading of the response you got to your email, the way this interaction would have unfolded if you'd done it in person is you'd have told the professor you need to miss class to attend a conference, and they would have said 'no problem' and wished you good luck.

It is sometimes true that schools don't like to hire their own alums, but this is by no means a hard and fast rule. Even if it were true that going to school B meant you could not get a job there, I would still much prefer to go there given that it has better funding, scholars, ranking etc. and seems like an overall better choice. No offense, but the chances of anyone, regardless of how good they are, landing a job at any particular school are so slim that accepting a worse admissions offer just because that way you might (chances slightly > 0) get a job at the better school 5-6 years from now makes no sense to me. Choose the place that will give you a better education and better chances of success post-graduation--which sounds like school B, not school A. Now, this logic aside, seems to me that being in the area that you want to live in after graduation can have a lot of advantages, even if you don't end up with a job at the school you attend. You can spend your time making connections with nearby institutions, so that when you graduate you will have an advantage when you apply to jobs in the area. This will be harder to do if you attend a school that's far away.

You can apply to SSHRC, which is similarly prestigious. FWIW, a few years down the line you will be eligible to apply for the NSF dissertation improvement grant, which is not limited to citizens only.

Generally speaking, yes, it's possible to overcome blemishes and past problems in your record, but it won't be easy. Your chances will greatly improve if you could get letters of recommendation from professors at the school you left. If you can't get any letters from there and instead will only have letters from undergrad or from non-academic employers, that will raise some red flags that you will have no choice but to address head on. Since you already have an MA, I don't know if there is a serious option for you to do an extra year at some program to show dedication and get better/more current letters, but that may be necessary if all your letters are outdated. However, if the attitude that comes across here also comes across in your application, I think you may be sabotaging yourself. You read like you are blaming everyone and everything else for your failure and not taking any responsibility for anything. Maybe it's true that you were completely in the right and they were completely in the wrong, but not knowing the other side of the story, most people will tend to believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle and if you're putting it all on the other side then there is something wrong with you. I'd keep the explanations about your past short and focused on the facts, without blaming anyone for what happened. Focus on your current interests and your future goals. I think another issue I had reading your post is that it's really not clear why you want to do a PhD. It's not something you do just because you couldn't get another job--people like that tend to have a high likelihood of not graduating and schools therefore try to stay away from them. You will need to write a SOP that expresses your passion for research and gives compelling reasons for wanting to go back to a graduate program despite the bad experience you had in the previous program. So -- to answer your question, you are not doomed but you will be fighting an uphill battle if you are serious about applying to school again.

You need to consult with the international students office at your school. You should be sure that you are not violating the terms of your visa, and that may depend on individual factors about your status, funding, etc. Don't just rely on what internet strangers tell you here! FWIW I think students on F-1 can volunteer in some cases, in particular when not doing something that would normally be done by a paid employee (otherwise it may be considered work, even if you're not getting paid). I wouldn't be surprised if there are restrictions on how much you can volunteer, but I don't know anything about that.

You're welcome! You ask good questions. There is no magical way to learn what journals are considered better for reputation or for hiring/tenure purposes. I've attended some very interesting panels about publishing organized by my field's national society, where the most immediate result seemed to be that people disagree about this, but that still there are some constants. I took that to mean that you want to have a diverse profile, so everyone can find something that they like. I think you mostly learn about this by gaining faculty's confidence and asking them about their experiences and opinions. You can also learn from the experiences of graduating students, if they went on the job market (if they at least got as far as getting interviews). Universities will differ in their hiring and tenure practices and I agree that it gets complicated if you're interested in markets outside where you are currently studying because people will be less familiar with them. However, quite universally, higher ranked (and more) publications are better. One good way to know if any journal is being read by the scholars in your field is to check whether others cite papers from there. Also (relatedly) you can go on some famous/upcoming researchers' websites and see where they publish their work. Those would be good venues. I like the idea of going on recent hires' websites and seeing where they publish. Also, ask the faculty in your department. They will know about the process at your university and may have some more anecdotal knowledge about other departments. When you go to conferences, ask other students about the process at their university, or if you meet young faculty, you can ask them about their own progress and if they have any advice. A lot of people will be very generous with what they've learned if you just ask.

Do you want to have a job in the US or in Canada once you graduate? Do Canadians generally read the US journals, and vice versa? When hiring/tenure decisions are made in Canadian universities, do the US journals count less/as much/more than the Canadian ones? (This assumes that in the US, the US journals are higher ranked than the Canadian ones.) Do the answers change if we are just considering your particular subfield vs. the field more generally? Unless the Canadians ignore the US journals, which I highly doubt (but you can tell me otherwise and I'll believe you), I think the best choice is the highest ranked journal that will accept you, that appeals to the general audience that you would like to read your paper. It doesn't matter that you might not even get past the editor's desk at some journals, no one needs to ever know that--though I hope your advisor can help you select submission venues in a way that makes this eventuality unlikely; one thing to maybe try if this submission uses unusual kinds of data is to write the editor before submitting to ask if their journal would be interested in a submission like yours. Another is to submit to one of the journals that have already published papers based on similar data sources in the past, since they are more likely to be sympathetic to your paper. Since you still have several years to go before you graduate, you can afford to have a longer reviewing process which might happen if you get rejected from a more prestigious journal and have to resubmit to another journal later on. My guess is that US journals have a wider audience than Canadian ones and that they count just the same (or more, if they are higher ranked) for hiring/tenure purposes. In that case, a US journal seems like the better choice. The main reason to prefer a Canadian journal is if it is better at reaching your target audience or if a publication there will do more to help you get hired down the line. Remember, if there is someone in particular who you want to make sure reads your paper (e.g. a famous scholar in your field), you can just email them your paper and ask for comments. There is no need to choose a journal to maximize the chances of them being exposed to the paper; this decision should be more about greater benefits, not about reaching any individual person.

In my field you do include service on your CV, such as reviewing for a conference/journal/grant agency and conference organization (chairing a session at a conference sounds like a stretch, I would not include it but I suppose some might). Organizing a roundtable would count as service and I'd put it on my CV as such. I suppose you could count it as a presentation if you also participate in the roundtable, too.

Keep your diplomas. You may never need them but you just don't know. It's not that hard and I would hardly consider them "garbage." If you don't have one already, start a folder for important documents like diplomas, birth certificate, leases, tax documents a few years back, etc. FWIW some jobs in Europe want to see ALL your official diplomas from high school onward. This happens every time you apply for a promotion or change of official title, too. I've had full professors tell me they still need to produce their original high school diploma every once in a while. When I applied for jobs in north America this year, only one wanted to see my diplomas (starting with my BA)--but it's the one I ended up taking so I'm really glad I had everything accessible and didn't pass on it because of this complication.

I've read you say that so many times. Due respect, you don't know what other people's situations are like. Not everybody likes to share intimate details of their lives, but that doesn't mean they don't have a valid point of view. There is a life beyond just you and your experiences, but you seem completely unable to accommodate that. It's surprising to me; since you often like to remind the community that you've had more than your fair share of "real life" experience, is it so hard to imagine that some others may have less experience and therefore may ask questions about things that you find obvious or trivial, or make decisions that you think are clearly wrong? I'm sorry, personally I just find overt disdain for others' questions off-putting. There are ways to tell someone that they are asking the wrong questions or are seriously misguided and there is no need to ridicule anyone, even if you're completely definitely absolutely sure you're right and they're wrong. You may know a lot, but you really don't know it all. (And you'll notice that I purposefully ignored the "but there is another thread that's really a joke" because that's distracting from my point about this thread.)

Personally, I would not incur that much debt for a PhD.

If you were actually concerned about that, you could bring it up and we could have a discussion about how to identify someone who is in a fragile mental state or how not to misclassify someone in this way. I don't think anyone would object to a reply whose content is basically "I think you are misinterpreting the situation," with some explanation of why you think that. Are you doubting that the OP was serious, or are you saying that this lack of "established" evidence is in your eyes an invitation to derail the thread? You know, sometimes it's ok not to have an opinion about something or not to participate in a discussion if you have nothing useful to contribute.

I agree with TakeruK -- the Harvard alum sounds like a great choice; I think it's a no-brainer that you should have your advisor write you a letter, that's the usual expectation and people might wonder if you don't have such a letter. The other retired prof sounds like a better choice than the remaining two. In particular, I would not want to choose someone who doesn't have her PhD yet over someone who does because a letter from someone from someone without a PhD will naturally carry less weight--such a person couldn't really talk about your ability to complete a PhD program since they have no experience doing it themselves nor have they probably had any advisees of their own, and they will not really have the experience to be able to compare you to other candidates. The prof from outside your major sounds like a good option for a 4th LOR in case some schools allow you to submit an extra letter, and I would consider having them use their personal connections at the school you mention, in case they agree to do so. A good word or personal endorsement of your application can go a long way and is independent of actually obtaining a letter from the person.

You know, I think Sigaba is not alone here. I am saying this is a regular poster here and not as a moderator; your replies signal that something is not right--I like the way Sigaba put it, maybe it's a lack of situational awareness or a lack of a desire to be respected. Someone came here with a serious question about how to deal with someone suicidal and possibly violent in their lab. I can't think of many things that are more serious than that. You took this as an opportunity to banter and make fun of the OP, more than once in this thread alone. Other times you have used crude language and made jokes that might be common in the 8th grade but should not be on a forum that is dedicated to grad school life. You've got to know that what you wrote here is not helpful to the OP. This time you were not successful in derailing the thread (yet, maybe it's happening now), but sometimes you are. I just find it very upsetting as someone who's been posting here for several years and has stuck around because I feel that sometimes what I say can help others. I feel like your distractions counteract this overall good that the community has to offer by alienating people, discouraging them from asking serious questions, and making it harder to find useful answers among the banter and useless posts. You may think you're funny and entertaining, and maybe you are, but I assure you that others see you in a less positive light. There is a time and a place for everything and you seem to not know what that is.

The best LOR you can get is from people who know you well. That's the first and most important thing. Now, it's better to get a LOR from someone who is better known than someone obscure because adcoms tend to put more weight on someone's word if they know them and believe they can trust them. People become known to others in their field in different ways. There is of course a correlation with being experienced and active in the field, but that doesn't mean that the best letters necessarily have to come from famous full professors. For example, a school might trust a LOR from a new assistant professor if that person was a student/post doc at the school so people know them there. Some new assistant profs are up and coming and actually get around quite a lot. Assistant profs who are in their 3-5th year on the job strive to be visible in order to help their tenure case, so they may be traveling and presenting quite a bit, and also publishing at a high rate. Newly minted Associate profs who just went through tenure probably just had a round of publications out and have been traveling in the recent past, so people will tend to remember them. On the other hand, some full professors stop being as productive once they take on administrative roles at their universities and may not carry as much weight as previously. Someone who is just retired might still be very active, or might have been really out of it for a long time; you can't know just by the person's official status. Unless you are in a situation where you have several people to choose you who know you equally well and you have the luxury of examining their records, I think the more important question in deciding who to ask for letters is what they'll write and how strong it'll be. A strong detailed letter is better than a short vague one, even if the signature on the vague one comes from someone famous.

Graduate student, unless it's someone who cares (an academic, or anyone who asks for clarification) or someone who speaks a language that forces you to make the distinction between PhD and Masters student.

I bought a good mattress because that was important to me. Bringing home a used mattress or couch is a big no-no where I am at because of bed bugs. That aside, you can get everything used and even for free if you move in around the time other students will be moving out. If there is a big "moving day" when everybody's lease starts/ends, you can find lots of things for cheap or even for free if you just walk around your neighborhood. If you're patient, you could probably furnish your entire house that way.

I doubt whether having an academia.edu page is a big factor in PhD acceptances/rejections. However, having a less-than-professional online presence could be an issue because these days adcoms are likely to google prospective students and you want respectable and representative pages to come up in that search. At some point in your academic career it does become important to have an online presence, but at least in my field that doesn't have to be an academia.edu page or a linkedin profile, it's sufficient to just have everything on your own website, hosted on your university's server or else on a domain you've bought that hopefully has a somewhat respectable name. If you don't have a lot to show at the moment, a clean one page website with a link to your CV and a description of your research interests is sufficient.

^ I agree with this. Regardless, though, I think it's clear now that your PI must be aware of the situation. Therefore, I think the wisest thing to do is to stay away from Person A, but be sure to know what resources you have available to you in case you actually feel threatened by Person A. (Though, as others have mentioned, just because they have mental health issues does not entail that they are violent. But it doesn't hurt to know these things.)

First of all, congratulations on the birth of your child! I don't have any first-hand experience to share, but I do have some thoughts, presented here in a somewhat random order to fit in my 10 minute break from making dissertation revisions ( ). For starters, I think a LOT will depend on how your advisor reacts to your needs and how supportive s/he is. Commuting 6 hours once a week will mean at least that day is shot in terms of actual work beyond physical attendance in the classroom. Moreover, having two small children at home may make it difficult to get much work done there, not only because of the obvious distractions but also because many people find it hard to work on and off for short stretches at a time (though some people discover that they are very productive that way), and most people find it hard to work when they are isolated from colleagues and peers. Therefore, having a supportive advisor who will talk to you on skype and who will understand that your schedule is restricted is important. A second thought is that people who stop, take leaves, and switch to part-time are much likelier to drop out and not graduate. That's a risk you run if you go part time, but the real issue, I think, is what the difference is in terms of the requirements from you and how long you can take to graduate. It'd make sense to switch to part time if staying full time will make it very difficult to meet the required timelines. A related thought is that the longer it takes you and the more you postpone things, the likelier you are to not finish. There may be very legitimate reasons to postpone things just one semester while the baby is young, and if that's the case then feel free to ignore me because here I really don't know what I'm talking about. The only observation I have is that people who postpone requirements are some of the likeliest to drop out, in my experience, because things pile up and life tends to not get simpler (and in particular, young children need a lot of attention and from what I see from my friends that doesn't seem to change at least until they're in school). A final thought on courses and postponing requirements, if it's possible to get all the course requirements done in one semester, and postponing would mean it'd take you another 2-3 semesters because you're not sure when the courses will be offered, there is something to be said for doing it and getting it done with. Commuting once a week for one semester is not as terrible as doing it for 2-3 semesters. Once you're done with classes, it's a lot easier to do your research long-distance without needing to commute to your department. As for doing research or studying for candidacy exams during the coursework period, I believe it should be technically possible--I don't see why you couldn't start your research before you're done with classes, and same with studying for exams. If you have a supportive department that allowed you to get started with the other aspects of the program as soon as you're ready and regardless of how you're doing on the formal course requirements, there shouldn't be any problem with getting started early. As you said, having a supportive advisor is again crucial.

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Well then assuming you find a place for $600 and you pay an additional $700 in health insurance fees, you will have $700 left over for all your other expenses - transportation, utilities, groceries, clothes, any other expenses (medical bills, cell phone, internet, eating out, etc.). There are threads you can find on the board about groceries and living expenses. My guess is it's doable but you'll have to live very(!) frugally. You won't be able to afford childcare so your spouse will have to stay home with your child. You'll have to be careful with grocery shopping and look out for discounts and sales, and you'll have to cook and eat at home almost exclusively. You probably won't be able to afford to travel home during the summer breaks, either. Note that my estimates are based on the assumption that you will have a steady income all 12 months of the year. Things would be greatly complicated if your salary is only for 9 months and you're not paid for three months of the year--in that case, I honestly don't think you'll make enough to support your family. I'm also ignoring taxes but, again, if the salary you mentioned is pre-tax, that too needs to be factored in. Overall, it'd be very difficult to maintain such a frugal lifestyle, but it's doable--especially if you and your spouse view it as an investment in your future and are willing to sacrifice for a better life later on. It'd be much easier if you got a loan or if you were able to secure additional summer employment. Are there other graduate students with families in your program? I think the best thing you can do is get in touch with them to get some information about their expenses and how they are handling them. That will be much more informative than our guesses can be.

Great minds think alike