fuzzylogician

Congratulations, OP! My own opinion is that there is never a "good time" to have children but I actually think the advanced stages of grad school are a relatively easier time, when you are not tied down with courses and can work from home to help with childcare. It sounds like you'll do alright financially, though certainly there will be more expenses and that will have an effect on your life. As for further down the road future plans, I am of the opinion that things can be managed, as necessary, though it won't be easy. Having a child will make things more complicated than before, but it will also introduce many joys to your life. I would say, expect the unexpected and take things as they come.

This is a good time to start asking around your department about summer funding and make it known that you are interested in getting some, if there is any to be had. Talk to different professors about what you might do. Getting funding might be difficult and depends on factors in your program that we can't know about. For sure applying for university-internal funds will take time, if possible. For external grants people might have it's easier - they just need to want to take you on as a research assistant for the summer. Note that even if you don't get funding, there might be a (perhaps unofficial) expectation that you still be at your department at least some of the time, which is something more advanced students can tell you about. They might also know about funding opportunities and how you go about obtaining them, so I recommend talking to them about that too. In my program everyone gets one month of summer funding and I've been able to get one additional month every year I've been there, and with travel home it ends up covering all the time I am around. I basically work on the same things as during the year, only it's better because there are no classes to take or teach so there is more time for actual work. I think I do most of my writing during these uninterrupted periods of time. On the other hand, some professors are gone over the summer and since students are gone it's harder to recruit subjects for experiments, so that's something to plan for. I try to have my experiments done before finals, otherwise it suddenly gets much slower.

A few days late won't matter. Schools don't normally start looking at applications right after the deadline and besides they know that the student can't control late letters. You should be fine.

From what I understand you didn't share the information about your medical condition with your advisor? If so, then consider how things look from her perspective - you started off well and did good work in the lab; then you disappeared for a while; then you came back but didn't do well; you improved for a bit; and then you were not doing well again. So while there were stretches of good work, overall you were not consistent both in showing up and in performance while in the lab. You have valid reasons, but you did not communicate them to the professor, and therefore she did not feel confident writing you a letter of recommendation. It's important that you realize that this is her interpretation of the situation based on incomplete information, and it's not -- I repeat, NOT -- a denial of your work, potential, and personality. Now, you could try and talk to your professor, explain the situation and apologize for not sharing the information with her earlier. Of course, it's a legitimate decision not to share private medical with your teachers, but this choice may have consequences like the ones you are suffering from -- the professor only has partial knowledge of the situation, they see your struggle but don't know there is a reason for it. If you tell your advisor about the accident, she may choose to reinterpret past events and rethink and her conception of you. Perhaps through putting things in a new light she will agree to write you a letter, but you should be aware that the letter will probably have to mention both the periods of successful productivity and the periods of struggle; you will have to also address these periods of struggle in your SOP and explain that they will not recur (because they were the result of an accident, and otherwise you were doing well). Will one or more of your other letters of recommendation discuss your research? If that is the case, then you could be successful without a letter from your advisor, although it might raise some questions. If this is the only letter writer who could discuss your research potential, then it's more of a problem. It's a likely eventuality that if you don't have a letter that talks about your research then you will have a hard time being admitted. It may still be worth trying, because you never know, but if you get rejected it will probably be because of this problem. It's possible that the best solution would then be to take another year to work as a research assistant in order to obtain better letters, and then try again the following year.

I second (third?) the advice to talk to people sooner rather than later. As for the grade, at least at my school you can get a +/- qualification of your grade which shows up on internal transcripts but the official transcript only shows the letter grade itself and that's what the GPA is calculated based on. You can probably find information about that somewhere on your university's website but what really matters is what your department considers the official grade, which may be up to them to decide. There may be some wiggle room here and that's where your advisor can help if they are willing to fight for you.

I once uploaded a bunch of papers to academia.edu on a slow afternoon maybe 3 years ago. I haven't been maintaining it since then. The main thing it's good for is notifying me whenever someone googles my name or work (or, sometimes, something else that's completely unrelated ) and finds some of my work. That's mostly good for my ego, though, not for much of anything else. For more serious purposes, anybody who wants to see work that's not 3 years old needs to go to my actual academic website. Since my name is unique, that's the first thing you find if you google my name and so I am not worried about not maintaining the academia.edu page. ResearchGate I've never even heard of. But why would you need to have multiple websites? I don't see the purpose.

If you were my student and I learned you were lying and trying to manipulate me, I believe that I would get mad enough to reflect that in my letters. Certainly I would not agree to write any more letters for you in the future -- that's a rule with me. If you lie to me, I will want to have nothing to do with you as much as I can possibly help it, because I would not be able to trust anything you say or have ever said to me in the past. Letters very often can arrive after the deadlines, and professors know that. You, on the other hand, have no idea what the professor did or didn't check or what they do or don't know. You want to preemptively lie to prevent imagined consequences. If it works, more power to you. For me the reduced stress from having the letter early would not be worth it because of the added stress caused by the fear of being found out as a liar.

Facebook isn't exactly an academic site, is it? Nor is Google+. In my field Facebook is actually used quite often for networking and some people also use Twitter, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that you need to maintain anything if you don't want to. The only important thing, as with any online profile that potential employers/students/others might find, is to watch what you post. The only site where I maintain an academic "profile" of sorts is my academic website. Everywhere else is where I socialize.

...unless the professors have other students applying to the same schools who don't lie and give the real deadline, in which case you are screwed. No one wants to be manipulated or be made a fool of.

If and when you get an offer, assuming it has an early decision date, you ask to extend it. Most PhD programs will be bound by the April 15 deadline even if they would prefer it if you decided earlier (and may try to pressure you into doing so). You will not be the first person to encounter this dilemma, and they will understand. Just see what you can negotiate. Then contact the school whose decision you are still waiting on, explain that you have another offer with a decision deadline, and ask when you might expect to hear back from them. It may speed the decision/notification along. Also FYI, if a school is bound by the April 15 deadline, that also means you can change your mind about accepting their offer without repercussions until that date. However, I would recommend against doing this if possible because even if it's allowed, you might upset people unnecessarily. So basically, wait it out, negotiate more time to decide if needed, contact other schools to expedite your decision, and decide when you have all the information.

OP, I'm not sure what the situation is exactly but as a first step I would recommend documenting whatever is going on. As a second step, I think it's important to find someone who you can consult with about the situation, who can help you think through ways of dealing with it, be it confronting the people involved, indirectly getting them to change their behavior (through intervention that doesn't need to be identified as initiated by you), or just waiting it out and leaving as soon as you can. This can be a trusted professor at your school, or perhaps an ombudsperson or a student association rep. Get someone with a wider perspective who is on your side and can serve as a front for you in dealing with these people - perhaps an anonymous complaint can be brought to their attention and affect change. Sometimes confrontation could lead to more harm than good in the long run, even if it will stop the bad behavior locally. For example, publically confronting a famous professor and shaming them might lead to them being out to get you in the future, which will damage your career. Even if you are believed, the professor is inherently in a position of power over you. That doesn't mean you should just roll over and take whatever they are doing to you without complaint but rather that the bad situation is already in place and the question now is what is the best way to get out of it or minimize it without hurting you in the long run. For that reason, "giving them a piece of your mind" when you leave might also be counter-productive. If you can confront them, do it when it can help mitigate the behavior. Otherwise, find some other way to deal, as I've said. Again, using a go-between might be advisable. If nothing else, you'll have someone who is aware of what is going on and can be a witness and a supporter if the situation takes for the worse.

...and "coincidentally" correlating with whether a certain field typically has a lot of external grant support that would be able to cover the costs imposed by the journals.

I'd assume nothing. Take his interest at face value and accept it if you're comfortable, or decline if you would prefer to keep your distance. Unless there are obvious blatant clues that he is inappropriately interested, I would not read into things. Do make sure that your interactions are in the public and stay professional (door open when you are in his office, no going off campus for an activity or whatnot), but from what you say I have no reason to expect that your interactions will be anything but professional.

You should ask your advisors these questions. My understanding of your post (which may be wrong since I am not an expert) is that you have only one year of relevant teaching experience + some summers, which is about half of what the job ads you are seeing require. Based on that, my guess is that you will not be qualified for these jobs, and even if you are, you will be competing with people with far more experience than you and you'd have to have some other special skills that would make you more attractive than those more experienced applicants to win a job. So the question is twofold - can you spin your experience to somehow make it seem relevant and sufficient, and can you explain what other skills you have to compensate for your relative inexperience?

Generally speaking, it's common wisdom that you want to have two strong letters and it's ok if the third one is positive but not particularly glowing. I've heard many stories of people who were accepted based on such strong letters and despite a weaker third one. I've also heard stories of people being accepted based on two strong letters before the third one even arrived, but I believe that at least in some cases the third letter may still be necessary for the record because the graduate school may want to see a full file before making you an official offer. This probably varies by school. My guess is that public schools are held to higher standards of transparency and may worry more about getting sued, but I'm sure someone will come up with some anecdote that goes the other way. How common it is is anybody's game -- I'd bet not terribly so; probably more so for rolling admissions than when there is a strict deadline. But I doubt anybody could give you numbers.

If I were writing a LOR I'd have to write about my opinion of the applicant as formed through all our interactions. The OP may be smart and knowledgeable but also slacked off in class and did not take advantage of the opportunity to rectify their grade. Overall, if that were the extent of my interactions with a student, I would not be able to write that student a strong letter. I'm not even sure it'd be terribly positive, unless I knew of a good reason for the low grade and the subsequent behavior, and the student actually demonstrated the level of knowledge and enthusiasm they think they did.

That you think that a person's professional reputation is not a thing of actual value is really quite telling. OP -- as others have said, I think you are overthinking this. The professor refused because your performance did not merit her support of your scholarship. I don't see what spite or resentment have to do with it. I wouldn't stake my reputation on that kind of record, either.

Just reply to the post and state that this is your opinion. Are you asking for a "board-approved" language for saying that? I don't think we would like to have such a one-size-fit-all statement and I don't think it's necessary at all. I also think that if you want to have a discussion of this issue, it should be done in a new post and not in replies to someone's individual SOP.

I have a similar process. I can't really write before I know what I want to say, but once I do, I am a fast writer. It normally helps me to start with handout and bullet-point lists that I can move around and turn into the outline of my paper. Before that, I sometimes either write out on paper or (preferably) on a blackboard everything that I know or think, in as much of an organized manner as I can, and when I am done brainstorming I will re-number my points, erase the board and start over until I feel like I have a good flow going. (It's partly why I love giving posters - I give the same shpiel over and over and at some point it solidifies as a good way of getting a certain material across.) At that point, I can start writing. When I write, I don't look back - I will jot down as notes any thoughts, problems, or things to look up, but my motto is keep going forward, no edits until I have a full draft going. At that point I may realize some things need to move around, be re-written, or taken out, but overall it saves a lot of time compared to constant re-edits of the same small text (which you then later might realize you're not even going to keep!). I have edit-buddies who will critique the hell out of my text, and I do the same for them. That's been one of the most helpful routines I've set - get a lot down on paper, don't look back, get feedback from others. Work with bullet-points and bite-size goals. Keep a nice list going, so you can cross all these things off the list! (I find that particularly satisfying.) If you are uninspired, walk away for a while. I have never been a fan of the "write a little every day" approach, it hasn't worked for me. It only frustrates me if I'm stuck and can't meet a daily goal, sometimes I just need some fresh perspective and a few days off to organize my thoughts. I think everybody has these off days, so I try not to take them too hard.

Unless the application software won't let you submit on your end until all of your letters are submitted, it doesn't matter. Your letter writers should still have the ability to submit letters after you have submitted the application, and in some cases they can only do it after you submit. In addition, as others have pointed out, schools will normally not start reviewing applications immediately after the deadline (exception: schools with rolling admissions). They will leave some time for late letters, transcripts, etc. As long as your application is complete at the time of review, it doesn't matter what was submitted when.

I speak of my own personal experience, but my impression was that the OP's experience is similar to mine. I've dealt with an illness of the kind that can majorly disrupt your life but is not categorized as a disability. Eventually I learned to manage it, balance my medications, and most importantly - listen to my body and know its limitations. For me, this means keeping a very regular schedule, aggressively guarding my sleep hours and rest, planning a heck of a lot of my time in advance, and giving up on various activities that would over-tax my body, which my friends and colleagues regularly participate in. This all is not a complaint, everybody has something or other deal with and some is much worse than this, but the point is that being able to function normally has come at important costs and sacrifices that healthy people don't even need to think about. If you are going to hold my accomplishments against me as a proof that there is nothing wrong with me, then there is something flawed in your logic. You get extra points for creative reading of my post but you fail at comprehension. More points for creative reading, here. I've been fortunate to attend a school that has been very forthcoming in accommodating my needs, e.g. with regard to TA assignments and such. However, everything that they have done has been a sort of favor to me, out of kindness, and could stop if it didn't suit them any longer. I need to explain personal details about my health to roughly two new people (professors, admin assistants) a semester and hope for their kindness. I happen to get it very often, but I'd really much rather not have to reveal such personal information and instead just say I have been diagnosed condition X that requires consideration Y and be done with it. Since it's not recognized, however, I end up having to explain why a request that may seem small or petty to some can make the difference between me being a happy and healthy person and being constantly tired and hence unhealthy, unproductive and generally unhappy for 3-4 months (the semester + some recovery time). When I was in undergrad this would have affected my grades (also my health, happiness, loved ones, etc) and hence my ability to get into a good grad school. In grad school, it affects my research productivity and in some cases it might affect my effectiveness as a teacher and hence affect my students. This in turn would affect how my profile might look when I graduate and hence what postdoc or assistant prof positions I might be hired for. That is, it might affect major life goals. Your trivializing how a chronic illness affects a person once it's balanced reflects a very narrow-minded way of thinking, which I find very sad.

If it helps at all, I always round grades up, unless the student explicitly does not deserve the higher grade (constant late/no-show for class, some suspected cheating behavior, multiple missed deadlines, etc). I hope your professor does the same. Re: "subjective grading," do you feel like you were not graded fairly? What you might think is a subjective grade often relies on a very clear rubric. I can definitely tell apart a 89 paper from a 93 one or a 96 one, even if you may think it's arbitrary.

Two things. First, some people care about their grades and about all kinds of other things. There is nothing wrong with wanting good grades and with realizing that lower grades can affect things such as admissions to graduate school and funding, which could affect a person's ability to obtain the training they need for the career of their choice. I don't know where you get that stuff about laundry. The OP has a serious question about a medical condition that has affected their performance. Second, having a serious medical condition that is not recognized as a disability is unfortunate because you don't get the help and recognition that you otherwise might, but it still seriously affects your life. It is unfortunate to have chronic diseases. OP -- you got some good advice above, in particular from Sigaba, danieleWrites, and jkirtz. I'd follow it. Good luck!

You can email the schools and ask to update the CV in your application. A submitted paper is a pretty big deal and most places will be happy to know about it. You can list it as "under review," as gellert says.

Loric, please stop with these posts. You're turning into a troll that really does deserve the down-votes you're getting.