fuzzylogician

In addition to what others have already mentioned, you should be consulting with your advisor about these questions. The POIs you are applying to work with are his peers and if you disclose your relationship it will also have an effect on him. This is not to say that you should do what he wants necessarily, but that you should involve him in the decision. Whatever you decide, he should be aware of it. He might also have his own opinions about how he might view a letter from someone who was dating their student, which would also be useful to know. My personal inclination would be not to ask for a letter and also not to disclose the relationship in the application, because you can't control how the information will be perceived and it can negatively affect others' perception of you. My experience with similar situations is that the (female) student is always affected more than the (male) professor. I would only divulge such information after getting to know people and having a good idea of how they might react.

It does get better. There is an adjustment period that many students go through in the beginning of grad school. The kind of work, the amount and the level are very different from what many students are used to, and it takes time to re-calibrate. Next year and even next semester will seem easier, even though the work load will probably not decrease: you'll just learn to deal with it. It's a common thing you hear about from many students. Here are some practical tips: First, NO ONE does all of the reading. It's impossible. One skill you'll need to develop this semester is the ability to skim. You'll also need to learn to triage -- some things are more important than others. This goes for readings, assignments and any other responsibilities you have. For readings, you want to know enough to be able to follow the lecture, and you need to have a broad idea of the content and a more precise idea of the main point(s) in the text. Concentrate on that: look at the abstract and conclusion, skim for the structure, find the main argument. Make a note of any contributions you could make in class. If you're active when you know things, it's easier to be passive without getting noticed when you don't. Second, if you have homework, one useful way to get it done is to work with some of your peers in a group. Get them to explain whatever you are confused about, and explain to them what you understand. It is good for everyone. If you class has a TA, go to them early and have them help you out. It can be hard for the instructor to know if someone is struggling and sometimes if you let it last too long, it's hard to make your way back. Ask questions. If there is something you're confuse about but you think is so simple you're afraid to ask -- chances are there are five other people in the room thinking the exact same thought. If you don't understand an assignment -- ask an instructor or TA! You can't believe how often students waste time trying to interpret obscure wording and end up creating far more work for themselves than was ever intended. To help figure out your paper, since you seem like someone who likes to make plans, so why don't you schedule a meeting with either your advisor or the instructor of the class and work on creating a schedule for the next few weeks that will allow you to be done with the paper in time? It'll be a good opportunity to ask about whatever it is you're not sure about with regard to the paper, and it will help you begin to find a way to deal with the workload.

Could you find any link to the paper, even if it's not accessible to you? I can't really find any link and I also don't see any citations of this paper. I'm not sure how good your chances are of finding anyone who happens to have a pdf of this paper. Have you tried contacting the author for a copy of the paper?

Are you asking about how much work you're allowed to do while studying on a student visa in the US? If so, the answer is that you can work up to 20 hours a week during the semester, 40 hours a week during breaks, on campus only. After a year you can ask for a permit to work off-campus in jobs related to your degree. You need to be very careful about obtaining permission to do any kind of work or else you might be in violation of your visa requirements. It'll be very hard for you to support yourself on an on-campus job alone; in addition, in order to obtain a student visa in the first place you will have to show that you have enough savings to support yourself without a job, because a student visa is meant for study, not work. Sorry I don't have better news.

Please don't post the same question multiple times. The same people visit this forum as the other grad forums; hopefully some people who can answer your question will see your post soon. For general interview advice, there are some great threads in the interviews subforum. Good luck!

FWIW, in my program an incomplete is totally harmless and people can actually graduate with some incompletes in their transcript (three, I think). I hope it's the same at your school and that it's not really looked down upon. The most important thing you need to do now is find out if there is some deadline for getting the incomplete changed into a grade. If not, I'd rethink the urgency your post is conveying. You already have the incomplete; does it matter when it gets changes? How will it affect your life if it's changes this week as opposed to three or four weeks from now? Unless there is a real issue here, I would not press the issue as if it were urgent. Give your professor a few more days before you just assume she's never going to reply, and if you indeed don't hear back, just pop your head in her door and ask when you might expect your grade to change. If you need to submit a transcript for something, or if there is some requirement for completing all coursework soon or it's a prerequisite for something else you want to take, I would tell her that and ask for her help. Otherwise, you can afford to give it more time before you start "going up the chain of command" as was propose above. I'd actually advise you to avoid that for as long as possible because a low-priority cause is not worth upsetting a professor who may have a big impact on your future life and career. Of course, if there is a fast-approaching deadline then matters are different - but I would still exhaust local sources before going above the professor's head - email again with a clear mention of the deadline, then stop by her office for a chat, then consider asking the DGS what happens if your grade isn't changed even though you did all the work and should not suffer any consequences through someone else's fault (because really giving a student an incomplete because the professor couldn't finish grading should not be acceptable practice at all!). From what you wrote this should be not only your problem but other students' in the class as well, so it may be good to organize them all and talk to your department's grad student representative for help in sorting this out for everyone.

I find that I can identify two distinct kinds of stress, which I shall call "local stress" and "existential stress." Local stress normally happens a result of over-working for some period of time, for example right before a deadline for a submission or towards the end of the semester. Existential stress happens more at certain important junctions of my career, for example when transitioning from doing mostly coursework to doing mostly research, getting ready to defend a paper or starting to seriously think about the job market. I deal with these two kinds of stress differently. For the local stress (by far, the more common kind), I do as others have said - I allow myself to take time off to recover and I do things that are not related to my work at all. For example, if I can allow it, I might go on a short trip or go sit in the sun for a while, or I might watch something totally brainless on TV (I love cooking shows and design shows), or I might take on an elaborate baking project. For existential stress, I do the same as for local stress but then I regroup and seek out my close friends and mentors to have a frank discussion about my concerns. I find that the best way to get myself remotivated to work is to acknowledge the fear and stress and find a way to turn them into a productive tool that pushes me along instead of paralyzing me. I have close enough relationships with two mentors who I feel comfortable admitting such things to, and they always have great advice on seeing the broader picture and getting myself out of my tunnel-vision state.

1000Plateaus, I am very sorry that you are in this painful situation. It is very difficult to hear unfavorable assessment of your abilities and to realize the implications of having a unfavorable review from your supervisor and second reader. What follows may be hard to read and I apologize in advance, but after you calm down a bit you may want to seriously consider your professors' opinions of your potential to succeed in graduate school. From all I can gather from this post and your previous one, there was never any serious blowout between you and your supervisor -- the main problem seems to be your ability to do up-to-par work at a reasonable pace. (Yes, I understand that some of the blame for that is on your supervisor for letting you take on what turned out to be an over-ambitious project but no, I don't think there is any reason to think your supervisor was maliciously setting you up to fail). You took three years to do a two-year degree and you had to basically write your whole thesis from scratch after the first submission was rejected. You may have finally brought it to a satisfactory level for a masters and you were therefore allowed to defend, but that does not entail that you can or should continue on to a PhD program. It appears that both of the people who know your work best think that you should not, and they will not write you strong letters of recommendation. I think you should respect this choice, or (as you are contemplating doing) work very hard to change their mind and persuade them that you deserve their support. As it stands, if they do not believe that you can make it in a PhD program, you cannot ask them in good conscious to write such a letter. They will have to lie, or the letter will not be good; from their perspective, it's their name on the line: they are vouching for you and your success, but they don't believe in it. Beyond that, if they are in fact correct, they are doing you a favor in telling you their honest opinion from the start. Certainly, the delivery was lacking and hurtful in your case and I am sorry that you had to go through that. But not everyone who wants a PhD can be successful at a PhD program. It's better to know that now than to waste several years before either dropping out or finishing the degree but failing to get a job. I honestly don't know if this is true for you, but sometimes you simply have to tell students the hard truth instead of letting them just struggle along and waste important years of their lives on an impossible mission. As I said, I don't know if what your advisor said was a fair assessment of your work at all. Either way, it's important to view it as an assessment of your ability to do the training for a certain job, not as an assessment of your personality or person. There are extremely bright and successful people who would struggle in a PhD program because the requirements are set up in a such a way that it does not play to their strengths. That doesn't make them any less accomplished, you just need a very specific kind of personality, abilities and strengths to make it through, and only a (small) portion of it has to do with your intellectual abilities. Maybe that's something to consider. If, on the other hand, the assessments of your professors are simply wrong, I wish you all the best in your battle to attend graduate school. I think your approach is the healthiest one: do your best to prove that you are able and willing, and earn the letter and the trust.

Like everything in academia (and life) it depends. In some fields, presenting at conferences is the most prestigious way of getting your work published, in others journals are more prestigious. It also depends on the conference--some conferences (and conference proceedings papers) are considered more prestigious than others: [disclaimer: field-specific advice starting here] in my field, for minor projects that you are not pursuing for major publication, certain conference proceedings would be a very respectable final resting place. These papers definitely get read and cited very often. Conferences are also good for visibility, as well as for CV building; generally speaking, the closer you get to going on the job market, the more important it is to have some name recognition and to just be out there and be productive. If you're a 1st or perhaps 2nd year, it probably won't hurt if you don't attend conferences at all or if you limit yourself to one a year. It's good for the CV if you have some conference/paper each year, so you can establish a flow to your graduate career and show productivity (but note: numbers and requirements vary widely across disciplines!). If this is your year on the job market, it's probably a good idea to go to as many conferences as possible, even if you're not always funded. Then there are location considerations: some conferences are held in the middle of no where, so even though they are prestigious, the networking options there will be limited and not many people will attend your talk (though you'll still get to write a proceedings paper all the same). For any conference you are considering attending, I'd contact the organizers for help with funding and also for arranging crash space with local graduate students; I've been able to stay with someone almost every time I've attended a conference. So yeah, it's hard to tell you what to do without knowing more about what stage you are in your career, what your CV looks like, how this conference is perceived, what other venues you might have for getting your work out there, etc., but I hope this helps you figure out some of the considerations.

Sounds like these other students are doing a better job at one or more of teaching, taking initiative, knowing the right people, or being there at the right time. All you can do is do more of those things and actively seek out these other opportunities. I don't think you have a reason to be resentful, you just need to do a better job taking care of your needs, since no one else is going to do that for you. If you just sit there and hope that your good work will be noticed and rewarded without needing to actively advocate for yourself, you may be disappointed.

Actually on my desk: external monitor, mouse, charger (all connect to my laptop when I arrive), a semantics book I sometimes consult, a hand brace for typing, a stack of papers and notes, ear buds, a coffee mug, a thermos, a bottle of water, cutlery and chopsticks, random small toys (mostly gifts friends bring back from their travels), a box of tissues. Under my desk: a couple of pairs of shoes, a tennis racket and a spare umbrella. In my personal cabinet: some toiletries (aspirin, tooth brush and tooth paste, a comb, contact lens solution), a little bit of money and a card for the bus charged with enough money to get me home, a change of clothes, spare gloves and a scarf, a few boxes of tea, coffee, energy bars and some trail mix. Nearby: books, a filing cabinet, trays for papers I collect from different classes and venues (that I scan and then file away in the filing cabinet once a semester). On the wall above my desk: postcards, comics I enjoy, a short poem that motivates me to write, a calendar.

The professor must have materials that you can use. Ask for notes or slides from previous iterations of the class to give you an idea of what the professor taught. Also ask if there are particular things she wants you to cover. Then make a detailed outline of everything (and do as rising_star suggests); if you're not experienced in presenting, try to get a sense of the timing of different parts of the lecture. Sometimes it's useful to think of ways of making parts of the lecture independent of each other, so you can fast forward or skip parts if you're running short on time. It's also good to have some kind of activity (one or two) that engage the students and requires them to do more than just passively sit there. Have more stuff than you think you need, because you don't want to run out of things to say, but don't expect to get through everything. Remember that you're not the prof, so it's ok if you don't know everything or get confused; and don't forget to have fun! This is a great opportunity.

I have good news and bad news. Making a mistake in front of your advisor or not knowing something that (you think) you should know will become part of your life from now on, so you had better get used to it! You go to school precisely so you can learn and because you don't already know everything. It is expected that you'll make mistakes, the more so when you're new. When you just start out, you don't even realize everything that you don't know. This is not meant to discourage you, just to help you change your way of thinking. I'm sure your advisor wasn't happy that you made a mistake or overestimated your knowledge, but it's also not a huge shock. He'll soon forget about this incident when you two start interacting in person, if he hasn't already. Bottom line: this kind of event isn't particularly out of the ordinary and I don't think there is anything for you to worry about. You certainly haven't screwed up an opportunity or done anything remotely near that level of messing up. You still have every opportunity of joining this lab, if you end up deciding you like it after you've rotated there.

I strongly believe the following: Do worry about funding. Do NOT go to graduate school if you are not fully funded. It is NOT worth it to go into debt for a degree in the Humanities or Social Sciences (and many other fields, but I know less about those) because you will have a very hard time repaying loans with the salary from your likely future job, after you graduate with the degree. I understand the desire to go to school, get an education, pursue a dream job--but I would not do it at all costs.

Normally you don't convert your grades from another system to the American one -- the schools do that themselves. It's hard to tell exactly how they'll interpret your grades, but the cutoff (if it exists) may be more difficult to implement, so your application may have a higher chance of being reviewed. You should find out if the grades cutoff really exists in your field because I wouldn't be surprised if there's less of an emphasis on grades in professional programs. If it exists at some schools, you may have to research programs more carefully to find ones that accept students with lower grades. In addition to this, the longer you've been out of school, the less important your grades are. If you'll be 3-5 years out of school at the time of your application, you should hopefully have relevant experience that you can draw on and that will help your application.

I think the professor is the better choice. Generally, since you're applying for a research PhD, it's better to have two academic LORs and one professional LOR and not the other way around. That aside, someone who never worked with you but likes you is really nothing more that a friend/colleague, and that's not the profile of a person you want to write you a letter, regardless of whether or not they have a PhD.

What are the publishing conventions in your field? Do students normally publish work alone or with their advisors? Does giving someone access to samples immediately guarantee the "owner" of the samples authorship on any results of work on those samples? That aside, do people normally publish co-authored or single-authored papers? Will people be suspicious if you publish alone? (Also, is it even possible to publish something now, since it seems that you've been scooped?) The answers to questions like these vary widely across fields and it's hard to know what might be acceptable in your case without knowing more about these conventions.

Generally speaking it is much more difficult to transfer in grad school compared to undergrad. There is no established procedure. In your case you'd be transferring out of your own initiative, not because your advisor is moving to a new school or another external reason. This means that you will need to find an advisor to take you on at the new school and obtain funding there. Usually there is no good way to do that other than reapply and start over at the new school, once you're accepted. You may be able to transfer some credits, but more often than not you won't, and you really will have to start over. If you're convinced that your current school is not a good match for your interests, I suggest you seriously consider reapplying to graduate schools this year. You have enough time to prepare your application (I assume a lot of it can be reused from last year). You'll need to address why you're not following through with the offer that you've accepted, but a bad fit between your school and your interests/personality is a very good reason. I'd suggest being careful about how you discuss the community and ambience issue, especially given that (based on your post) you can't have been at your new school for more than a month. There is an adjustment period that it's worth going through before you decide that the school is not right for you. So maybe what you want to do is go through at least one semester, perhaps year, of your current program, and also at the same time consider reapplying to grad school either in the coming application season or the following one, to keep all your options open. If you do stay in your current program for a year -- give it a fair shot! Try and keep an open mind about it, and accept the possibility that you may have only had a bad first impression but the program is better for you than you are imagining it is right now. If you do that: if you end up liking the school you're at (which is quite likely, as first impressions can be deceiving!), then you will have lost some time and money on the applications, but you will have gained a year of school. If you don't like your current school then you will have lost a year of school, but you'll be able to move to a new location as soon as possible after this experience, and I'm sure that the year you'll spend at this school will not have been in vain--you'll still learn a lot! ps: I merged this post with the post you made in the IHOG forum. There is no need to post the same question in multiple forums.

As others have said, teaching is important for your career development and although you've been very noble, you're hurting your chances of successfully finding a job once you graduate if you continue to lack any teaching experience. You won't continue to rely on your parents' help forever and you need to give yourself the best training that will lead to the best job you can find in the future. I think it's admirable that you've been so considerate of your friends, but it's time to start taking care of your own needs. I don't think there is any reason for your to feel guilty about that. I also don't think there is any reason for you to donate the money; it's yours and you will earn it fairly. Save it, you never know when you might need it.

Generally speaking, since you're far away and can't ask in person, there is nothing impolite about asking in an email. You'll want to make initial contact to ask for the letter and say that you will provide your writers with any materials they need to help them write you a stronger letter (e.g., copy of your transcripts, cv, a draft of your SOP). I'd only send those along after you've received a general 'yes' and assuming the professors ask for these materials. But before you do that, Monochrome Spring makes a very good point -- are you sure that you'll get good letters from these professors, given that you say they don't know you well? 2/3 letters from profs that don't know you well sounds like a risk. Moreover, you might have difficulty distinguish between 'yes' (I can write a letter) and 'yes!' (I can write a strong letter) since this will be done over email and you don't have a strong relationship with these profs to help you tell these apart. None of these are insurmountable problems, just things that it's worth to keep in mind.

If your LORs don't improve following a Masters program where presumably you get to work with professors one-on-one and demonstrate your research abilities, that would be quite alarming. Aside from that, I agree that a MA is a good way to get some much-needed experience to help you both make sure a PhD is right for you, and strengthen your application.

Not that I know of. The requirements for students with and without an MA are basically all the same and I don't think you could get courses waved just because you took similar courses at another institution as part of another degree--maybe you could replace some of them with more advanced ones, maybe not, but they won't just be waved, at least where I was interested in. When I asked about having a class waved that I'd already TAed for several times, I was told that it's still beneficial to take it with the professors at my current university and to look at it as an opportunity to think about deeper questions or concentrate on how I would teach such a class--a question you often don't consider until much later, but a very relevant one. It was very good advice and I'm glad I took that class because even though there were no new concepts, I think I learned a lot. If you have an advanced project (a Masters thesis say) some places will let you use that as a qualifying paper and that could save time. If you continue working within the same subfield and on roughly the same question(s), you may be able to finish early. But if you want to take the time to develop other interests or work on something other than extensions of your MA project, you will probably take just as long as people who didn't come in with an MA to begin with. Generally programs work to equalize everybody's knowledge with required classes in the first year, and then the program is structured so you take some required and some elective classes in years 2-3, you work on 1-2 (or more) different projects that need to get to a certain place in years 2-3-4 and you then work on a dissertation project. There is not much flexibility in terms of finishing early, and as I said above, if you have funding and you want to go into academia, it's not clear that rushing through the degree is a good move at all.

I should add: I am now starting my 5th year in a linguistics program; based on how fast I completed my program's requirements I could have graduated in 4 years, but absolutely no one that I consulted with thought that would be a good idea. The job market isn't great and having one extra year to do research before graduating and moving on to a post-doc or job is highly advantageous both in terms of the quality of work I would produce and also simply in terms of the quantity of work that I could produce. I think it was very good advice--though I could have written something as a dissertation last year, I am very glad I had the time to work on other projects and develop my thinking about my dissertation project more before getting sucked into the job market race.

A program in theoretical linguistics? Do you have a Masters degree already? I can think of some programs where you might be able to finish in 4 years if you work very hard, but 3 seems like a serious stretch. Course requirements alone normally take two years and I don't know of any programs that will wave the requirement even if you already have a MA; then there are intermediary requirements like generals papers/qualifying papers or a Masters thesis - basically one or two large research papers to be defended in your 2nd or 3rd year. If you come in with advanced projects, you might be able to defend more quickly. Then you write a dissertation - in some places, after defending a prospectus - and that process usually takes at least a year, especially given that during that year you also apply for jobs and prepare everything that is required for that (research statement, teaching statement, project descriptions for post docs, cv, cover letter, etc). It's not unheard of but it's extremely rare for people to graduate in less than 4 years, and even that is very fast. Five is the norm, and with good reason.

Sounds like a fine letter to me -- it's someone with a PhD who knows you well and can talk about your performance in class and your teaching abilities. Along with two letters from research professors, I'd say your bases are covered.