fuzzylogician

I've moved your question to the appropriately titled "Interviews and Visits" section of the board. I suggest you browse this section, and you'll find a variety of posts detailing people's experiences, questions they were asked, suggestions for how to prepare, etc. If you have any specific questions after you've done some reading, come back and ask them.

@wrighna, you are reviving a two-year-old post just to advertise your podcast. We've been lenient in letting you advertise here, partly against the board rules, but please don't abuse our good will.

How far are you from graduating? Since it's taken you this long, I won't even try to guess. Changing to a new advisor at this point might be difficult and also possibly not something too many people would want to take on, because taking this long is an obvious red flag so people would be concerned about spending time with you that doesn't end up going anywhere (sorry if this is blunt, but I do think that's how people would think). If you can still find someone, that might be the best solution. (One option is someone young and relatively inexperienced, who wouldn't know the history and also isn't too busy with other advisees. There are obvious drawbacks, but it could also be very good.) Otherwise, you may need to start documenting everything, including everything you agreed to (in particular, what you still need to do to graduate), and his conflicting requests and forgetfulness. Do you have a committee? Is there anyone on your committee who you could express concern to, or who could take over as the main advisor? The fact that your advisor is going on sabbatical might actually be helpful in that it's a great excuse to replace him without anyone losing face.

If you feel like you have a hard time expressing yourself, you could try putting things in writing before you go, so you have some text prepared in case you get flustered. I wouldn't send an email in this case, but rather have an in-person conversation. Advisors can vary in how much they want to know about your personal life and how much they support they want to offer. Professors are *not* mental health professionals (or clinicians, for that matter -- but you'd never go to them for advice on an actual physical problem, you'd see your doctor!); some don't feel comfortable knowing about their students' mental health issues or offering advice that may overstep their expertise.* As an advisor myself, these days, I can tell you it's a very delicate matter -- you want to be supportive and understanding, but you don't want to make assumptions or offer advice that might be taken as more than just musings based on anecdotes or personal experience. Some people are much better at handling this than others; some, understandably, just want to know about your work and not about your life. Seek out those who can also support you in other aspects, if you need it. Sounds like your main supervisor might be that person. Sharing a difficulty and asking for help getting through this difficult last stretch should not be interpreted as being "against" anyone or "attacking" anyone. I'm not sure how that happened in the first place, but making clear that you want to do both, but might need to prioritize one over the other in terms of timing (because you just can't keep up with the demands of doing both simultaneously), should do the trick. As for your comment about your supervisors being native English speakers, I guess I don't know how this works in your field/institution, but I personally don't like it when students think I am their own personal editor. I am there to offer professional advice and guidance, and I do my best to help with writing, but expecting your busy advisor to copy-edit your work might be beyond what they think is a part of their job description, especially if the piece requires a lot of work. From the sound of it, their having referred you to published papers, they may not think this is something they should be doing. Again, I suggest using the services of the writing center at your school, if it exists, or someone who does this for a living. * Which is not to say I don't want to know that there is a problem that needs accommodating, but I may not be the right person to ask for advice on how to handle it!

^ I agree that McGill doesn't sound like a good choice. UCLA's linguistics department also isn't applied, but at least it's large and fairly broad in terms of faculty and interests (though I don't think it's what you're looking for). UMich is also fairly diverse. CUNY has more people on the applied side, as does Rochester, but your interests are so vague that I can't begin to guess who would be a good advisor for you at any of these institutions. I think you need to spend some time narrowing down and better-defining what it is that you are looking for. For your questions, I started studying for the GRE over the spring before the application season, took it in early summer. Wrote a draft of my SOP early in the summer and had probably about a dozen drafts before I had the first finished product, which I then tweaked to fit different applications (in terms of content, word count, fit). I asked for letters around October. I spent a *lot* of time researching programs over the summer and early fall, and iteratively over time better defining my own goals and interests -- as I read online and wrote my essays. I basically used an existing paper as my writing sample, and integrated comments I got on it in the fall. I got transcripts early in the fall, as well. I had a spreadsheet to keep track of all the different requirements of all my applications. You can find other posts on the board about timelines and strategies for keeping track of everything you need to do, there is nothing special about linguistics. As long as you tie it into your other interests, it could be used to establish fit with the department. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're asking. I wouldn't fluff anything anywhere, and I wouldn't lie. It's fine to be open minded. Yeah, this is not a question anyone can sit down and answer. Read more on the board, and come back with more detailed questions.

There is no reason why telling your supervisors that you are stressed out and feeling close to burn-out at this point in the writing process should disappoint your supervisors or damage your relationship. In fact, it would be surprising if you didn't feel this way. It's a natural part of the process, no less so because you haven't been taking care of yourself. Sharing with them that this is starting to affect your physical and mental health and you need their help planning and prioritizing so you can finish on schedule without causing yourself damage would be very sensible. I would start there. You want to say basically what you said here -- that you appreciate their support and advice, and that you know that they are trying to help you further your career -- but the difficulties you have with writing have meant that it's taken you longer than they perhaps assume, and therefore you haven't taken any breaks in order to keep up. You now realize that this isn't sustainable and you need to slow down somewhere. You think it should be on these other experiments, keeping the dissertation writing on track; ask them what they think about this. Have you considered getting professional help with writing/editing? I'm sure you can find someone who could help take off the pressure by streamlining the text. (Maybe a less advanced student who is in your field and can understand the content? Or a professional copy-editor who works on texts in your field?) I personally tend to agree with your supervisors that the publications are more important than the dissertation; but you also need to get the dissertation out of the way so you can take the next steps in your career, so it's important to find a way to do both.

It's probably a no, and sadly this is a lot more common than you might think. Professional or not, this is how a lot of schools handle applications.

Well when I say Boston I mean Cambridge and Somerville, but yes. In my current city, leases begin August 1, and I know people who are well underway looking, and others who've already signed a new lease for next year. I found my own place last year in early May, and some places I was hoping to see were already taken by the time I could visit. So, I think there's a lot of variation, and it's best to ask locals about their experience in their town.

Actually, unless things have changed since I moved away, now is very much the right time to look. Leases normally begin on September 1, but they are normally signed pretty long in advance, and good apartments might already be gone, or are going now. I don't think May is too early to start; and sure, you might also find good things in August, but you're much less likely to.

Yep, the Boston area is a fast-moving market, and this time of year things go very quickly. What they ask for generally sounds about right -- you'll need to pay a downpayment (often first+last month's rent), plus a security deposit that would be returned to you when you leave the apartment, after they've ascertained that you haven't caused any damage (could be anywhere from half a month's rent to two or more). Some places use a real estate agent and that comes with a (non-refundable!) fee, as well. I'm not sure what they need the I-20 for, but what worked for me was to get a letter from my department stating that I was an admitted (and later, current) student, with X years of guaranteed funding in the amount of Y. I assume all they want to know is how much you're making, which is something the I-20 shows. Otherwise, I don't know what they would need it for. So I would ask for such a letter (I got mine from the department's admin person), and ask whoever you're talking to about apartments if that letter could be used as a substitute for the I-20, since you haven't been issued one yet. The Boston area sees thousands and thousands of (international) students a year, so you're not the first one these people will have dealt with.

The Linguistic Society of America is hosting a webinar for linguistics scholars focused on applying for the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowships. The webinar will take place on Wednesday, May 10 from 2:30 to 4:30 PM US EDT. Register for the webinar here. Participation is limited to 100 attendees, but the webinar will be archived for later viewing. (More here:) http://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2017/04/26/lsa-host-webinar-applying-nsf-graduate-research-fellowship-program

You don't necessarily need an MA in linguistics, but you do need to be able to explain why you want a degree in linguistics (and how you know that, if you haven't taken coueses in it, or done anything in linguistics recently -- guessing from the two non-ling MAs). You might consider attending a summer institute -- there are several of those in the US, Europe, and Asia. The LSA summer institute is happening this year, and there's for example ESSLLI, EGG, the summer school in St. Petersburg, the summer school in Crete, the one in the Himalayas, to name a few. That would be a way to show you're actively pursuing an education in linguistics and to get to know some linguists who teach at those venues.

Wouldn't that depend on your area of study? If the student wants to study the deaf community, ASL is obviously more helpful, and conversely braille if they are focusing on the blind. If neither and they just need to satisfy a requirement, why not ASL, again? In any event, my comment above was about allowing ASL to satisfy the foreign language requirement in general (stemming from a current struggle my department is having at my own institution, where ASL can't ever count because it isn't a written language!). Of course there might be other factors that go into approving a particular language for a particular student, to do with their research and other goals this requirement might have. We could also talk about whether Xhosa could satisfy a language requirement for a Romance lit student (perhaps not). In this particular case, I would think that allowing ASL to satisfy the requirement is entirely within limits, since the student in question is interested in disability studies, with the caveats above.

So I'm not sure I understand from the OP whether the professor understood that the other TA's suggestion wasn't run part you first, so when s/he said "maybe we could do [blah]" that shouldn't imply that *you* are in agreement with this. Personally, if my TA ever suggested returning an assignment before the deadline, I would never decline. Why not, if s/he can make it? So now the question is whether the prof is aware, and also if the class has already been promised their work will be returned by this earlier deadline. If not, I think it should be much easier to negotiate a later deadline than if promises have been made. So: if the students aren't aware of this interaction, it seems to me that the best course of action is pretty straightforward. You need to write the professor as soon as you can and simply explain that this last-minute change of deadline can't work for you because you have other plans and deadlines and were planning based on your earlier agreement. Any reasonable person should understand that suddenly moving a deadline will cause trouble. Either suggest returning to the earlier deadline, or explicitly say something like "the earliest I could get the grading done is by [reasonable time, given your other commitments]." If for whatever reason it's hard to move the deadline back, you might try to negotiate your own deadline (and have the prof walk back their promise, it shouldn't be on you!), or depending on the specifics of the personalities involved, either simply choose to do a less-good job (spend less time on each paper) or actually say that this is what it means if you have to meet this sudden deadline. Alternatively, since there is also a final, something else you could try is to redistribute the workload. Have the other TA do more of the paper grading now, since apparently they have plenty of time, and you do more of the exam grading later.

Yep, so as noted above, schools vary with regard to whether they accept ASL as a foreign language. Partly this is to do with simple misconceptions, and occasionally it has to do with technicalities, like at some point in the sequence of Language classes, schools might have a writing component that ASL simply can't satisfy because it's not a written language. Some institutions find a way around that and others think it's a sticking point.. so you'll need to figure out what your institution is like, and keep in mind that you might need to fight to have ASL recognized as a second language. For the record, ASL is a different language from English, and if you speak it (and English), then you are bi-lingual. I (and other linguists) think it absolutely should count, but that doesn't mean it's not sometimes a fight to get it recognized.

Ah, I see. Well, you know him and are the best judge of whether it's a good idea to involve him in this.

If I may suggest, I am sure that this is stirring up a lot of emotion, and justifiably so. But to be taken maximally seriously, you need to remain very professional when you talk to other people about this, and not say things like you wrote above. Your goals should be to right the wrong that was done to you, which probably means having him remove the versions of the paper that don't have your name on them and uploading corrected ones (also citing the paper correctly in any public venue, like a lab website or online CV, if relevant). Any additional sanctions from there on are up to the university.

Okay, so you're in pretty good shape to actually pursue this. I'd still start with either the ombudsperson or the office or research integrity. Those are both unbiased bodies that are unrelated to your department. You should know that lodging a complaint against your advisor with the research integrity officer that claims he's essentially appropriated your work and stealing your credit/sabotaging your career is a serious allegation, and one that could get him into trouble. Maybe that's what you want and maybe it's deserving, but you should know this is a very serious thing to do, and an investigation could be a lengthy process. A lot will also depend on whether or not he's tenured (less can be done if he is). It's hard to know what to say about talking to your advisor directly, because you might well imagine that this was not an accident, and you'd be alerting him to the fact that you're onto him and pursuing this. One thing you might try is pretend this is all a mistake and just write him an email saying something like "hey, I noticed my name is missing on your recent arxiv upload of our paper, do you know what happened?" or some such. See how he reacts. But again, I think deciding on a game plan with someone who is impartial and has some experience is important, hence my suggestion to speak with the ombudsperson. The Dean of Students would be an alternative venue at some universities, it depends a little on the particulars of your university, so you'd need to figure that out. It's a question of confidentiality and who knows who, because you need to remember that there is a lot of politics involved here, and you need to do this right.

First thing's first. Are you admitted to a new program, or still dependent on his letter of recommendation for other things? You say that your name is still on the paper when you log into your account with the journal -- does that mean it's on the accepted version of the manuscript? If so, there's a sad but real calculation that has to go into how much it's worth fighting to have your name on the unofficial version of the paper, since it's a third-authorship and since the official version is all that really counts. For starters, though, I would not put anything official in writing and I wouldn't email anyone before I had a better sense of the politics behind this move. I'd reach out to the ombudsperson for advice, since they are bound to confidentiality and might have a broader perspective and some experience with cases like this. And if you want to take this a step further, the appropriate venue is most likely the Research Integrity Officer at your school (or in some cases, the Dean of Students), who can take care of complaints to do with misappropriation of research and retaliation related to authorship. Either way, I'd start with a confidential meeting to get a sense of how these people think of this case. If there is someone you trust, you might take a representative along with you to the meeting, to make sure someone has your back and is taking notes. Starting now, you should document everything that happens concerning this paper. Make sure you have copies of emails and other correspondence, especially if some of it is hard-copies and controlled by your advisor. You need to be able to prove that you were promised authorship and did authorship-worthy work, before this all went awry. Good luck!

It'll be limiting and tiring. Not impossible, but not something I would recommend to anyone. Spending two hours on the road every day is a lot! If you have to drive, you have to concentrate and it's time when you're not getting work done. In the winter the drive might take longer, or you might not want to drive in the dark and you'll end up leaving earlier. There are costs to do with parking, insurance, gas, maintenance, etc. And it'll limit your ability to interact with others -- you won't be able to join outings in the evening, you won't want to stay late and study, or even just hang out. Which means you'll be less connected to your cohort. Eventually you might start skipping events such as reading groups or other talks, or you might not show up if you don't have classes/meetings a certain day, again limiting your interaction with the program and limiting what you'll get out of it. Part of what the program will give you is exposure to faculty and the departmental culture, and those are things you might (partly) miss out on, if you're commuting from far away.

I mean, what more do you expect us to say? We're talking about an internal funding source listed on an I20 by an unnamed employee at an international students office at an unnamed university, presumably based on information provided by yet another unnamed employee of an unnamed department at said unnamed university. It's hard to offer any kind of input beyond: either it's real and they're offering you more funding than you thought, or it's a mistake. If you're wondering how often miscommunications happen where someone ends up with more/less funding than they thought, well, who knows. I'm sure it happens. Either way, the only place where you will be able to get answers is your department.

You need to 'debug' what happened: - did you get interview invited but no admits? - is your SOP well written, expresses your interests clearly, establishes fit with the school, and discusses your background in detail? Is it forward-looking and doesn't spend too much time on the past? Does it sound like you're excited, or like you're making excuses or blaming others for any difficulties? Is it grammatically correct and typo-free? - do you have strong LORs from professors who know you well and can discuss your research potential? - do you have a strong writing sample (if necessary for your applications)? - do you have good grades and GRE scores? - are you explaining any obvious red flags in your application? - are you choosing appropriate schools in terms of fit and rank? You might need to get help from an advisor or someone you trust who is in grad school. Get at least one person to read through your materials, to see if you are presenting yourself in the best possible way. Having good credentials on paper doesn't necessarily imply a strong application; a lot of work needs to go into that.

Assist how, exactly? Job talks are given by finalist candidates for faculty positions, usually TT but occasionally also for temp positions. It's only one part of the interview process, but for you as a student it'll be one of the only ways to see the candidates before there's a hiring decision (there might also be a lunch with students you could attend). If you want to see what job talks look like, or if the topic interests you, go ahead and attend them. Beyond that, they're just like any other talk in your department, as far as you're concerned, so you can make a decision about attending just like you would in any other case.

Well, for what it's worth, it's not the academia I'm a part of.

Well, it seems like you need to have a conversation with your advisor, and sooner rather than later. Raise this concern about having sufficient material to present on and enough time to craft the presentation and ask for their advice on how to handle this. I'm not sure I understood how your presentation was accepted if there was no data when the abstract was submitted, so this is all a bit odd. But the most reasonable strategy would be either to withdraw, or if that isn't an option, have a presentation that is more about the idea and setup of the experiment(?) or study, predictions, plus perhaps preliminary results, and a discussion of the importance of the topic. Most of those are things you could get started on now, so you can put the presentation together with plenty of time to spare. And this is where your advisor can come in: ask for help in putting together the presentation in terms of structure and content, and specifically what you can do now, and what will happen if you don't have results in time, or if they are inconclusive. Just discuss how a presentation could go in that case, and see what your advisor has to say. (And approach this as: (1) what can I do now? (2) what would I do if the results are inconclusive, and (3) I worry that this might happen very last minute, and that stresses me out as a young student; I wouldn't use words like impossible or not feasible, just words like difficult or worry.)