fuzzylogician

You have time for what is important enough for you to make time for. Exercise, family, friends, sleep, household chores, hobbies, to name a few that you might need to actively set aside time for, or else they may fall by the wayside. Why would there be a grad-student-specific answer to this one? There have to be a thousand websites and videos out there for your fitness level and level of engagement. That's what you need to worry about, as opposed to what random other people do.

OPT is the only option I know of that would work for you. You need to get started with the process as soon as possible if you want to be able to work in the summer. Note that it doesn't matter if you work for pay or not, it's considered work either way. You should also consult with the international students office at your school, if you haven't yet.

In my field: From most to least formal - 1. Dear (Prof/Dr) LastName. 2. Dear FirstName 3. Hello FirstName 4. Hi FirstName (or just Hi!). You get (1) from strangers and students, as well as university bureaucrats. (2) for most official correspondence with colleagues I don't know well. Soon after (2) we usually move to (4). (3) is somewhere inbetween and used when you're not entirely sure what to do, and also when emailing groups. In any event, "dear" is not personal at all in this context. I wouldn't consider "Prof XX," a faux pas, but I'd assume it's someone who's not too versed in these kinds of emails.

Two things. That (made up) email address isn't a professional one, and not coincidentally, people who use such emails tend to not sign their name. Sign your name, and I'll use it and not be confused.

Good advice above. Other random thoughts: If your instructor has a PhD, call them Dr./Prof. XX, not Mr. or Ms. (This commonly happens to female professors and is incredibly annoying.) It's better to err on the side of being too polite than not polite enough. So use Prof. Last Name if it's someone you've never met or who hasn't invited you to use their first name. In some programs and academic cultures first names are the norm, so if you know that to be the case, use whatever is the norm. But when in doubt, err on the polite side. Don't give unnecessary details or explanations for your request/question. (E.g., if you're a student in my class and you're sick and need an extension, it's fine to just say you're sick; I really don't need to know how much time you spent in the bathroom and what you did there...) Use a professional email address, and sign your name. Sometimes I'll get an email from "hotpuppy59723@comcast.net" and I don't know what to begin to do with that. The most useful emails have just one main point, and it's front and center (in the title, even, if possible). If you make multiple requests and/or ask multiple questions, there is a much greater chance that some will be forgotten or ignored.

Best advice I can give: find a way to work with the ones you get along with more, and realize that you won't be able to change the ones who do things that annoy you or aren't compatible with your work style. It's better to work with people with compatible work styles even if their interests aren't as close to yours than with ones who are technically a better match but will drive you crazy. Also: - learn to do your own research and not to expect faculty to know about formal requirements; they so often don't. - instead of saying "I sent you an email about this two weeks ago", reply to that original email whenever you follow up on a topic. - put everything you agree to with your committee in writing (send a summary email after meetings). They don't need to reply, but it's good to have a record. - (if you haven't yet,) make sure you pick committee members who get along with one another, and appoint a chair. The chair should have the final say in case of disagreements. And as with my advice above, having people who get along is more important than having the people with the closest match for your interests. - talk to more advanced students (if you're in your final year, find them at conferences, or email them!), and talk to them about their process. Learn about when the ball was dropped with them, and generally what the process was like. Also, for commiseration, I almost didn't apply for an NSFDRIG: first, I found out it existed totally by accident (long story), and when I asked if I should apply, my advisor said something like "oh, sure, that would be a good idea!" .. but I guarantee you that if I hadn't brought it up, they would have never told me. And then it turned out that there was a secret institution-internal deadline for proposal submission that no one told me about, and I found out two days *after* it passed. I was also away, traveling at the time. But we all got our asses into gear and worked hard and get an extra-special extension from the office of sponsored research, and eventually made it work (and I got the grant!). But yeah, I shouldn't have trusted other people to lead me through the process, that caused a whole lot of stress and almost led to failure.

Bumping this up because it's an important question. I wish I could remember the setup at my own PhD institution, but it's been too long ago. I can say something about the university I work at, if that helps, but it'll be from the perspective of a new employee, not a graduate student, so I assume that's not what you're looking for. From what I do recall: I can't remember students/friends ever talking about mental health concerns, though I am sure they existed. I think that there were resources for grad students that were separate from the undergrads (support groups, mostly, and the possibility for an off-campus psychologist, so you didn't have to run into your students at the doctor's office), but otherwise it was mostly shared. I think the first time I learned about these resources was when I first started to TA and had to deal with students with these issues.

I think it may be time to do two things: - Look where the literature you are citing in your work was published. Go to those journals and see how often they publish work like yours. Come up with a list. (Or a chosen candidate, if that becomes clear.) - Go back to your advisor with that list, and talk it through. It's a bit strange that your advisor said they don't know what journal would be a good venue. I would believe that they can't tell you which journal is necessarily the "best" because that might be hard, but they should at least have thoughts about where work like yours is published, if they are advising you. Presumably that should mean that they should have some expertise in the area, and that would include knowing where relevant work is published. Maybe they wanted you to do more of the legwork yourself instead of just giving you the answer, and that's fair. So do it, and go back with the results and have another chat.

It seems to me that there are two topics being discussed here. The OP asked "do men resent successful women", but this thread has somehow turned into "is the OP doing the right things when dating/looking for a relationship". I can totally understand why someone isn't so excited about internet strangers analyzing their personality and offering advice based on a few posts and not much other information. OP, there might be some interesting thoughts here worth pondering, especially the ones that repeat, but I also think you need to take everything in the perspective of your broader life, which we don't know about here. Since this is an open forum and everyone is entitled to post their opinion, you can't direct the conversation, even if you started it. You can and should choose what advice you want to take. I do agree with the statement above that relationships aren't always easy for everyone and that just being around a lot of new people might not be enough for some people. I also think the advice to let friends and family know that you're looking is useful. They know you and might be able to help you find someone who is a better match than a random person you met on the job. (Assuming you trust these people's taste and opinion of you!) As for the question you actually asked, I think I saw two kinds of answers, one along the lines of "it hasn't happened to me, but..." and one along the lines of "those people are d-bags anyway". So, yes, people like that aren't people you want to be in a relationship with, but it's not always that simple. Yes, it happens, there's research on that. Sometimes it's obvious, but sometimes it isn't. I think the bottom line is that it might make it more difficult for you to find a suitable partner who is supportive of you and your goals, that may be a valid difficulty. But it's not a reason to stop trying or assume the worst. Good guys are out there; you have to believe that. It does indeed take longer for some people than others to find a good partner, but that's not reason to give up. On the other hand, there is only so much that you can do to start a relationship. It's partly a matter of luck and circumstances. The best thing you can do for yourself is learn to be happy on your own, and stop worrying so much about what others say or what should happen at what time. You're much more likely to have a successful relationship if you're in a good place in life and happy as a person, and if you just let it happen instead of actively seeking it.

Yes. It's really not that hard. There's lots of advice online on how to get started.

Is there a way for you to delay graduating -- e.g. take a leave of absence to recover, restore your mental health to a better place, diagnose and treat your ADHD, and catch up on work? It's too bad someone didn't suggest this for your spring semester (and frankly, even for the fall semester) and it might be too late now, but if possible, I think the thing to do is to talk to your advisor and/or your DGS both about the ADHD and about the grieving process, and see if you can make up some lost time and stability by slowing down. You say that you work hard and don't take breaks -- that too isn't healthy, and isn't actually a good way to catch up or keep all your balls in the air. It's pretty much a guaranteed way to wear yourself out and eventually drop balls all over the place. So given that you were on the right track last year before your father died, you can't quite rewind to that point, but you could ask to be given a chance to put the pieces of your life back together and try again when you're freer to concentrate on your studies. I don't know how this would work technically, there may be financial difficulties (and visa issues, if you're international), so this would be something to discuss with the DGS sooner rather than later. But overall I think the situation is such that your professors can't judge your abilities fairly because your work has suffered from external circumstances outside of your control, so the best argument you can make is that you are still passionate about a PhD and you'd like the chance to earn their good opinion and support, once you've had time to process what has happened in your life this year and recover. If you have extra time to concentrate on your work once you've dealt with other issues, I hope you'd be able to get to a place where your advisors would be happy to support your PhD application.

For the record, I use (Xe)LaTeX and BibTex with the natbib package. My bibliography manager is BibDesk (on a mac), which allows me to save details on each of my entries, including author, year, etc., as well as the pdf and any comments. The pdfs themselves as saved in a dedicated folder on dropbox, so the whole thing syncs across my home and office computer.

My main advice is to talk to an advisor who knows the work. You'll want to pick an appropriate venue for the work (which journal is the highest ranked journal you could target such that it accepts work in your area and your work is good enough to (hopefully) be accepted there?). You want to look at other papers there for style and content, and read the instructions to authors on formatting, length requirements, and such. Then you'll probably need to go through several rounds of writing and editing with your advisor. If this was a thesis or course paper, you'll need to streamline and probably reduce the amount of space you spend on the lit review. You might need to change how you situate the paper in the context of the literature, or how you talk about the results. It's hard to know what more to say without seeing the paper/work, which is why you need someone on the ground to help you get started. The first projects you'll do will be slow and hard(er), but with time you'll improve and get faster. You might also want to start by finding presentation venues for the work, to workshop the presentation and get feedback on the ideas. Those could be locally at your university or at conferences. If those conferences have proceedings, that's another good way to get started with the writing process before you move on to a full-length article.

Every school I've attended or taught at has had some version of a "dissertation writing bootcamp", involving some form of communal writing/shaming into writing component, with multiple sessions throughout the day over a week or two and with some form of food provided. Those are usually organized by the student union and tend to be free, so it's worth checking them out. They're (maybe) useful for those times when you absolutely have to produce a large amount of text in a limited amount of time, but beyond that developing healthy habits for writing is generally a good idea, because writing is going to be a part of your life as an academic after your dissertation is done and at times when you couldn't possibly drop everything and just write, because you have too many other obligations.

Relevant to some of you perhaps: http://ling.umd.edu/baggett/ The deadline is April 21. Some former Baggett fellows have gone on to do PhDs in very good schools, so if you struck out with your applications this year, you could try for this post-bacc, they reapply next year.

It happens, but it's extremely rare. Barring very unlikely scenarios, you're in -- congrats!

You tell her where you're going, it's not a secret. You don't explain why you chose that school and you don't reiterate how difficult the decision was. This is a friendly response by a curious professor. @TakeruK's formulation is a good example of how to handle this question.

Well, there are several options. One is that they made more offers than they want students in their cohort. That's actually extremely common, even among the most competitive programs. You'll make n offers and expect a yield of m<n as a result. If you don't get enough students after this first round, you might go to the waitlist, but you will want to wait until you have a better idea of the size of the cohort, it's not enough for one student to decline. Another is that the waitlist is not strictly ranked, so there will be some politics that goes into who is offered a spot off the waitlist. If so, this will depend on internal complex power struggles. It will possibly matter not only that someone declined, but also what their field was, to try to accept someone else with similar interests to keep a balance. Yet another is that there needs to be an official department meeting or some other official and complex bureaucratic shenanigan that needs to happen before the department can move to the waitlist, usually involving several people, some of whom busy and/or slow. (This is actually quite likely.) It might be that some student was offered more money to try to attract them to the program, but that holds up more money so even though someone else declined, they're still waiting to figure out the money situation. I don't think it's common for this to depend on some university-level decision making at this point, although it is of course possible that changes in budget will affect how many students can be funded this year -- but that should have been decided long ago! It could still be that something changed in the funding situation, but I don't think that's likely the case.

The way undergrads are taught doesn't have to be the way you describe. And learning by having clear learning objectives, including assignments and grades, is very useful. Not everyone is good at learning everything themselves, and not everyone will have learned the relevant skills in their undergrad. Part of what grad courses do is begin to train you to teach yourself what you need to know, because there isn't always going to be a class for everything you need to know. Classes also useful in a variety of other (social and professional) aspects, e.g. getting an entire cohort together in the same room, so they get to know each other and learn to share ideas. If done well, collaborations will form that could inform research. And you as a student learn who I am as an instructor, you learn about my teaching style, about my interests, and about our compatibility as a potential advisor/advisee. In other words, coursework helps not only in leveling the playing field so that everyone in the program has some common shared knowledge that is driven by the interests and expertise of the faculty, but it also creates a community where ideas can be shared, people get to know each other better, and collaborations can be formed. Those things could, but often won't just emerge if everyone works in their office in isolation and don't get to interact with others.

This, frankly, is a bizarre position. Do you think that you've learned all there is to learn in undergrad? There aren't any more advanced materials you might not have covered in undergrad that you might need to learn (and be graded on) as a graduate student? I highly doubt that.

Note: this thread is from 2009. It's unlikely that the OP still needs any advice.

It is high. No where near where posters here are. Usually the result of a meltdown or obvious trolling, which rarely ends well. I hope things calm down and don't get out of hand here. **moderator note Friends, please exercise discretion when posting and when replying to posts. Those disappointed with their results, it's okay to be upset, but you need to learn to deal with rejection and disappointment. Acting immaturely isn't going to lead to anything positive, and isn't something you'd ever want associated with your real identity. In this day and age, it's fair to assume that anything you post online is here to stay, and could eventually be associated with you. So please watch out, and consider the consequences of your actions. Other friends, please consider ignoring tantrums and negative posts. The moderating team doesn't like to intervene unless someone crosses the line, which hasn't happened here (yet). You can use the reputation system to down-vote posts you disagree with -- but do not abuse the system (do not go back and down-vote other, perfectly agreeable posts by someone just because some other post of theirs upset you). The best thing you can do is just ignore the offending post and move on. **

If there is a specific format, it'd be specific to that contest. Ask them. If not, whatever you do (that meets the requirements) will be fine. If the paper itself is anonymized for the judgment phase, all the cover page is used for is to match up the paper with the author.

Since they asked for it, it seems reasonable to assume that they use it somehow. I don't think anyone here can tell you how one particular admissions committee at one particular department in one particular school makes its decision, that's not something we can know. But if other students with similar backgrounds to yours have been accepted at this school (and others like it), it follows that they know how to read the WES report and how the grade you got really compares to their other applicants. I can't tell you not to worry, but I think I can tell you that this isn't something you can change now, so it's not worth spending too much time worrying about it. There is nothing you can do other than try.

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