fuzzylogician

There are several threads about this topic in Officially Grads that you might want to read. In general, here are some tips:

- Current students will be able to recommend areas you should concentrate on and areas you should avoid; they can tell you what price range to expect and how long a commute you can expect to your school. Ask them!
- If you can find a roommate through your department, you have good chances of doing OK. Maybe a current student is looking for a roommate or has a friend who is looking? Maybe another prospective is able to look for an apartment in person and is looking for a roommate? Ask! (departments usually have a grad students mailing list which you could use, find out what it is)
- Find out if it's really that bad to wait until August to find a place. In many places it's entirely possible to find a good apartment within several weeks in the summer, though I understand that it's very stressful.
- Get a letter of endorsement from your department (in case you will receive a stipend). Show it to potential landlords and to realtors. Landlords will know that grad students with a steady income are usually good tenants.
- Find out if your university has its own housing website; most large universities have one which is only open to students and will help you avoid scams.
- Spend some time learning the do's and don't's of renting. If this is the first time you'll rent, you'll want to avoid as many mistakes as possible. For example, consider getting in touch with a current grad to have them go look at apartments you are considering renting. Renting sight unseen is usually a bad idea.

Good luck!


ETA: what I did last year was email my department's graduate student mailing list to get some recommendations about locations and ask if anyone knew of an empty room. I was in touch with a couple of people who were looking for roommates and I ended up deciding to live with a student who was then a 1st year and was looking for a roommate for an apartment she was going to rent. We exchanged a few emails, talked on skype, and decided that we have similar preferences and would make good roommates. I took the room sight unseen (not a good idea in hindsight, but I was lucky and it turned out OK). I got a letter of endorsement from my department and was approved by the landlord without any trouble.

I fail to see the problem.

Time away from the work also helps a lot, so you can come at it from a fresh perspective. 
I've used the Abode "Read Out Loud" feature (under View). Works alright, kind of painful for formulas, but otherwise not bad at all. 

I'm saying there is no such thing as "feeling like an adult". Everyone feels like a weird nomad. That doesn't change when you first move out, or start your first relationship, or get married, or have your first child, or get your first "real" job. (Or when you have your first grandchild, or your first great-grandchild, according to my grandma.) We're all just making it up as we go along. Sorry I don't have better news.  
As for people around me, they know that I am working toward a particular career goal and they're supportive of that. That's all I ask. (But my family lives an ocean away and most of my friends are academics, so there's that.)

From an outside perspective: you had the whole summer to prep, plus the whole fall + half of spring semester, and there is no way you spent the whole time writing. You could have (and perhaps should have) prioritized studying for your exam more. To me, the story you're telling sounds like an excuse. You're always going to have more than one thing on your plate as an academic, and if you can't handle that, you won't succeed in academia. Now, beyond that, there's a question of whether you prepared correctly, which it sounds like you may not have. You say that there were concerns about your ability to recall your readings and express yourself orally, which isn't so much a problem of having time to do the reading but of doing the extra work to digest, integrate, and actually speak about these topics out loud. I don't know if you did that, but that would be something I would think about. Short version: I don't see anything unfair here. 
Now when it comes to the letter, not knowing your program it's a little hard to know what to say. For one, no one outside your program ever needs to know it exists. These "files" students have won't follow you around after you graduate. So I guess the question is what it does program-internally, and that is something you'd know better than us. The good news is you passed! A pass is a pass. A high pass or a low pass are both just the same a pass, meaning you've been approved to move on to the next level in your program. It sounds like your program isn't shy about letting you know what they think, so if they thought you should leave, they would tell you. Nonetheless, I think it's wise to have a frank conversation with your advisor about this question and get their opinion. If they say you could/should stay, you should ask explicitly how to fix whatever was lacking in your exam. But assuming you stay, you will need to put this unpleasant experience behind you. As I said, a pass is a pass. Impress your committee with your next steps, and they will assume that you've taken their advice in the letter to heart and improved. They won't hold older offenses against you if you're doing well later on. And again, the letter is internal (as is the exam for that matter) and doesn't matter to anyone but your program. You'll be successful in academia on independent grounds that have nothing to do with this exam or letter, so all is most definitely not lost, and you still have a path to success directly ahead of you. 

Definitely. Your own department bully can be used as an exercise for ones you don't know as well and whose behavior you can't predict. The stakes are lower because everyone knows this person behaves this way, but you can confound expectations by handling them well. Think back to people who've handled them well in the past: how did they do it? Attitude? A certain way of deflecting the question? Answering a different question or reformulating? Giving them a compliment or finding a way to cite/use their work in your reply? You can even try to prepare for the question(s) this person might ask, since you've seen them do this in the past. You can't predict all questions, but you can prep for at least some. I sometimes find that it's useful in these situations to say "that's an interesting way of putting it ... hmm. Funny, half-way thought [this] is what I thought you were going to ask: ..." and answer your own version of the question that you've prepped for. Or if the situation calls for it, you don't even announce that you're doing it, you just answer your own question and pretend that's what they asked.  

My 90 year old grandmother tells me she still feels like she's 18. I don't think you ever start "feeling" like an adult. But you are one at almost 30, for better or worse, and having a "regular" job or not doesn't change that. You can definitely treat your graduate school career like any other career; you can work regular hours if you want, you can get dressed and go to the office every day, and you can attend multiple meetings a day. Up to you. You can also work from home in your pajamas at odd hours. That's one of the things I personally love most about the job -- some things are fixed, but I get a lot of freedom. I don't think that makes me any less of an adult, whatever that would even mean. 

It's your CV, you choose what to list. It's not a job application where you're asked to list *all* of the higher education institutions you've attended. If you ask me, I really don't think it hurts to list a CC degree, but just like you can choose not to include a publication in a more obscure venue or whatever else takes away from accomplishments you want to highlight, you can omit this degree too. 

From an outside perspective: you had the whole summer to prep, plus the whole fall + half of spring semester, and there is no way you spent the whole time writing. You could have (and perhaps should have) prioritized studying for your exam more. To me, the story you're telling sounds like an excuse. You're always going to have more than one thing on your plate as an academic, and if you can't handle that, you won't succeed in academia. Now, beyond that, there's a question of whether you prepared correctly, which it sounds like you may not have. You say that there were concerns about your ability to recall your readings and express yourself orally, which isn't so much a problem of having time to do the reading but of doing the extra work to digest, integrate, and actually speak about these topics out loud. I don't know if you did that, but that would be something I would think about. Short version: I don't see anything unfair here. 
Now when it comes to the letter, not knowing your program it's a little hard to know what to say. For one, no one outside your program ever needs to know it exists. These "files" students have won't follow you around after you graduate. So I guess the question is what it does program-internally, and that is something you'd know better than us. The good news is you passed! A pass is a pass. A high pass or a low pass are both just the same a pass, meaning you've been approved to move on to the next level in your program. It sounds like your program isn't shy about letting you know what they think, so if they thought you should leave, they would tell you. Nonetheless, I think it's wise to have a frank conversation with your advisor about this question and get their opinion. If they say you could/should stay, you should ask explicitly how to fix whatever was lacking in your exam. But assuming you stay, you will need to put this unpleasant experience behind you. As I said, a pass is a pass. Impress your committee with your next steps, and they will assume that you've taken their advice in the letter to heart and improved. They won't hold older offenses against you if you're doing well later on. And again, the letter is internal (as is the exam for that matter) and doesn't matter to anyone but your program. You'll be successful in academia on independent grounds that have nothing to do with this exam or letter, so all is most definitely not lost, and you still have a path to success directly ahead of you. 

Yes, it's not okay to lie to your advisors, and yes, you are likely burning a bridge with A and C. This bridge was already burning for a long time, and you are not doing anything to put it out. I understand that you didn't want to do the experiment while you were working on your dissertation because you were busy and stressed out. But as I recall, you did agree to do it later, and it's in all of your interests to do it to get a publication that from your description sounded like it would be high-impact. Since A and C are out of funding, I'm not all that surprised that they need this paper, and frankly you made a promise, used them (and from their perspective, perhaps manipulated them and B to graduate), and then are reneging on your promise, so I can see why they would be upset. (Not saying this is what happened, but I can see how they would see it this way.) I can also see your side and the money part, but on your own admission, that's not why you're dragging your feet. I think in all fairness to your PhD advisors who still depend on you, you need to finish this project. They are worried that with this new job you'll just move on and never finish the experiment, and that could have a detrimental effect on their careers, so it's not surprising that they're not all that happy for you or congratulating you. Can you understand where they're coming from? 

From an outside perspective: you had the whole summer to prep, plus the whole fall + half of spring semester, and there is no way you spent the whole time writing. You could have (and perhaps should have) prioritized studying for your exam more. To me, the story you're telling sounds like an excuse. You're always going to have more than one thing on your plate as an academic, and if you can't handle that, you won't succeed in academia. Now, beyond that, there's a question of whether you prepared correctly, which it sounds like you may not have. You say that there were concerns about your ability to recall your readings and express yourself orally, which isn't so much a problem of having time to do the reading but of doing the extra work to digest, integrate, and actually speak about these topics out loud. I don't know if you did that, but that would be something I would think about. Short version: I don't see anything unfair here. 
Now when it comes to the letter, not knowing your program it's a little hard to know what to say. For one, no one outside your program ever needs to know it exists. These "files" students have won't follow you around after you graduate. So I guess the question is what it does program-internally, and that is something you'd know better than us. The good news is you passed! A pass is a pass. A high pass or a low pass are both just the same a pass, meaning you've been approved to move on to the next level in your program. It sounds like your program isn't shy about letting you know what they think, so if they thought you should leave, they would tell you. Nonetheless, I think it's wise to have a frank conversation with your advisor about this question and get their opinion. If they say you could/should stay, you should ask explicitly how to fix whatever was lacking in your exam. But assuming you stay, you will need to put this unpleasant experience behind you. As I said, a pass is a pass. Impress your committee with your next steps, and they will assume that you've taken their advice in the letter to heart and improved. They won't hold older offenses against you if you're doing well later on. And again, the letter is internal (as is the exam for that matter) and doesn't matter to anyone but your program. You'll be successful in academia on independent grounds that have nothing to do with this exam or letter, so all is most definitely not lost, and you still have a path to success directly ahead of you. 

A sub-thread that has taken off in an inappropriate direction was removed here. Please keep the conversation on topic and civil. 

From my perspective, if you found an advisor that's a great match and has a strong placement record, that beats official rankings by a mile. 

Yes, it's not okay to lie to your advisors, and yes, you are likely burning a bridge with A and C. This bridge was already burning for a long time, and you are not doing anything to put it out. I understand that you didn't want to do the experiment while you were working on your dissertation because you were busy and stressed out. But as I recall, you did agree to do it later, and it's in all of your interests to do it to get a publication that from your description sounded like it would be high-impact. Since A and C are out of funding, I'm not all that surprised that they need this paper, and frankly you made a promise, used them (and from their perspective, perhaps manipulated them and B to graduate), and then are reneging on your promise, so I can see why they would be upset. (Not saying this is what happened, but I can see how they would see it this way.) I can also see your side and the money part, but on your own admission, that's not why you're dragging your feet. I think in all fairness to your PhD advisors who still depend on you, you need to finish this project. They are worried that with this new job you'll just move on and never finish the experiment, and that could have a detrimental effect on their careers, so it's not surprising that they're not all that happy for you or congratulating you. Can you understand where they're coming from? 

Seconding the writing center advice.
If your problem is with the discussion, you might ask yourself if you have a plan before you start writing. You have described your project and findings, now your goal is to communicate how to situate them in a broader context, how we should interpret them, what really matters out of what you found, and what we should take away from that to inform our science more broadly. It's useful to sit down and sketch in bullet points what the main points to be discussed are. E.g., finding 1 -- teaches us that [blah], is evidence against [this thing], lead to broader conclusion that [something]. Same for other findings. Now, are there themes? Group the discussion so you stress those recurring themes instead of scattering them. Remember that your goal is to tell the most compelling story; that may not (very often, is not) your personal story of how you made the discovery, which means that you may not introduce everything in the chronological order of which experiment happened first. Work by main conclusions and themes instead. Create that sketch on a piece of paper *before* you start writing and have a plan and a skeleton for your chapter. This should help with repetitiveness and with scattered ideas that are hard to pinpoint. 

An easy place to start: remove all adjectives and adverbs. Does the text change? 99% of the time, the answer is 'no' and the extra embellishment is unnecessary. A second step: remove hedges: I would like to propose that..., it would appear that [blah] might be the case --> [blah], etc.
Writing papers can be hard. When you got started, did you sit down with your advisor and discuss the overall structure and main point(s) of the thesis? If you haven't, even though it sounds like you're fairly advanced, it would be very useful to stop and do this. Existing text aside, what are you trying to convey to your reader? How do you plan to structure the argument(s)? What does the reader need to know at each step, to understand what you're telling them? If you've done this already, go back to your plans and ask yourself how you're doing with respect to your plans. Things always change along the way, but it's also good to remind yourself of where you started and where you want to go. The thing about edits is that they get into the nitty gritty details and you can easily forget the forest for the trees. Take a step back to remind yourself of the bigger picture. Then make a pass with this in mind. For each sentence/paragraph, does it need to be there or can it be cut? If it stays, what's it doing there? Is it doing its job well or can it be trimmed? Maybe it'd serve you better in another part of the essay. 
It's useful to read things out loud or have them read to you (there's software that will do that for you). It's also often helpful to print things out and read them on paper as opposed to on the screen. At the end of the day, you have to learn by doing, there is no other way. Look back at edits you've gotten: are there common themes to things that get corrected in your writing? Are there things you particularly appreciate about other people's writing that you can emulate in your own writing? I find that going back and forth between the details and the big picture helps me avoid some frustrations.  

An easy place to start: remove all adjectives and adverbs. Does the text change? 99% of the time, the answer is 'no' and the extra embellishment is unnecessary. A second step: remove hedges: I would like to propose that..., it would appear that [blah] might be the case --> [blah], etc.
Writing papers can be hard. When you got started, did you sit down with your advisor and discuss the overall structure and main point(s) of the thesis? If you haven't, even though it sounds like you're fairly advanced, it would be very useful to stop and do this. Existing text aside, what are you trying to convey to your reader? How do you plan to structure the argument(s)? What does the reader need to know at each step, to understand what you're telling them? If you've done this already, go back to your plans and ask yourself how you're doing with respect to your plans. Things always change along the way, but it's also good to remind yourself of where you started and where you want to go. The thing about edits is that they get into the nitty gritty details and you can easily forget the forest for the trees. Take a step back to remind yourself of the bigger picture. Then make a pass with this in mind. For each sentence/paragraph, does it need to be there or can it be cut? If it stays, what's it doing there? Is it doing its job well or can it be trimmed? Maybe it'd serve you better in another part of the essay. 
It's useful to read things out loud or have them read to you (there's software that will do that for you). It's also often helpful to print things out and read them on paper as opposed to on the screen. At the end of the day, you have to learn by doing, there is no other way. Look back at edits you've gotten: are there common themes to things that get corrected in your writing? Are there things you particularly appreciate about other people's writing that you can emulate in your own writing? I find that going back and forth between the details and the big picture helps me avoid some frustrations.  

Taxpayers are not only the American citizen but also internationals who work or live in the US.
Yes, Stanford got the money from the government, but a larger portion of government income was paid by the internationals who work or live in the US. The fact is anyone works or lives in the US, regardless their nationality or country origin, has to pay taxes to US government. Based on that, internationals should have the same amount of education opportunities just like when they paying their taxes.
Being an international student myself, I worked in NYC for a year and I paid the exact same amount of taxes as my American citizen coworkers. In fact, when I did my BS and MS in the US, my tuition is about doubled than a domestic student. I think I should get the same opportunity as an American citizen to get accepted into a statistics Ph.D. program. However, the reality is the admission standards for internationals are higher than domestic. I was not able to get into the Ph.D. programs where my domestics classmates get accepted easily.

This conversation is not productive anymore and if off topic. If someone wants to start a are domestic female students discriminated against thread go ahead, but this conversation no longer has anything to do with the rankings.  

One imagines that it'd be relevant to know what your post-PhD goals are. Do you want a career in academia or in industry? Does the topic you study in grad school matter for a career in industry, if that's your choice?
From my perspective in academia, the topic you work on has some effect on your career path in the sense of what kinds of jobs you can apply for. It doesn't entirely box you in, if you are able to tell a good story about why you want to switch topics (in case you do), or if you cultivate side projects of the right kinds, but it does to some extent determine the natural path forward for you. Your advisor has a great impact in terms of helping you through while in school and in terms of connections and support after you graduate. Your advisor and group also have an impact on your wellbeing and mental health; it's hard to get up in the morning and go to a workplace you are unhappy in, and that's more likely to happen because of a personality mismatch than because of your research topic, assuming that it's at least in the ballpark of what you want. I personally would much prefer the better advisor fit than the better research question fit, if you ask me. 

I use BibDesk to organize my articles. It allows me to search by author/journal/year, etc, and I can also save notes on papers I've read. When I save papers through BibDesk I have it set up so each paper is given a title that is a combination of last.name+year, and the paper itself is saved in a special Bibliography folder I've created in dropbox. Inside this meta folder I have a folder for each author (based on last-name), so it's easy to search directly in dropbox, though I almost never do. I just find my articles through BibDesk, it's fast and easy. Because the .bib file and the actual articles are on dropbox, it all syncs across computers, too. It also creates all my bibliography entries in all my papers, I haven't done that manually in years. 

@Dalmatian Yes, I have had students cry in my office, usually in circumstances not unlike what you're describing. It happens. Not much you can do about an uncontrollable emotion that sweeps over you, so I'm glad to hear that your professor handled it well. 
@Berk Oh, that really doesn't sound healthy for someone in their first semester. I would strongly advise you to look for support elsewhere, be it through moving to another lab/supervisor or by simply finding a mentor who isn't your advisor. It can be an advanced student, a faculty member, maybe someone in a specialized support group (those exist!). But don't just keep going like this for too long, because you'll find it very hard to finish, and I'd personally question whether you should. A PhD is not worth 5 years of suffering. 

I just came across this convenient side-by-side comparison of the J and F visas on the Berkeley International Office. It mostly just confirms what we've already said here, but it's nice to have it from a more official source.
 
http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/students/new/fj_compared

Okay, so there are relevant facts, irrelevant facts, and speculation. You'll do well to distinguish those in any official conversation: 
Relevant facts: 
You were on track as per your last meeting.  You were asked by your advisors to divert your attention to writing a manuscript, which you did.  This led to a slow down in dissertation writing.  At some point there was a money problem that led to a delay in the manuscript writing. Everyone agreed that you should re-focus on the dissertation.  You have been doing that, with good progress again, and a planned submission date by the end of the year.  Irrelevant facts: 
Anything to do with happened to that other student in the committee meeting.  That A called B names or vice versa.  All the business with authorship on the paper.  Speculation: 
Anything to do with delaying your graduation time for any nefarious reason (e.g., to wait for another funding cycle).  Anything to do with how you interpret someone's comments or lack thereof.  Actually, at least part of your story about authorship is probably also speculation.  Ulterior motives behind the timing of submission, where to submit, etc., beyond what you witnesses firsthand.  Stick to the relevant facts, and that should be enough. This sounds like a pretty common occurrence. Don't offer speculation if anyone "thoroughly investigates". It's fair and smart to say "I don't know, I simply did what my advisors asked and trusted in their expertise." If asked, you can say you expressed concerns that the manuscript writing was slowing you down, and that after some meetings and deliberation, and partly because of the money trouble, you all eventually agreed that you should focus on the dissertation first. Again, facts, not speculation, and no accusations. People can draw their own conclusions. 

Okay, I'll voice the possibly less popular opinion. Your responsibility is to yourself. You don't have to stay with him and you are not responsible for getting him better or for educating him. You need to take care of yourself. If you do decide you want to try and stay, I think it's of utmost importance to get support from others. Can you involve his family? friends? do you have a support system around you to take care of you, if you need it? If he wasn't always like this, something must have triggered this, and maybe you can help him through it. Whatever it is, though, you shouldn't do it alone, and you shouldn't let him take it out on you. This sounds like a situation that requires professional help. I know that posting here was probably already hard enough, so maybe the next step is for you to find counseling on your own, maybe through your school, before you think about talking to him. Figure out your resources and support network, then come up with a plan to confront him. I hope that there is no fear of physical violence, but if there is, let me repeat again: your responsibility is to yourself first. Make sure that you are safe, and take care of yourself, both physically and mentally. If that means you need to leave him, I think that's totally understandable and no one from the outside can judge. And if you choose to stay and try and fix it, again I hope that no one will judge and that you can find the help you need.