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Frankly, if you intend to do a PhD in psychology you won't be able to work full-time while you do it at a reputable program. Most PhD programs in psych will require you to attend as a full-time student, and many prohibit you from working outside of the program. Really, you shouldn't restrict yourself geographically to one area unless you have family care commitments or physical mobility issues that prevent you from moving. You severely limit your chances of admission, AND the perfect program for you (including both clinical and research aspects) might be in the rural Midwest or the Northeast or something.

We cannot really answer that question for you, because the programs are going to be guided by your research interests. The concentrations at some epi programs are going to be different than others - so if you are interested in psychiatric epidemiology, you might choose different programs than if you were interested in cancer epidemiology. But I can point you to some places to start. The Association of Schools & Programs in Public Health (ASPPH) has a program finder website that helps you find a general list of programs in your area: http://www.aspph.org/program-finder/. Select an area of study and degree level and you'll get a list of a whole lot of epidemiology programs. You can also use the CEPH website to search for CEPH-accredited PhD/DrPH/DPH programs in epidemiology: http://ceph.org/accredited/search/. U.S. News & World Report publishes a ranking of schools of public health (http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-health-schools/public-health-rankings?int=992108). I wouldn't put too much stock in it, since it ranks schools instead of programs, and most of the focus is going to be on the MPH programs. The quality of the epidemiology PhD programs are going to vary widely, and exact numerical rankings aren't very helpful anyway (it's better to think in clusters, like top 25). Still, this gives you a rough idea of the well-respected SPHs in the field - and also an idea of where a lot of the top scholars and resources are going to be. Harvard, JHU, Columbia, Michigan, Minnesota, UCLA, etc. - those are going to have top scholars, lots of research funding, lots of research infrastructure, training grants, and all kinds of other resources to help ensure student success. While you could probably also get a good education at Loma Linda or St. Louis U, they're not going to have the same kinds of resources, so their PhD programs will be less competitive. After you take a look at the list, you're going to have to go through and look at webpages to see what schools have researchers/faculty that are doing research that's interesting to you. There's really no other way around it. You can also read interesting journal articles and see where those people are currently teaching and doing research. But visiting the webpages and taking a look at the faculty profiles on the epidemiology department will be helpful, too, in identifying potential research mentors. As a final note - in doctoral admissions, there's really no such thing as a safety school. "Safety" school theoretically means a school that you are almost guaranteed admission to, and the school that you would attend if no other programs admit you; it often connotes (but does not necessarily mean) a program that is less desirable to you, that you'd only attend in a pinch. Number one, there are no PhD programs that one can be virtually guaranteed admission to. All programs are pretty competitive. But two, graduate school is completely optional - and career-wise, it doesn't necessarily make sense to attend whatever program is willing to admit you. Instead, you want to be purposeful about the programs you select and apply to, and only attend a program that is going to help you make it to your career goals.

I agree that you need time away. You might want to find a research position that you can do with an MS for 2-3 years and do that. But you also need an advocate - someone from your current/former doctoral program who is willing to go to bat for you. You need a professor who is willing to say that despite the rocky grades, you were an excellent student and are cut out to be a researcher - but the particular program you attended just was not the right fit. Ideally this professor would be your research mentor/advisor, but a professor you took a class or two with or the director of graduate studies would also be acceptable. Professors are often good people to explain roadblocks or rocky situations because it sounds less subjective coming from them. Instead of potentially sounding like you making excuses, it sounds like someone who believes in you genuinely explaining an unfortunate fluke. Also, 2 years is not too out of date. If you were applying for an American PhD right now, I would say you could get 1-2 letters from the MS program and 1-2 letters from the current doctoral program.

SO MUCH good advice in that blog post. I think my two favorites are the one about keeping the paper trail and "consider what the minimum is needed for you to get the hell out." I recommend the latter even if you have good relations with your advisor, because I think it's so easy for doctoral students to get hung up on the small details of their dissertation in a desire for it to be "perfect". It is never ever going to be perfect, and you are going to spend a substantial amount of time revising it anyway (both for deposit and for publishing as a book/papers) so just get the damn thing done and get rid if it. Trust me on that one. I took notes at every single one of my meetings with my advisor. He also took written notes - he had a hanging file for me with all of our notes in it. That's nice, but I would take notes too, and take some time to think about them afterwards and sum up what's going on. Oh, and advisors really do love it when you draw up your own agendas for the meeting - and by the time you get to the advanced stages, you really will be directing the meetings more or less and your advisor should be asking *you* what you want out of it. (Also, now I want to follow this blog!)

Good luck everybody! No, I don't think you should be worried. First of all, you can't change it, so there's no use worrying about it anyway. But second of all, the NSF GRFP funds the person - not the research project. You only have 2 pages to talk about your proposed research and really what they want to know is whether you can orient your research within a broad theoretical field and connect it to prior work, creating a niche for yourself, and answering unanswered questions/filling gaps. They're not necessarily interested in the exact details of how you are going to carry out the research - and in fact, your reviewers may not be in your subfield or know enough to make a judgment about the drugs or dosage. A lot of professors approach this application (and others) as if they were grants, because that's what they are familiar with. But the GRF is not a grant; it's a fellowship. I proposed a daily diary study in my fellowship application; I said that I would measure drug use, but I did not specify exactly how (i.e., which instruments/measures I would use). I also said that "participants will be asked to respond to items indicating several behavioral and attitudinal factors that have been identified in previous research as substance use triggers" and that I would use "quantitative analyses" to explore connections between my variables. That's VERY vague! But the methods of my project was only 1 paragraph long out of the 2 pages. The rest was used to explain why I decided to undertake this research (both theoretically and based upon my own past experience) and why I thought my institution was a good fit to do the kind of research I was interested in.

No, a single C will not drop you out of the running. Not at all.

Well, on the home front, I think that it's okay to gently push back a little bit. One of the things I eventually learned in my PhD program is that although your PI is more experienced and has more training than you, you're both human beings - and he's supposed to be training you. So if he shoots down an idea, there's nothing wrong with saying "Can you tell me why you think it's not a good idea?" You can further explain that you want to know so that you can refine your idea-generating process and so that you can learn more about the mechanics of the system. The way he answers the question can tell you a whole lot about him and whether he's ever going to be open to you proposing things. Some PIs think that grad students should just shut up and do the projects that are assigned to them - you need to know if your PI is that way, and whether you're okay with that. I agree, though, that this is sounding more and more like an unsolvable problem.

Personally, I lean into the slump, if possible. I found that forcing myself to work hard through a slump just made me feel slumpier. I didn't want to work, so the quality of my work wasn't as good; I would sit for long hours procrastinating or staring at my computer screen instead of doing work, and then berate myself for wasting time. The result was that I felt burned out and really negative towards my work, and I wanted to do it less and less. Instead, I started simply reducing my workload during a slump and giving myself the time to rebound a bit. I'd give myself the little easy/enjoyable tasks you can do, like data cleaning or reading articles. And I'd take the time out to pursue something I really wanted to do, like read a book or go see a movie I'd been putting off or just take a long nap. As I went on in my program I got better at pacing myself and building this extra time into my timelines - I would set deadlines with the expectation that I'd need a bit of downtime away from work to recharge. It works for me. Obviously sometimes you can't push it off because you have a hard deadline, but if you have the ability to set your own deadlines and give yourself the space to go into a slump for a little while, I think that's a good approach. If you absolutely have to get through a bunch of November deadlines and there's no way to reorganize, then what works for me is to approach it like a big exciting project that I have to break down into parts. I love lists and organization and so I'll start furiously making lists (using Wunderlist) of the items I need to complete by X date. I break those into subtasks. What do I need to get done each week in order to meet the deadline? Each day? Take things one day at a time. Don't think of all of the dates together (which is overwhelming), think about the thing you are doing right that moment or that day and stay focused.

This would make my life, lol

First, I want to say that going straight to a postdoc is not necessarily a bad thing. I am in a postdoc right now and it's terrific. You get 2-3 years to focus solely on your own research interests and making the transition from the frenzy of graduate school to being an independent scientist, with the guidance and interest of a mentor who really wants to help you develop. The idea of going straight into an academic job was terrifying for me, but I feel like I will be ready after 2-3 years of this postdoc. With that said...I don't know. I think that everyone has to make their own career choices and risk assessments. I went into my field not wanting to be an academic (I'm actually in social psychology + public health), although it's on the table now. I really wanted a research career of some kind, using psychological methods to understand how people interact with each other, and that was my motivation for the PhD. Given that, I've always been acutely aware of the many things a social psychologist can do. There's market research, user experience research at tech firms, advertising, consulting, research associate positions at think tanks and nonprofits, government research and research support, etc. Within the university, there's institutional research and other kinds of related positions (a friend is now a data librarian at a small college). Personally I feel like my PhD has opened up options that were not available before I did it. And yes, academia is competitive. But I always say that's not necessarily a reason not to go - just need to keep your eyes wide open and have a plan B.

The Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) is usually a designated faculty member in your department. The most recent student handbook should list who that person is; if it does not, then I would ask any faculty member in your department. They should know. I think these are two distinct problems (not wanting to do astronomy research at all vs. needing more physics to do the astrophysical research you want to do) and before you go about trying to switch, you need to figure out which one you have. Every PhD program is different, but most programs have quite a bit of flexibility for students to build a program that is tailored towards their needs. If you are an astronomer in a joint astronomy and physics department who plans to do astrophysical research, you could most likely stay in the astronomy program and work with an advisor to build a coursework and exam curriculum that would help you acquire the physics background necessary to do the research you want to do. In most cases, that would not involve switching - just taking more physics classes than are required by the curriculum. I have seen people do that even across departments - people in my public health department who took a lot of biostatistics and epidemiology courses; people in my psychology department who took business courses or political science courses or biological courses to brand themselves as multidisciplinary and/or give them the background to do research in the area they wanted (behavioral economics or political behavior or neuroscience). It would be even easier to do this within departments, I would think, unless your program is much more rigid than the average PhD program. Moreover, I think that it's very common for people's research interests to develop and blossom over the course of the program - sometimes even bleeding into related disciplines - but you don't necessarily need to switch programs to explore them. It could be as simple as building collaborations with someone already in your department or school. For example, my PhD program was a social/behavioral sciences in public health PhD program, but let's say that a student in my program decided she was very interested in social epidemiology. The two fields are pretty closely related. Transitioning to the epidemiology department would be a lot of work, and might require starting over. But a PhD student in my department could easily take a lot of epidemiology classes, work with an epidemiologist on a more epidemiological dissertation, and then do a postdoc in epidemiology. The skills and background are more important than the name of the degree in the majority of cases. Likewise, a developmental psychologist might decide that her interests are really in cognitive development and she needs a broader cognition background to do her research, but she could acquire a secondary mentor in the cognitive subfield of her department, take some classes on cognition, and do a postdoc in cognition. This would probably be a lot easier than switching over. However, if you want a PhD in physics for other reasons, you may want to switch. Reasons like You don't want to do any research related to astronomy, or your research is only tangentially related to astronomy. Thus switching to the physics program would allow you to avoid taking needless astronomy courses. You know that you want to teach in a regular physics department, and you're worried about employability. (In some fields, interdisciplinary or subfield degrees are less employable. So for example, in my field, a psychology PhD can teach in a psychology department or a communications department, if they did comms research. But a communications PhD couldn't easily get a job in psychology department. However, I do know of statistics and biostatistics PhDs in math departments, epidemiologists in biology departments, and a psychologist in a biology department - so this is not a hard and fast rule, and I imagine that astronomy and physics are related enough that an astronomer could find a place in a physics department. Still, it's something to consider.) Your program is really rigid, and it's easier to switch PhDs than it is to build a flexible program within your existing PhD that includes all of the coursework you need. You want to work with Professor X but he will only take you if you are in the physics PhD program. There are probably some others I am not thinking of right this moment. Basically, I think that a conversation with a trusted faculty member and/or the DGS will help you figure this out. The first step is to personally examine your own reasons for switching. Writing them down may help you work them out more fully. After you personally understand why you want to switch, then I would talk to your current advisor and the DGS (or, if you don't have an advisor, just the DGS). Explain your issue, and ask for their advice. Ask them if you even need to switch to do that or if there is something that you could work out to tailor your program while staying put. The DGS's job is to direct the graduate program(s) in your department and advise students on matters such as these, so they should give you some good feedback on what your next steps should be. Also, if you need to switch, they can help you initiate the process.

I'm leaning towards no. But it depends on a lot of factors. First, it depends the cost of living in your university city vs. the amount that you will make on campus. The upper-limit of most student work on campus was about $20/hour, but how much you made really depended on what you did. Many part-time grad student positions - like RAing or doing administrative tasks - paid closer to the $20/hour, whereas the more undergrad-student type work (desk attendant, library aide, etc.) paid $10-15/hour. However, this was in Expensive Grad City. If you were able to make $20/hour in a place where the rent only costs $400, then you might be able to get by if you lived VERY frugally. But I suspect that a place with $400 rent also does not pay students $20/hour. The other thing to remember is that PhD programs are extremely time-consuming. I'm not sure whether you've already begun or not and whether you're in coursework or advanced. But during the coursework phase of a PhD program, it is extremely difficult to work in non-related work. If you have a 20-hour RAship, that contributes to your research and program advancement and so it's kind of woven into the program; even a TAship is more related to your career advancement (and, ideally, takes less than 20 hours a week anyway, and much of that can be done in the evenings). A non-related job will take 20 hours on top of your already busy schedule of classes, research, and any required teaching; you may be scheduled mostly between 9 and 5, which may make it difficult to schedule courses. I did successfully work part-time during the later stages of my grad career, after I had finished my coursework. * This is also just my opinion though, but I don't believe in attending unfunded PhD programs. Your profile says you are already attending. Did you have funding and it got cut somehow? Is there a plan for you to regain funding? How much assistance does your department give to students who don't have official funding re: obtaining external money or getting a related part-time position, like being a research associate at a nonprofit? (You don't want to flip burgers or shelve books to support yourself in grad school, not because there's anything wrong with that kind of work, but because it will not benefit your career.) How likely is it that this will be an ongoing problem? If you are early in your program, will you have to struggle to get money every year? Explore the answers to these questions. I think that if your program is unwilling to pay you a stipend but also more or less unwilling to assist you in some significant way to find additional funding (significant meaning more than "here is a list of alumni with jobs" or "here is a list of fellowships you can apply to; good luck), then you should be unwilling to continue. But that's just my opinion.

How would the NSF reviewers know that it's a longer-term vs. short-term project anyway? The project I proposed was a tentative dissertation project, but I did not include timelines or any indication of how long it would take me to do the project. In fact, since I proposed a daily diary study in my NSF, it might have looked like it would've taken shorter than it actually did (the daily component was two weeks, but not all participants are recruited at the same time - it's taken us a year and a half to complete the data for this project, and it's not what I did my dissertation on because of that fact). Most people in my field would have never done a daily diary study or even necessarily knew what it was, so it's not like it's a standard protocol they'd all be familiar with. There were not several components; in fact, I spent more time talking about the theoretical underpinnings of the research and the impact I hoped it would have than I did talking about the actual method, which was only about 1 long paragraph. That's because this isn't about the methods of the research; they are not really evaluating the project itself. I suppose you could include a timeline, but this is a fellowship, not a grant. As was already mentioned - the NSF just wants to know that they are funding a budding researcher who can think critically about interesting, feasible (in a very broad sense), innovative research. They don't expect seniors and first- and second-year grad students to be able to write a full grant proposal with a detailed, realistic timeline. What they do expect is that you know a little background in your field - enough to position your work theoretically - and that you've thought about where your work fits both within science and within "broader impacts." I could see a 1-semester planned project doing that just as well as a 3-year project, and besides, your reviewers may have no idea how long the project is going to take you anyway. The NSF says: And also Emphasis mine in both cases (except for the "don't get bogged down..." sentence). The BEST advice I got when writing - which took my application from not even HM to funded in a year - was after I described my project to an informal mentor of mine, she told me "Well, I wouldn't fund that either! What's the theoretical framework? You need to have a theoretical framework on which your research is based." Judging by the NSF's (totally new and much more informative!) website, that seems to be spot on and the most important part of your graduate research plan, far more important than the specific project you select.

I don't think any of these are significant enough to list in a separate email, so I would just pick the top 3 and list those. I would select the dean's list at your university (since it's more recent) and the scholarships - or maybe one of the scholarships and the honors program + dean's list. You can notate the honors program elsewhere (presumably it's on your CV), and honor roll is kind of implied by your GPA - plus it's relatively meaningless across schools (the requirements for honor roll at one college might be lower than that of another college). You can include a very brief notation about the competitive nature of the scholarships if people are unfamiliar (e.g. Fancy Pants Scholarship ($250) - awarded to the top 5 students in the country) AND if the scholarships are very competitive. BUT if it's simply that international students don't get the scholarship that often at your college, I don't know that I would mention that.

I am of the opinion that YES this should go on your CV, and you can talk about it in your SoP in a limited sense. It's true that in general, you shouldn't put things that happened before college on your CV. However, I think that doesn't necessarily apply to research-related things. "A research assistant who did minimal things" describes almost everyone's first experience as a research assistant; you just happened to have yours earlier than most people. As someone said, a CV is a historical record of your professional life and you record things that happened professionally since you started; you started your research career in high school, so include it. If you had published in Science in high school you wouldn't leave it off just because it was HS, right? So IMO, put it on there. (Same thing about honors - large national honors or prestigious awards, I would leave. If you won the Intel Science competition in HS, I would put that on my CV in grad school applications, although I might remove it after I was in grad school.) And yes, I think that you can spend 1-2 sentences talking about how you first got interested in science in HS as an RA. Most statements are looking for some information about when you got interested in research, and by talking about it in this context you show that you've had a longstanding interest in the field that has persisted over the course of the last 4 years. It makes a stronger case for you being truly invested in the idea of scientific research.

It really depends on the program, but generally speaking you don't have to be accepted by a professor before you apply even in the STEM fields. Many students contact professors ahead of time to see if they are "taking students" into their research lab because many programs require students to work in a specific professor's lab if they are admitted - but that doesn't mean that the professor has to say that they are willing to accept a certain student before they even apply; it simply means that at least one professor needs to be amenable to taking the student in order for the student to be admitted. That determination may happen during the regular admissions process. FWIW, I didn't contact any professors before I was admitted to my PhD program in a social science field. In addition to this, I am under the impression that in the humanities and arts there's even less of a need. In STEM fields students often work in professors' labs and are funded by professors' research funding, so you need a professor who wants your particular knowledge/background/skill set in their lab and who is willing to apprentice you, basically. However, I don't think humanities and arts students work with professors in quite the same way - you will get an advisor, of course, and ideally that advisor's research is close to yours so that she can give you better direction in your scholarship. But given that she is unlikely to fund you directly out of her grants, I don't think it's as necessary to have contacted them before hand - and it's definitely not necessary to secure permission to apply. Other than that, film is not my field so I can't offer advice about your competitiveness, but I will say that it doesn't seem prudent to get another MA if you already have one.

I did not go through this myself but I have a friend who I met in graduate school - she was in art history and had applied to the PhD program at our university, but was admitted to the MA program instead. Generally, speaking, I would say that if you do get admitted to the terminal MA program rather than the PhD program you probably will not get offered funding. There may be some exceptions, of course. But I think if they were going to fund you, they would probably just admit you to the doctoral program. Applicants who get denied from the doctoral program but admitted to the MA program are generally being told that they are great, but borderline, applicants who need more preparation before being a good fit for the doctoral program at that particular program (or others). I don't think, however, that the school will take that as an indication that you don't take the PhD seriously. After all, you are applying for the PhD, not the MA, right? It's not uncommon for students who want a PhD to get an MA along the way - in fact, it's very common in your field, it seems. So I think the university will just see it as dedication - if deemed unready for a PhD, you are willing to do a terminal MA in the interim to improve your chances. I don't think it impacts your admission to the PhD program at all - just if the department considers you not ready for their PhD but a good fit for their MA, it allows them to consider you at that time rather than denying you outright. As for my friend - she had originally intended to continue on to a PhD in art history, either at our university or somewhere else. But some time in her second year, I think she decided she had enough, and now she works in our university's city in a mostly unrelated position that she likes a lot. Not sure if that's relevant!

I dunno. While I would probably wait too, I think that variations of this are going to happen no matter when you submit it. It's a feature of applying to grad school - or anything, in general. We'll never be perfect, so we'll always think about some improvement that we could've made if we "had more time" or had revisited it again before submitting. I wouldn't fret about these things - best thing, IMO, is once you submit it to try to put it out of your mind completely and occupy yourself with a hobby while waiting on decisions.

That is one thing I wish my early professors had taught the connections about earlier in statistics (connections between the general(ized) linear model). I kind of vaguely understood the concept, but I didn't really get that they were the same thing until the beginning of graduate school when I kind of pieced it all together and was like "OH!" Like this: Would've changed my life in college! I still love its simplicity I would love to use this as a flow chart in introductory statistics classes.

Why do you want to switch? If you're in the same department and you can have physics advisor, and you can presumably have physics advisors on your committee, what is the purpose of switching to the physics program? Is it because you are no longer interested in astronomical/astrophysical research? I think that if it's because you're no longer interested in astronomy, then you need to handle this within your department by discussing with your current advisor. If you don't have an advisor yet, talk to your Director of Graduate Studies. Explain your reasoning and what area you do want to work in, and maybe even identify some potential advisors in physics. Depending on your department you might want to discuss with the potential advisors first to see if any of them are on board and willing to supervise you (but it shouldn't be an issue since it sounds like your funding is departmental).

If he is currently on sabbatical, that means he will be back from sabbatical next year, which means that it really shouldn't affect you as a new student. The only way that it would affect you is if he has decided not to review any applications this year while he's away and concentrate on selecting new PhD students in 2015-2016 to begin in the fall of 2016. But given that he would shoot himself in the own foot by doing that - particularly if his current students are mostly or all advanced - that might not be an issue. Most of the time when professors are on sabbatical, they are still doing some kind of work - they are just away from their current university. One of my two PIs went on sabbatical twice when I was a student; the first was when I was a second year. He was writing a book that year and was on campus the entire time; I met with him biweekly as if nothing was different. And he brought in a new student to start the next year, too. The second was during my sixth year, when I was writing my dissertation. He was on campus for the entire first semester and although he suspended all of his other duties, he still met with me to talk about my progress. He left for another institution in the spring, but we chatted on Skype and he was very responsive on email when I needed him, and we simply arranged my defense to happen after he returned. I'm not sure if he took another student this year, because I graduated (woohoo!) Anyhow, email him and ask him, briefly, if he's planning on accepting students to begin fall 2015.

What did you do wrong? Probably nothing. It's difficult to get a good sense of what being a student at a particular department is going to be like until you're there. You can meet and like a professor for the 1.5 hours you talk to him, and then find out that he's not good to work for. Also, teaching 3 lab sessions is a LOT for a graduate student. I taught two lab sessions in one semester of grad school and I felt like I didn't have time to do anything else. I get a sense (could be inaccurate) that the department is using doctoral students as low-cost teaching labor. The fact that they are running into financial issues and are withholding research funding at the point when you really need it (the beginning of the program) is also worrying. It's easier to juggle teaching and your own work when you don't have courses and when you know a little more, so frontloading the teaching requirement seems a bit silly. Especially since you are all doing research anyway. The more important question is - what are you going to do now? You can try to make it work at your current institution or you can attempt to transfer somewhere you'd be happier personally and professionally. If you're going to try to make it work, you'll have to change your approach to working with your advisor. The professors who have projects that are very different - I would sit down with as many of them as you can and have a 30-minute chat. Where is their research really going? If you have ideas, where do your own ideas fit into their lab's work? What stage are they at with your projects? If you want to stay with your advisor but do different work or write grants, you're going to have to be more assertive and independent. Most advisors appreciate this kind of initiative, which is something I wish I had known in grad school. If you wait for your advisor to give you the go-ahead, you might be waiting forever. If you want to write a proposal, identifying a granting agency and draw up an outline. Then make a meeting with your advisor and show him the outline and discuss it. If he thinks it's a bad idea because your idea needs work/won't work scientifically/it's the wrong agency/some other valid reason, then you might need to do revisions or think about a different avenue. If he vetoes it simply because he doesn't want to support you in writing the grant, then run away and find another advisor. You'll also need to try to obtain external funding. This might be difficult - it sounds like you're not eligible for NSF because of your MS, but you might be eligible for NDSEG and Hertz (more competitive). That will relieve some pressure and maybe get you into labs that you couldn't work with before. If your university has internal fellowships that could also help. If you're teaching 3 lab sessions (which I'm assuming are around 2 hours each), and you also have to attend the lecture (which is probably 1.25 hours), then you have this 3 hour meeting, and you're holding multiple office hours (let's say 1 per session). That's already 13.25 hours you are spending without even including prep time, like all the grading, preparing labs, etc. With grading large sections of individual lab reports, I could see your teaching easily taking up 25-30 hours a week, which is WAY too much time in the beginning of your program. I think it can hinder your progress.

Hi! Caveat of course is that I am from the U.S. and am completely unfamiliar with the European system - so if you are trying to stay in Europe to study for your MPH, then a lot of my comments won't apply at all. 1) In the U.S. there aren't MRes or even many MPhil programs in public health, but there are MPHs vs an MS, MHA, maybe an MA in related fields. The MPH is typically the professional degree; you can learn to do research with it, and many MPH graduates leverage their MPH into PhDs. But the goal is to prepare students for professional practice in public health. Many universities have MS or MA programs instead that are more focused on research and have preparation for a PhD program as a goal. If you think that you want to work for a few years before your PhD, then I would encourage the MPH, but what's going to matter more than the letters are the skills you learn. MPH programs are broader and you take classes in policy, management, epi, biostatistics, etc. The MS or MA is usually narrower and you're not required to take all of those classes. In the U.S. many public health PhD programs require or strongly recommend a master's degree before you can enroll in the PhD. So it really depends on what kind of programs you want to enter and whether they require the master's first. 2) I was funded throughout my MA/PhD program. Funding is difficult to come by for standalone MPH programs; a lot of my friends got their funding through assistantships (research mostly, but also some teaching) which helped them get a tuition waiver. I think finding a master's that will allow you to conduct your thesis research abroad is difficult unless you go into a global health program that allows you to go away for a summer or semester to do your practicum, and you can do your thesis research during your practicum. It's mostly for time constraint reasons. You may want to save the international work for your PhD program, unless you get into a program with that structured in. (I have a friend who studied global environmental health and she spent the fall semester of her second year abroad doing her practicum.) NIH funding, if you mean the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., is usually restricted to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. 3) Yes, it is acceptable to contact the professors first, and no you don't have to go through their students. You would contact professors who you would like to supervise you in your research. Briefly explain your interests and how your work intersects, and attach a CV so they get an idea of who you are and what you can bring to the lab.

Yah, please ignore any professor who tells you this, and continue on about your life. In the bad old days professors were primarily men - primarily married men who had wives at home to take care of that pesky housework and child-rearing while they focused on their careers. Plus, you traditionally went to grad school right after undergrad, so you were < 30 before you finished - and then transitioned directly into a tenure-track job. So you maybe didn't have to worry about starting a family and saving for retirement until after grad school was done. (I think they also just have skewed memories. My advisor once told me that if he could do anything he would do a PhD in another field, and then laughed uproariously when I looked at him like he had grown another head.) That's an unrealistic state of being in 2014+. People do stuff between undergrad and grad school; gender equality means that people share in building relationships and families together; and people definitely do stuff between grad school and the TT job (if they get one). If we all put off relationships and families and working on our mental health until after we're in the TT job, we could be in our mid-to-late-30s or early 40s before we start (or, it could be never, since most of us won't get TT jobs).

The best advice I have gotten for overcoming jealousy at other's accomplishments is "don't compare your insides to their outsides." LD, you only see a person's outside presentation of their relationship or other accomplishments, and people have a vested interest in making themselves appear happy and well-adjusted. What you don't see are the problems that are inside other people - the stress that may come from maintaining a marriage in graduate school, the financial arguments that come with lower income in younger marriages, the potential jealousy of your freedom to make choices as you please without considering another person. So you compare the visible positives to your more balanced appraisal of yourself (because you know your own deepest insecurities and problems in addition to your good points), and find yourself coming up short. If you have depression and anxiety as treated by a therapist, that can compound the problem, since depressed and/or anxious people have lower appraisals of themselves and tend to downplay their positives. You have to remind yourself that every position has good points and bad points. What might be helpful is making a list (an actual written list) of the things that are great about being single/unmarried, right now. If you need help, you can search the Internet and there are plenty online. Then if you find your anxiety rising when you hear others comment about the SO, quickly remind yourself of why it's awesome that you're single. (I did an exercise like this in a different context - I felt like peers were more scientifically productive than I was, so I made a list of reasons why I am professionally awesome, and remind myself of them if I feel inadequate. It helps!) Also make sure that you make some single friends, too - and some single friends who enjoy being single and aren't always looking for a potential SO at every social opportunity. You need some strong social support from friends who are going to help you to focus on yourself and having a good time rather than looking for a partner, and potentially making decisions that will hurt you.