juilletmercredi

No, it doesn't matter at the MA level. It will matter at the PhD level, but if this is a stepping stone to the next step then it won't.

Yes, I agree that this depends on what the MA is in and what you intend to do next. If this is some kind of professional degree and/or your goal is eventually to work in government or international/NGO type work, the program in DC at Georgetown might very well be worth the debt. Might. The DC connections can help a lot, and you can do an internship during your term-time that can lead into a job. $35K in total tuition isn't that much, either. if the program is only 18 credits then I'm assuming that it's only a year long; if you can live on $25K in DC (which you totally can if you're single and childless) then thats about $60K total debt, which isn't outrageous for grad school. If you have little undergraduate debt that can really work for you. In many fields $60K is the salary you can expect to make out of grad school. But. Let's say that your MA is going to be in Spanish literature and your goal is to get a PhD in Spanish literature after the MA. Then no, the MA is definitely not worth the debt. Also in some fields (like social work to a certain extent, or nursing) where you get your master's from doesn't necessarily matter that much, so following the stipend is probably a better idea.

I kind of disagree with this a bit. A mentoring relationship in a doctoral program is a two-way street: both of you get something out of it. Now yes, it is an advisor's job to teach a doctoral student many things - but they're not really your teacher so much as they are a guide, a master to your apprentice. Their job is less to teach you specific things and more to help you learn how to teach yourself, and guide you in how to do Science (or Scholarship). On a more basic level, you do have to teach your mentor how to mentor you. You are different from everyone else he's ever mentored and will mentor, and in your case OP, your potential PI is brand-new out of a first postdoc. Whenever you select a brand-new PI there is always an element of mutual teaching. He has not mentored a doctoral student before, and will be learning to mentor on your back. You have to decide whether or not you are okay with that, and you have to decide whether you want to take the time it will take take to - yes - teach him how to mentor you. Not in the traditional sense of you managing a class on it and planning a syllabus, but in the more subtle way that you are going to have to ask for what you want, be a bit more independent, and push back a little when you are not getting what you need. Only you can decide whether you are willing to take that on. I also want to note, though, that you shouldn't assume that a PI is going to be one way or another because of their tenure status. My PI was not tenured for my doctoral program, and he had flexible deadlines and was generally available (actually, he became less available as he got closer to tenure, not more). He was also a good mentor, despite being rather new at the whole enterprise. And he definitely did not micromanage me. IN fact, his need to publish and produce in order to win tenure, I think, gave him less time and energy to devote to micromanaging me. A couple of friends with micromanaging adviors actually all work for tenured professors.

I don't see how any of this is directly relevant to what the OP asked. The grad student may be interested in her - it's definitely not unheard of for older people to be interested in, date, and marry younger people. A 9-year age gap isn't even the largest I've ever seen. What averages are and whether women typically ask out men or vice versa is sort of unrelated...because we are talking about a very particular man, whose preferences we cannot divine from statistics. That said, I think, OP, that our interest in others can cause us to over-interpret the signals they send to us. It's possible he was interested in you, and possible that you are just that cute girl he saw at the gym and interacted with on a regular basis. He may have not asked you for your number because he was nervous even though he liked you - or maybe he's just nice, but not interested. Anyway, the only way to know is to ask him directly. He hasn't made a move, even though you left the opening for him, so if you really want to see what's up with this guy, take a risk and ask him out. Since you want to go hiking, be bold and just ask "Hey, I found this cool hiking trail. Wanna come try it with me X day?" The coy hinting and waiting for him to ask you doesn't work, so go for what you want. If he says no, you're none the worse - just in the same place you are now. As for the Psych Today article graphs on page 2 - as a social scientist myself I can't resist pointing out that this is a pretty unreliable survey to draw conclusions from. I'm not unwilling to believe that men ask women out more often than women ask men out. But the survey was done with just 31 men and 55 women, the majority of whom were college students and thus probably aged 18-22 (and also the other demographics that go along with college students - probably mostly white; decidedly all heterosexual; probably mostly middle or upper-middle-class, etc.) We can't really generalize from 87 heterosexual teenagers, basically, what adult dating patterns are like. I would imagine that the gender balance of preference and action becomes more equal as people get older.

I don't think you will find a clearinghouse of this kind of information. First of all, the schools would have to collect them. But many programs do not, either because they are unable (in that they don't have the resources or time to devote to that) or unwilling (because their placement rates are not good or they simply don't want to know and want to advertise in other ways). If the schools are cagey on their OWN websites, then they are very unlikely to release that information to a neutral website to publish it out there for all to see. Some schools do collect the data and just refuse to release it publicly - they use it to help them make decisions about new course offerings, certificate programs, and career services, but not necessarily to give to others. Secondly, the school would have to be honest about the information and not twist it to their own favor. For example, law schools are required to release this information because of the ABA's standards, but it's well-known that many law schools find ways to inflate the numbers. One is by counting people who have any kind of employment - even if it's as a barista or retail manager. Another is by giving graduates jobs just long enough to count then as employed in the survey (e.g., if the survey is employment 6 months after graduating, the law school gives them a low-paying internship from month 6 to month 12 or something, then cuts them loose). So yes, I think you are unlikely to find this kind of information on the web and be able to trust that it is accurate and meaningful. With that said, though, I agree with the suggestion to contact alumni. They won't have hard numbers, but they might have a sense of at least how many from their own social circle were able to get employment from the program, and how long it took them. But I wouldn't expect their answers to help you confirm whether grad school is right for you - that's a decision that you really have to make on your own. Every body goes through a different decision-making process, and just because one or a few alumni were originally hesitant, changed their minds and now are infinitely glad they did doesn't mean that you will be, too.

I find it hard to believe that unless you work with one of 10 people, you will find it difficult to be “accepted into the community” (assuming he means community of scholars). Let’s even assume that those 10 people each have 5 doctoral students and 2 postdocs. Are we saying that your subfield is only 80 people large? 80 mostly junior people? I mean, yes, the students coming from top 5 or 10 research lab groups/programs might have an easier time because of the size of their PI’s network (they tend to know everybody!) and the reputation attached to their program. But that doesn’t mean that working with the #30 researcher is going to leave you unemployed. That said, though, I wouldn’t assume that a PI is less amenable to meetings because of the size of their research group. They may be exceptionally good at managing their time, or they may meet less frequently with the advanced students and postdocs and more frequently with the newer PhD students. I was in a medium-sized research group (2 postdocs, 4 doctoral students, a bevy of undergraduate and master’s level RAs) and my advisor was willing to meet with me biweekly and we had weekly research meetings. (You don’t really need individual meetings more than biweekly in grad school, IMO, unless you have a specific project). Large labs can also be filled with friendly, funny people who are warm and open to helping you. The size doesn't really dictate that. GeoDUDE is also right. The smaller your advisor’s lab group, the more support work you will do. I started working with my PI (a different one than above - I had two in grad school) when he was an untenured assistant professor, and didn’t have much of a lab group. Although I did a lot of writing and analysis early on, I also spent some of my time recruiting participants, collecting informed consent and administering surveys. As my PI’s lab grew and he acquired more staff to handle those things, I did less of them and concentrated more on writing and analysis. "State school" could mean the University of Michigan or UCLA; it could mean San Francisco State or SUNY Binghamton or CUNY Grad Center; or it could mean Kennesaw State or Western Washington State. There's a huge range of public institutions.

I’m not against rankings on principle, because I think that well-done rankings systems can yield important information. For example, the National Research Council gives a range of rankings, not just an absolute number. It also takes into account factors that are actually important for an academic career, like research money and publications and time to degree (as opposed to U.S. News’ rankings, which are based solely on the nebulous opinions of a few academics in the field). But when I say “rankings” I more mean reputational surveys that don’t have absolute numbers - more like groupings, like “top 25”, “top 50”, “mid-ranked,” etc. Whether a school is #1 or #9 doesn’t really matter - at that point they are close enough that there are probably only superficial differences between them. There may be a bigger difference between a school in the top 10 and a school in the top 40, though - but not necessarily in a way that would make you automatically select the top 10 school. I don’t like the brand analogy, because I DO make decisions based on branding, as do most people. I wouldn’t buy the Wal-Mart tool set; if I want quality tools, I buy the Craftsman or DeWalt. I wouldn’t buy a car made by GMC these days. I’d get a Toyota, or a Honda, or a Nissan. Certain brands have a reputation for quality. Likewise, certain universities/programs have a reputation for quality - because they turn out good scholars, get disproportionate shares of research dollars, and do good scholarship work. I think that’s slightly different from prestige. Infiniti and Nissan are made by the same company, but Infiniti has the prestige associated with it. Likewise, Minnesota and Harvard are both ranked in the top 10 in my field, but Harvard had prestige associated with it while Minnesota does not. I also think this is not true in most fields. Both are important. It's just that people take that to the extreme. While your PhD institution is important, it's not important because academics are bedazzled by names and prestige (they largely are not). It's important because of the reputation programs acquire - where the people are, the network you build, the work that you are able to do, the resources available to you. Especially the network you build. People at well-reputed (not necessarily prestigious) programs have broad, sprawling networks. There's somebody there who knows somebody everywhere else, and they get the job ads before other people do, or know when School X in Your Favorite City needs a new person in your area, or can call up Professor B on the search committee to chat you up. Nonetheless, I do think they have gained outsized importance in selecting colleges and grad programs. And so I agree - you are in a place where you are productive and happy. You like your advisor; you are only 2 years in and you have already published 1 paper with several more in the pipeline. You *are* happy; you just have this one niggling question about the rankings. Is your program “not ranked” because it’s newer? And even then - screw the rankings. Are people from your program getting good jobs? Are they getting research money and publications? Are they doing interesting work? Do your professors have connections and networks that will help you build your own? THAT’S what matters.

Yeah, I agree in that I wouldn't take them trying to bring someone on in your area seriously. Perhaps they are, but like TakeruK says, there's no guarantee that this new person will actually be there in time to give you any meaningful assistance. Even if they do come, though, there's no guarantee that this person will work with you. Maybe they come in with a grant that helps them protect themself from advising a doctoral student in their first year, or maybe they are technically in your area but actually pretty far afield from what you do, or maybe your personalities don't click. There would still only be ONE person in your department, teaching maybe 1-2 classes in your specialty area per year. No, you need to go somewhere your specialty/research area is supported. I don't think there would be any overlap - if you apply for fall 2016 and finish in the spring, then you'd finish around May and start the new program in August or September. That's pretty normal. This is very normal. You don't want to do a PhD where no one can support you, and frankly the program shouldn't want you to do a PhD in a department where no one shares your interests. Will they "give your their blessing"? You don't really need their blessing; they probably will, if they are sane, though. If you explain to your advisor or the DGS if you don't have an advisor why you want to transfer and you make it all about research fit, there's really not a whole lot they can say. You will need a letter of rec from at least one person in your program - to verify that you're not leaving because of professional issues (quality of work, failing classes, etc.)

Not necessarily. Top schools admit who they want to admit. I don't think yield plays a big role in rankings of graduate programs since it's essentially meaningless, so I don't think it's very likely this will happen if you have an otherwise good fit with the school. (It may be a small issue at schools with limited funding; they may be more likely to offer admission + funding to applicants they believe will attend. But I think "believe will attend" is based on a lot more than "this person applied to Stanford, gasp!" I think this one is even less likely than the first scenario. Any professor at a top school would realize that it is wise for students to apply to a range of schools, since admission rates at their programs tend to be low. If you weren't confident that you at least had a shot at UCB, you wouldn't have applied (theoretically). Graduate programs don't make their decisions based on what they think their colleagues at other schools might do. They make their decisions based upon their own needs and desires.

a program in Middle eastern studies with some faculty research of interests are in the GCC Region, may be more flexibe in admitting applicants coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar or UAE for instance or any other GCC state. I doubt it, since country of origin has very little to do with your research ability or interests. There might be a white girl from Minnesota who's really interested in gender roles in the GCC region and who has the stats to back it up. Simply being from the region of interest doesn't add "academic value". Programs do, of course, consider factors other than test scores and GPAs when admitting students - but that doesn't mean that they are relaxing their selectivity. It just means that they have determined that there are other factors that go into student success, like fit with the department and the recommendation of other scholars. So yes, a student with a 3.4 may get into the department over a student with a 3.5, if the 3.4 had a better fit with the department or if Professor X knows the student's undergrad thesis mentor. Other than that I'm not really sure what you're asking.

I think these are broad assumptions that don't necessarily apply across the board. In some 'cash cow' MA programs (like, let's say, an MA in peace and conflict studies,* in which exactly zero people are awarded non-repayable financial aid), an international student's ability to pay might be considered as a plus in admission. But in a PhD program, funding from an outside source may or may not make a difference, as 1) the department may commit to fund all students anyway and 2) at very competitive programs, there may be several students who have outside funding who are just as competitive. *Note that I am not saying that peace and conflict studies is a bad field or only for the money. I just thought of that off the top of my head because my former institution actually has an MA in that field and it is a 'cash cow' - by which I simply mean it's a program that brings in revenue for the university, by virtue of the fact that students are not offered non-repayable aid and the professors are largely taken from other departments who teach a few classes in the PCS program every year. MBAs and journalism degrees and MDs can be cash-cow programs for universities, too; it has nothing to do with the field.

Don't do it. There are way too many ways to go wrong with this one. As rising_star said - select a book in a related subfield. You also said that "ONE of the only" books is by the PoI...so if there are others, select another one.

I don't think there's a minimum; it depends on the field. In my subfield of psychology (social) it's common to apply to ~7-15 PhD programs, although most people probably apply to between 9 and 12. But in other subfields like experimental and quantitative, the average number is lower because there are fewer programs in those subfields and fewer applicants to those programs. I'd say less than about 4 is a gamble, but that might be okay. If you would rather not go to graduate school at all than go to any other program besides the perfect #1 choice, then 1 might be fine for you.

1. Should I apply in the first year of a "terminal" masters or wait until the second year? (Meaning that next year I will apply to PhD programs, hopefully beginning immediately after my masters) 2. If I'm intending to go into a balanced Clinical Psych program, am I even eligible for this fellowship? 3. If i don't have specifically science outreach experience, am I eligible? 4. Are there other similar grants that are more applicable to my situation/interests? I've done some searching but feel pretty in the dark. 1. Both. 2. In theory, no. This is the list of programs that NSF says are ineligible for the fellowship. Practice-oriented, professional degree programs (MBA, MSW, MPH, ED, etc.) Joint science-professional degree programs (MD/PhD, JD/PhD, etc.) Business administration or management Social work History (except for history of science) Public health programs Medical programs Dental programs Counseling programs Research with disease-related goals, including the etiology, diagnosis or treatment of physical or mental disease, abnormality or malfunction Clinical areas of study (including patient-oriented research; epidemiological and behavioral studies; outcomes research; health services research; pharmacologic, non-pharmacologic, and behavioral interventions for disease prevention, prophylaxis, diagnosis, or therapy; and community and other population-based intervention trials) In practice, I got my PhD in public health and I do research with disease-related goals (substance use, mental health AND HIV prevention), and I still got an NSF GRFP. I just emphasized the research-oriented nature of my work - I was in a joint social psychology program, so I emphasized that - and I didn't heavily mention my disease related goals in my research proposal, focusing instead on the theoretical framework and the basic science application of my work. A friend of mine in my program who is a historian also got the NSF GRFP, and she also has clearly disease-related goals (she studies the history of asthma). Technically it is the history of science - but the history of medical science, in a public health department! YES. My undergrad GPA was a 3.42. I thought I had exactly zero chance of getting the NSF GRFP, especially given that I was in a public health doctoral program with disease-related research. There was no way to complete hide the disease-related nature of my research because it's the whole point. I wrote my research proposal on trying to use innovative longitudinal methods to look at the relationship between discrimination, mood, and drug use in a population at high risk for HIV. LOL. I did minimize the HIV goals, but I did mention right in the research statement that one of the Broader Impacts of the research was to combat HIV. I still got the fellowship, and I was more surprised than anyone else. So if the question is "Should I apply?" the answer should be Yes, unless you are clearly ineligible based on the rules (and even then...lol! I was in a public health program, it's a good thing I didn't read the criteria too closely...?). If the question is "When?", the answer is "every year you are eligible. Also, this isn't a change - 2nd-year grad students in their first semester could always apply. That's when I won the fellowship - the second year of my doctoral program - and I applied in 2009. I swear it was like a miracle, I think they picked me out of a hat lmao.

I looked back on my first paper I ever wrote for graduate school a few weeks ago - I was preparing a session on graduate school for my students. Wow, it was terrible! I mean - it wasn't bad when I wrote it. In fact, it was really good for my level. But 6 years of writing experience later I realize all the things that could be improved upon. I say this to say that your first paper is supposed to be kind of terrible in an absolute sense. I mean, work hard on it! But realize that it won't be perfect and your professors are not expecting perfection. They want to see where you are and they want to help you improve, which you will, over time.

Wow, that card thing is a good idea! I think I'll do one and also make a note in my phone. I've heard from friends that EMTs tend to look through phones to find emergency contact numbers, so I have my emergency contacts clearly marked in my phone just in case.

I support this post and pretty much everything it stands for. I think sometimes in the admissions frenzy we forget that this is a two-way street. You need to impress the department, but they also need to impress YOU. Graduate school isn't required - so don't settle. Don't go to a place at which you feel uneasy or that's not the right fit because it's the best of the options you have left (or the only option). It's better to reapply the next year or forget about grad school altogether than waste time. I especially co-sign the teaching as "important career development" one. Realize that there's a difference between a department actually believing that and acting accordingly and a department using PhD students as cheap labor. My department strongly believed in teaching as important career development, but they were pretty low-key about it and built opportunities into the program. If everyone in the department is really hype about teaching being "REALLY important for your career," and all the grad students seem kind of frazzled teaching or TAing pretty much every semester, that's a sign that a department is using PhD students as cheap labor. I also really like the last one, too. One way that you can gauge this without revealing your own inclinations is that when you visit, ask the grad students what kinds of jobs they are looking to do after they graduate, preferably in public. If they shift their eyes around uneasily before they answer...that's a pink flag, I would say, lol. If they almost universally, 100% say that they want tenure-track jobs, that's also odd. (One of the things that made me choose my department is when I asked this question, semi-publicly and privately, the grad students were not shy about talking about non-academic positions. My department also maintains a list of alumni and their current positions, and I would say that fully 1/3 are in non-academic positions. These are treated no differently from the academic ones.) You may be a die-hard academic now, but 5-10 years can change you...or, you may be unable to find academic employment. And heck yeah location matters. I mean, keep an open mind - I'm currently in a small college town and I actually really like it, whereas 6 years ago I would've never imagined myself here. But if you can tell you'll be miserable somewhere, don't go.

I don't think you have to detail how you would go about doing the project. You just have to come up with the idea. My applications also asked me to propose a potential dissertation topic. I think I spent about a sentence or two on it. Nobody expects you to have a detailed and nuanced perspective on what you might study; they just want a general idea of what you're interested in and want to see whether you are at least able to formulate an idea. I think this skill has little to do with whether you've published or not, and has more to do with your undergrad education and research experience - it should've at least prepared you for this much. Also, remember that nobody is going to hold you to those 1-2 sentences from your SoP. I did something completely different from what I proposed in my SoP. I realized 1) the resources just weren't at my current university to do it and 2) I didn't really want to do that anyway, as I discovered new interests in grad school. The idea doesn't need to be what you actually are going to do; it just needs to be something that is, potentially, in a perfect world, feasible to do as a dissertation project.

Maybe? It depends on how far into the program you find out that your professor's personality clashes with yours, whether or not there are other people in your department who are able and willing to supervise you, and how terrible the personality clash is. This is one really good reason to apply only to departments at which at least 2, and ideally 3-4, people can supervise you. Third: I bet some of you know some fantastic, awesome communicators, people who talk to their students like they care about them and are interested in their careers; don't try to steal their ideas, listen like a human being, talk like one in return, etc. etc. Could you please mention them here and what school they work at so I can look into their interests. Honestly, this isn't a good way to go about this. I do agree with you that to a certain extent, personality is more important than interests - but only to a certain extent. For example, I'm a social-health psychologist and I study health disparities, primarily with people of color. I'm interested in health disparities broadly, though - so I could work with a supervisor who did research on income disparities or rural health, and then apply that to my work on racial disparities. But I wouldn't work with someone who didn't do health disparities research at all. Finding 'nice' people and then investigating their interests, then trying to squeeze yourself into that niche is a really backwards way to approach this. Instead, look up the researchers who share your interests. Apply, and then visit the program. Meet with them for lunch or a 30-minute meeting in their office - and then talk to their grad students! Grad students will give you the scoop on what it's like to work for that person. I am brutally honest about my advisor (who is actually quite awesome, but has a particular working style that will work for some people and not others). I have Skyped and emailed back and forth with students who have had questions about working my department (which, despite being made up of mostly normal-ish people, functions a bit psychotically) and specifically with my advisor. That said, I've actually found that most academics are quite normal. They may be a bit more quirky than non-academic, but not in a psychotic way. (Besides, given that you are trying to enter the field, you are probably a little quirky and weird, too. I know I am.) Then again, I have specifically selected for places/departments/centers at which the academics appear to be normal-ish people, because I'm not interested in working with psychotic sociopaths.

^Yeah, this. As odd as it may sound, I think you should treat the grad school process like an apprenticeship period/vocational training program, in a sense. You're doing all of these things to make yourself more marketable, and able to get a tenure-track job (or a think tank position or whatever). Therefore, you need to pick up marketable skills. Not flash in the pan trendy fad skills or interests, but things that will be long-term useful. As you do more reading and immerse yourself in the conversation with scholars, you begin to identify the difference between fads and longer-running trends. I saw my dissertation as a learning project. I'm not sure what field you are in, but in my field we don't write books. We write articles. Therefore, the idea of writing this monograph was patently absurd, because no one was ever going to read it. But as I got closer it became clear to me that that's not the point; the dissertation is intended for you to learn how to manage a large project all by yourself; it's intended for you to learn some new skill or area; and it's intended for you to dig really deep into a specific area so that you have a foundation upon which to launch the beginning of your research career. It's also so that you learn how to learn - aka, when you need to do something that requires Skill A but you don't know Skill A, how do you go about acquiring that information? Once I figured that out, the project became long instead of difficult. I selected a moderately interesting topic that wasn't *exactly* what I want to do for the rest of my life, but rather was in the same general area - so that I could mine the literature review for future papers for a while, and so that I would be pretty much up-to-date on the lit in this field and really just adding new stuff. I selected a statistical method I didn't know how to use yet so that I could teach it to myself (and I also ended up teaching myself a new stats package, too). BUT I also chose a project that was more or less the culmination of work I had done earlier in my graduate career. I don't think you're ever really starting from scratch - even if it's the norm for you to pick something that perhaps you haven't already done research/scholarship on, surely you're not expected to pick something you've never read a book about or written a seminar paper on? You can build upon the work you've done in courses and comprehensive exams. This also shortens your time to degree! I didn't really have this issue either...or, maybe I kind of did? It's hard to remember, because it's a chicken and egg thing. I'm a practical person and came to get the PhD because I wanted a job, so from the beginning I was very attuned to practical aspects. I already had interests in research methods and statistics, and I also had interests in a specific broad area. I already liked these things, but I liked them even more when I realized that they were in high demand in my field - and a demand that didn't seem to be going away. The substantive area is a relatively new area of inquiry and the NIH is just brimming with RFAs for it so it looks like it's fine, although in the next 10 years or so I will need to use innovative ways to study this area. That's where the methods and statistics part comes in; but in my field, that is ALWAYS going to be in demand. They're always going to need someone to teach the intro-majors-research methods and stats classes, and that is totally my wheelhouse.

I see where you're coming from OP. I don't know about a lot of SPHs, but several major newspapers had been covering the Ebola outbreak before Americans got the disease - I'm not in international health, but I've been following the Ebola outbreaks and the transmission in Africa before the two Americans contracted the disease, mainly through the New York Times but also through other outlets. I've actually found the coverage to be quite comprehensive and sensitive, which I didn't expect; one recent article discussed how the problem with the response is that a lot of public health workers are treating the Africans as if they were ignorant/stupid when really, they're scared and the Westerners are also ignoring their cultural practices (i.e., many of the cultures involved must ritually wash the bodies of the dead before burial, which spreads the disease. Many of them KNOW it spreads the disease and they do it anyway). I also think a lot of SPHs would only post something about if there was a professor at the school who did research in that area, or similar to it. My SPH doesn't have anything about it on the website, but most of our featured stories are either about the new MPH class or some research someone is doing. BUT at the same time, I know exactly where you're coming from. Yes, of course people care more about the issues in their own country, but many Westerners do turn a completely blind eye to the problems in other countries/regions. AND it's true that newspapers and the mass media's stories do reflect the interests of who they think their readers are. That extends to the poverty and health disparities in their own backyard, which is one of the reasons that I have decided to study domestic issues. I took a class on the social history of American public health and the paper I chose to write was about the coverage of HIV/AIDS in the newspapers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The newspapers that started covering it first were African American dailies in predominantly black neighborhoods with mostly black readership. Major newspapers didn't start covering it until later. This is true of a lot of health issues that affect minority, poor, and other disadvantaged populations in the U.S. So it's not far-fetched that it would occur with the Ebola coverage. I do find it interesting that GeoDUDE said "no need to get hysterical," though, to a very levelheaded and rational post with no signs of hysteria. What's that all about?

I currently live alone, and so what I do is cook two portions for dinner. I eat one and bring the second one to lunch with me the next day. That injects some variety in my lunch, as long as I'm not lazy and actually make dinner (I've been lazy this week so far). If I don't cook, or make something that doesn't lend itself well to bringing lunch, sometimes I will make a salad. Those are pretty quick and easy to make! I like to try new things and I really like to cook, so what I do is use AllRecipes.com to find interesting recipes and save them to my account. Then I try them out. Over the course of the last 5-6 years I've collected a lot of spices and learned about what staples to keep in my kitchen, so I usually have all of the things I need to make whatever other than the meat. I plan my meals for the week so I know exactly what I'm going to pick up when I go grocery shopping. Each week I rotate in a few new recipes along with some standards, so that on days when I'm tired I can just default to autopilot. Recipes are pretty much the only thing I still do in hard copy, because I want to pass down a recipe book to grandchildren. I have a recipe binder and when I cook something I like, I print out the recipe and put it in the binder. I note any modifications on the paper in pen ink (because I like the idea of my great-grandchildren looking at my scrawls when they try to follow my recipes. Also because it's easier.) Breakfast - muffins are really easy, and there are about a thousand different things you can do with muffins. They are about to get really interesting because it's fall, and fall food is the BEST. All sorts of pumpkin and apple spiced stuff. You can also make quick bread - banana bread is really easy and you can easily cut the sugar so it's not so desserty. I make myself omelets for breakfast - pick a few simple ingredients (mine are spinach, mushroom, feta. Sometimes if I'm feeling less lazy I toss in some peppers or onions or something). You can also get a waffle iron and use Bisquick to make waffles! Without a waffle iron, you can still make pancakes. Mmm. I do those on the weekends, though. During the week, I just make bagels, cereal, quick stuff. I think one weekend (maybe this one) I'll make some scones and freeze them, then you can pop them in the oven and eat them before you leave. You could also bake muffins ahead of time on the weekends and wrap them in plastic and then eat those in the morning before school. Dinner...like I said, AllRecipes.com! And all over the Internet! I visit a whole bunch of different recipe sites. My favorite dinner is glazed salmon because it's easy and yummy. There are all kinds of things you can do with pasta and fish. Pretty much anything you eat in a restaurant you can probably find a recipe on the Internet (the easy version and the OMG version). Last week I made rosemary-garlic Cornish hens and stuffed cheese manicotti for the first time; they were delicious. Also tip for the dinner: make your sides super easy, so you can focus your energy on the main dish. I use Pillsbury biscuit canisters unless I really feel like making biscuits from scratch; I use instant mashed potatoes (they're actually really good) and the boxed scalloped potatoes (ditto). Baked potatoes and frozen french fries are also really easy and have the potential to be tasty. Frozen and canned vegetables are easy to make and are just as nutritious as fresh...and cheaper. They also don't go bad, which is a real concern when you're living alone. I eat a lot of canned green beans, corn, carrots, and frozen spinach. I mix it up - sometimes I buy fresh if I know I'm going to use it. I really like to cook. One of the things I did with my free time during my dissertation phase, to keep myself from going crazy, is take a crack at baking. I'm pretty good at it. I wanted to take a cupcake class at one of the fancy New York cupcake bakeries, but I never got around to it. (Just as well. Making cupcakes is crazy easy. I think what they teach you is the food science so you can invent new cupcake recipes.)

I wouldn't get e-books if I only had a computer, but if you got a tablet I would totally get the e-books, as long as any relevant tables/diagrams are displayed correctly. I only buy physical copies if I think it's going to be a book that I reference often while in front of a computer, and even then once I discovered dual-screen set-ups and my current 24" monitor that became less of a problem. (I still do have some physical reference books, but most of them aren't available electronically anyway). Also, check. If it's something like a Kindle or nook e-book, those display correctly within the relevant app. Most publisher's e-books will also display correctly on a tablet. But some publishers' e-books are made for computer screens, not tablet screens, and they show up kind of wonky on a tablet. I think this is not so much a problem anymore, though (I was almost finished with my coursework when the first iPad came out, so...) For me the push to buy an iPad and read my articles all electronically was about paper waste and carrying it around but also about storage. I lived in a small apartment and I didn't have room to store all of those papers and books. My first year of grad school I printed papers and I gave that up really quickly as I started filling up magazine files with them. Also, I don't think you should worry about the computer getting stolen. Chances of that happening are small, and even if it does the e-book usually isn't tied to your computer - it's tied to an account, so you can read it at school until you get a new one. Get renters insurance!

Is it really true that most libraries don't have e-books? Are we talking about public libraries or electronic libraries? Because both my Grad School City's public libraries and my actual university library had plenty of e-books. Yes, they do force the public library to purchase more than one copy of the electronic book and there is a waiting list for it sometimes - which is, of course, ridiculous, since it's just data. But the publishing companies have got to find some way to limit consumption, otherwise the library would purchase one copy of the e-book and lend it out to everyone who wanted the book at the same time, indefinitely, meaning that publishing companies - and all the people who work there - and authors wouldn't make any money. There are still costs to be borne in making that book, and physical books have their limitations that prevent you from doing the same thing (they wear out, rip, tear, each borrower needs one...) If the e-books are being consistently updated with new information, or libraries are paying a yearly subscription for a parcel of electronic books together, then it might make sense. Instead of ordering (and shipping) the six hundredth edition of some dusty tome, they can just electronically update the information - probably for cheaper. But if it's just a regular academic book being published that doesn't get updated, I don't see Elsevier charging a yearly subscription because nobody would pay for that...unless it were cheaper. The Handbook of Social Psychology, for example, is a classic text in my field and the two volumes cost $211 together. Why would anybody pay $50/year for it when you will quickly exceed the costs in 4 years? Even if they give it to you for $20/year, you know that people are still going to be using that book in 10 years (I mean, the book was first published in 1935) so the academic librarian would pass and buy the hardcover version. At least right now I can't imagine a model in which any publisher could get away charging a yearly subscription fee to books that don't change (as opposed to books that are updated with editions every year. The Handbook does have editions, but the book is nearly 80 years old and it's only on the 5th edition). Perhaps in 20-30 years when/if libraries are relying primarily on e-books and nobody really reads paper books anymore, then the publishers might have the upper hand. Anyway, in response to the question: this answer may not be kosher, but when technology has outpaced the APA and hasn't come up with an appropriate way to cite something I'm using, I kind of make something up. By which I mean I modify an existing citation style in order to cite whatever it is. I can't remember what it was I was citing an NYC DOHMH surveillance report recently in a paper and/or my dissertation and there simply wasn't a style to support that, and I searched the Internet and scoured my publication manual. Zip. So I took a similar entry and used that one, slightly modified to include relevant information that would help the reader find it if they wanted to (and the in-text citations were still pretty easy - author, year). In your case I would try to see if I could find the page number on Google Books. If I couldn't, and I absolutely needed to use the quotation for some reason, I would just do something like (Smith, 2009, l. 2385). I mean, no, it's not standard - but the way I see it, a citation style's purpose is to help a reader find the information that they want. By adding the location number in an admittedly non-standard way, I'm including information that helps them find what they want. Of course, this also depends on the venue for the paper. I would do this for a paper for class or even my dissertation and see what I could get away with, but for publication, I would avoid anything potentially confusing.

Another thing...that high school social-circle thing tends to decrease in importance once you graduate from college. In my experience, there's no "cool kids," no "in-crowd", etc. I don't know whether it's because most graduate students aren't the type to have been the popular kids in high school and college (although, stereotypes aside, many of them are - I know homecoming queens, sorority women, and SGA presidents who have become close friends of mine in grad school). I just think that once you get to a certain point, you realize all that is kind of pointless and it's much better to get to know people based upon personality and interests rather than social class. One friend in particular I'm thinking of, we may have never been friends in college, but we have very similar interests and like to do the same things so we just click outside of the superficiality of your under-20 days. So, discard the 'cool kids' mentality, because social groups like that don't really form in graduate school and in your professional life (well...I guess it depends on your workplace, but in my experience, they don't). One of the best things you can do is be proactive. Everybody likes the person who takes the initiative to organize social events!