juilletmercredi

I also go to an Ivy League graduate school. I'm in an interdisciplinary program, which means that my first-year cohort was me (a psychologist), another psychology/women's studies major with former public health training, two anthropologists, two political scientists, and a historian. Everyone else (including the other psychologist, because of her women's studies background) had lots of experience with theory - Foucault and Derrida and Marx and Bourdieu. Psychologists don't do a lot of theory, and when we do it's very different than anthro/soc theory. I had taken two philosophy classes in college, one a very basic freshman level one and one was a gender studies philosophy class that went completely over my head. We had a one-year required first year class that was soc/anthro/poli sci theory based, and we read all of those people (and Appiah, and Connell, and a bunch of other people I didn't know). Needless to say like you I felt very out of my depth. I had very little interest in theory; I'm a quantitative researcher. I didn't even know how to READ the theory we were being assigned. There was literally one week in the entire class that had work I was vaguely familiar with; we read about some of Douglas Massey's quasi-experimental work in racial discrimination). My classmates were and I intensely felt the imposter syndrome. Then I took a chance on actually trying to get to know my classmates and realized that although they had the experience, some of them felt as uncertain as I did! They felt overwhelmed by the amount of reading they had to do and although they were better prepared to engage with the text because of their previous reading assignments, they were no more familiar with the work than I was. After I learned that I started speaking up more in class and asking questions, and exchanging confused WTF looks across the table with my friend the historian (whose theory is also very different from the course's theory). I also found out that the professors actually thought I was doing quite well given my background, and that I approached the material in a different way *because* of my lack of exposure. Sooo the moral is your classmates may not be as elitist as you think they are, and you may be doing better than you think. It sounds like plain old imposter syndrome. I will also add that since learning about them in my first year I have never used them again in my own research. Psychologists simply don't use critical theory. Buuuut it is useful to know for conversations across fields. I also started out naive and adorable. I was 22 when I started - I had JUST turned 22, and was the youngest doctoral student in the department. (Funny story, some of my department-mates joked that I was a child prodigy, but then a few students misinterpreted the joke and thought I was actually a child prodigy, and so for a short while there was a rumor going around that I was 19 in my third year of the doctoral program. LOL.) Anyway, it goes away eventually, especially if you work hard and prove yourself. My advisor actually explicitly commented on it during one of our relaxed moments.

I disagree with Loric…but only at the PhD level. It's not bitterness, it's risk perception. If you say you are coming and they prepare for you, only for you to bail out, that could have consequences on the department. They could lose a student slot (because they couldn't find anyone to replace you). They could lose the funding for that slot. And they would remember. I still remember the student employee I supervised who didn't show up for work during one of our final important days of work, and if called for a reference for her - even now, two years later - I couldn't give her a good reference. Let's say that you later apply for a job in this department. They would remember that you were a person who agreed to come but pulled out when something better came along…and maybe would be wary that you'd be willing to do it again. And of course there's a good reason not to give you an extension. They want to begin preparing for their incoming class now; there's a lot of work to be done for a new class. They also may find themselves on the "second tier" and competing with the best schools for the best students, so maybe they want to lock you in now before you hear back from the other better schools. It's a retention strategy - maybe inconvenient for the student/ And of course they are concentrating on their needs for the program and not the students' needs. Other people telling the OP not to burn bridges aren't necessarily jealous - why would I be jealous, when I am already in grad school and have no desire to do finance? But I don't think it is as much of a problem for MS programs, simply because they have many more students who applied and who they potentially have to turn down. Finding another student would be relatively easy, and even if they don't there are variations in the size of their class from year to year anyway. Furthermore, these programs are rarely funded, so it's not like you are potentially endangering any money the department is entitled to. So in this particular case I think it's safe to accept and later retract that acceptance if you get admitted somewhere better. And I also don't think you should tell your new school that you accepted somewhere else but are now reversing that decision; I don't think it's really any of their business.

I wrote a long reply to MassAppeal and it disappeared, but suffice it to say that unless your grandfather is very very old, that's not true. Scientists have been expected to have PhDs since the beginning of the 20th century, and at least by the 1920s or 1930s most serious recognized scientists had a PhD. And even before the PhD was the recognized credential, chemists (and other scientists) basically did the equivalent of one anyway - which is to say that they apprenticed with an established scientist and studied under them, sometimes for much longer than it would take a modern student to get a PhD. The apprenticeship would involve listening to lectures from established scientists, getting tutorials with the advisor/mentor and also doing research. That simply morphed into the modern PhD. Not to mention that there's much more science to learn today than there was in 1832, so you have to take the master's level courses to get a good foundation in the field. Anyway, I decided in my sophomore year of college that I wanted to do research as a career. I started doing research with a professor in that year and loved it. I continued junior year and only loved it more, so in the summer before my senior year I started to contemplate whether I wanted to go straight into a PhD, or work for a few years first, or do an MPH and then work, etc. I decided that since at the time I was very sure that I wanted a research career, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do research on, that there was no point in working in some other field for 2-3 years when I could go straight into a program to prepare me for what I really wanted to do. I planned a career in public health and most of the doctoral programs I wanted to attend required an MPH, so I applied to a few top MPH programs (I was fairly certain I would be admitted, since I had been preparing for PhD programs all this time) and one top PhD program that didn't require a master's but was my dream program. I ended up getting admitted to that PhD...and I should finish this spring. And my desire to be a researcher and even the broad area in which I want to do research hasn't really changed much, which is interesting because I tend to be fickle. I did get burned out in grad school in the middle and sometimes I really wish I had taken a few years off - especially because I really wanted to go teach abroad for a few years after college, and eschewed that in favor of going straight to grad school. But ultimately, I'm glad that I went straight through...not the least of which because I'll be 27 when I graduate.

There are other ways to get awards aside from at your university. Many professional organizations give awards recognizing student research; some give awards for best completed dissertation or dissertation proposal. Look for both large and small professional orgs in your field and submit your work to be considered by them! Also, if you are in the dissertation phase consider applying for a dissertation fellowship or small grant through the NSF. A better approach with your department is to ask professors if they know of any funding or recognition sources to which you can apply.

What is the purpose of this question? I'm curious. I live in the United States for context. -Raise the federal minimum wage; make it based upon a cost of living index that would be pegged to inflation and the cost of living in a moderately expensive U.S. city. It should be such that a person working full-time at minimum wage would be minimally able to care for a family. For example, right now I think the minimum wage should be at least $15/hour and perhaps closer to $20/hour. -Universal single-payer health care, provided for by the government - like in Canada or the UK. Not this mish-mosh "universal" system provided by a lattice of private insurers. -Universal paid parental leave. Parents would have to be given a minimum of 6 months of paid leave; the cost would be shared by the employer and the government. They should be guaranteed their original position or a position equivalent in pay and prestige when they come back. Also, any tenure or promotion clocks should be stopped during that time. Parents of all genders will be welcome to take the leave within the first three months of having a child or adopting one; and they will also have the option of an additional 6 months of unpaid leave. -Mandated paid time off. Employers would have to give employees a certain number of paid sick days that employees could take without penalty. -Make it illegal for employers to dock the pay of waitstaff when their customers walk out on the bill, and severely punish any restaurants who do this. (I just read an article in the NYT the other day about this; it's apparently not illegal to do this and restaurants do it all the time!) -Subsidized healthcare on a sliding scale based upon income, and university pre-kindergarten for children beginning at age 3 or 4. -Sponsored education programs and summer programs for students interested in certain fields. The target groups would be underrepresented groups in those fields - women in math and science and racial/ethnic minorities in lots of fields, but also potentially men in elementary education and nursing. The idea would be to have a series of programs beginning in elementary school and extending through college that were partially funded by the government but designed and run by educators at all levels, in a sort of grant operation much like the NSF or NIH gives grants now for training programs. Students wouldn't have to go through all of them, of course, but a little girl who's interested in math in fourth grade could, for example, do a Saturday math exploration course sponsored by her local community college, and then do a two-week math immersion program that summer to learn more. And then maybe in high school she decides to take an advanced math course in the summer after her junior year. Rich kids do these kinds of programs all the time, but they are usually very expensive and poor kids can't afford them, so the idea would be to give enrichment capabilities to poor and middle-income kids who want to explore fields and prepare them to compete for college admission, as well as get them interested in careers in which they are underrepresented. -More money in public schools, less emphasis on standardized tests, pay teachers a LOT more money. If you pay them well you attract top talent, so maybe making the starting salary of a teacher around $50,000 (instead of $30,000), with mid-career being around $70,000 and end-of-career teachers just shy of six figures. Also, pay student teachers an internship salary, so that more students can afford it. I know a couple of people (including my husband) who have considered teaching but dismissed it or are afraid to take it on because they don't think they could adequately support a family on teaching income, and/or the amount of work is not worth the low salary. In exchange, though, teachers need to be highly educated and well-prepared for the jobs. Maybe fund programs to lure experienced professionals into teaching, so that people who do have other work experience can bring their experiences into the classroom. (One of my favorite teachers was a Georgia Tech-trained mechanical engineer before he started teaching high school physics and calculus, and because of this he didn't just teach us math as an abstract concept - he wrote his own homework problems and taught us exactly what physics and calculus were used for in the real world. It had a tremendous impact, as I went to a predominantly black school and a disproportionately high number of my classmates went on to get engineering or math/science degrees, because of him.) I think I'll leave it at this for now. Also, this has little to do with real inequality problems, but I'd put a cap on how much contingent labor is allowed at a college/university before they lose their accreditation, INCLUDING graduate student instructors of record. Instead require the majority of instructors to be either tenure-track faculty or non-tenure track permanent lecturers on contracts (with full-time pay and benefits). Not only do I think this would directly affect the market - by removing the incentive administrators have to cut tenure lines and hire adjunct faculty - I also think it would indirectly affect the academic market by cutting down on the number of doctoral students programs bring in. If programs can't make money off them by requiring all of them to teach, for fear of going over their percentage and losing money, then perhaps they would admit fewer students.

While technically your diploma won't say "online," in reality there are many ways for an employer to tell that you have an online degree. The most obvious is if, say, the university through which you are doing the online degree is in Pennsylvania and you are in Texas during the time on your resume that it says you are doing the degree. (Of course, if you are not currently working, this may be less of an issue.) However, this is less of a problem nowadays for employers because online degrees are becoming more acceptable, especially from nonprofit institutions. Normally undergraduate prestige doesn't matter. Where you do your MA does matter, though. It's possible to go from a good, solid, but not prestigious master's program to a great doctoral program as long as you do good work. BUT I will say that academia has a long-standing bias against online programs as preparation for PhDs, with sort-of good reasons. The theory is that an academic career involves a lot of face time - in a PhD program, online interaction won't substitute for the face-to-face mentoring and networking that you do with peers and professors, much less the intense discussion you get during small classes and seminars. Nor will you be present at the university to assist a professor in his/her research or attend research talks given by people in your field. Your professors won't know you personally enough to give you really good recommendation letters to grad school. Overall, an online MA is not an ideal choice in preparation for a PhD in most fields. So it's not the ranking or the prestige that's the issue, but the format. My recommendation would be to wait to pursue the MA until you are healthy enough to do it in residence, if your eventual goal is academia. That way you can get research experience and foster close relationships with professors, and set yourself up well for PhD applications. I also disagree that your personal medical history will be taken into account as compelling for a doctoral program. While professors may have basic human sympathy, when they are evaluating candidates they are judging you on your ability to complete the work - both the work in the program AND any work that they need completed by a research or teaching assistant, which you will be expected to do. Although they are not supposed to discriminate based upon physical health or disability - if they are made aware of yours, they may unconsciously do so. Also, they may have valid (and legal) concerns about your ability to do the work in the program, especially if you explain like "I had to do an online degree because of a medical condition I have." Let me also say - and others may disagree with me - that I'm wary of the pursuit of a PhD as a lifelong dream. A PhD is a means to an end - you get the degree because there is something specific you want to do with it, like become a professor or an educational administrator or a researcher. You don't get it just to get it. I'm not sure of your motivations because you don't say, but it does catch my eye that you keep saying that you dream about getting your doctorate but not necessarily that you dream of any specific career that requires one. So for the sake of your health, it may be worthwhile to consider not getting one and switching tracks to dream of a career. If the career you really want requires a PhD, then go for it, but if you're just getting a doctorate for some abstract reason and don't really need it, it's not worth the time.

I think getting a second bachelor's degree is almost always unnecessary. The only exceptions, IMO, are if you want to be a nurse or an engineer (and even then, with engineering it's often unnecessary if you have a close major like math or physics). However, you are in Canada so take my advice with a grain of salt - I'm American and I only know much about the American education system. There aren't any required high school courses that you have to take before you start taking biology. Intro biology 101 at the college-level is designed to be a floor-level course - it's appropriate for students who had never taken biology before. So if you want to take intro biology classes, begin now with college classes, not HS classes. If you started in the spring semester, assuming that you don't attend college during the summer you could take anywhere from 3-5 biology courses depending on how many requirements for your major you have left. You could potentially drop one of your majors and use the time to take classes in biology instead. That would get you a minor, or close to it, which may qualify you to pursue an MS in biology. You may need a few more classes (so closer to 7 or 8) but if you get at least 3 or 4 done in college, then you only need 3 or 4 more and you can take those as a non-degree student while you work after you graduate. Then you can go back and get an MS in biology and if you're interested, a PhD. Also, most colleges that accept students doing second bachelor's (if you choose that route) count the general education credits you've earned somewhere else. It usually doesn't take four years for a student to complete a second BSc - it usually takes around 2 or 2.5. You will only have to take the major courses and perhaps a few general electives. Be mindful though that not all colleges and universities allow people to do a second bachelor's.

I think this is a gray area. Yes, employers are aware that not everyone they employ will be there for life; at the same time, they have a reasonable expectation that the people they hire will be in their position for at least 1-2 years at a time. Moreover, if you don't find a job immediately, it may end up being just 6 months of employment. In this case I would say whatever you do should be out of self-preservation, but that includes not burning bridges in an industry that you may potentially come back to or, at the very least, with someone who may serve as a reference. My first move would be to try to contract with a temp agency - when employers contract temp firms they KNOW the temps will only be around for a few months, so there's no risk there. If temping is not an option, then I would apply to jobs and not necessarily disclose up front that I was planning grad school, but perhaps after a few weeks in the job make it clear that you are planning grad school - and perhaps excuse yourself during the application phase if it becomes *clear* that the employer is really looking for someone who will stay longer-term.

It just really depends om your priorities and ability to balance. I have had a great social life throughout most of the time I was in grad school, and the times when I didn't have one were my lowest and most unproductive years. In years 1-2 I made friends with the master's students who came in with him, and since most of us were fresh out of undergrad or maybe just a few years removed, we liked to hang out and have a lot of fun. I think I went out at least 2 weekends a month and then maybe one day out of the week. I was very very busy but I usually had enough time to hang with friends. After my master's friends all graduated I found other ways to make friends - I did a graduate-student-only paraprofessional job on campus and made my best friends there; I played in a city-wide social sports league and I went to a bunch of grad student mixers. I also made the effort to hang out with some of the closer people in my departments (I have two). I did all of this while taking coursework and/or studying for exams, so yes, it's very possible - you just have to prioritize it and fit it in around the other stuff you have to do. You have to make the effort in grad school - sometimes you won't feel like taking off your pajamas and putting on real clothes because you're at home, working, but I always made the effort because my social life is really important to me - I'm very outgoing and love to have friends and hang out. Once my friends graduated and started working full-time jobs I had to make even more effort, because they actually had more free time than I did BUT at hours that were at odds with mine. Periodically I'll send an email to a friend I haven't seen in a while and say "Let's grab lunch/coffee/drinks!" in order to maintain those friendships. I agree with TakeruK, too - I'm a social scientist, so while I belong to a "lab" I don't have to be in the lab in the traditional sense. 90% of my work is done at home parked in front of my desk, from a computer. So I work a much more regular and flexible week now that my coursework is over - probably about 40-50 hours at this point, which isn't much busier than a person working full-time. My advantage is that I can work any 40-50 hours I want, so I try to make myself available when my friends (who are mostly working full-time and have more rigid schedules) are available.

Graduate students do not take introductory courses Depends on the field. My field (public health) is not one that students typically study at the undergrad level, so we actually do have to take several introductory coures - to sociomedical sciences, to epidemiology, to biostatistics, to environmental health sciences, and to health policy and management at minimum. Sometimes to other things, too. They are certainly at the graduate level - fast-paced and rigorous - but they are still introductory, in that a talented undergrad with no background could complete them. In a public administration program - also something students typically don't study at the undergrad level - it is entirely possible that this is an introductory course to a specific subfield or topic.

When I grade groups (or papers, or anything that's a bit subjective in nature), I grade the first few tentatively. Then I go back and adjust the grade if necessary. But grades aren't always a direct comparison to other groups or people; they're supposed to be an evaluation of your work. But I don't understand why you are "really stressed." If your college does + and - grades, that's an A- instead of an A, which is hardly something to be stressed about. If not, it's the difference between a B and an A, which is also not really something to be stressed about. Presumably you're in graduate school, and if your GPA is above a 3.0 no one will really care what it is.

It's going to vary wildly depending on your program AND also where you are in the program. I'm in my dissertation phase. I spend 10 hours a week working as a lab assistant in a stats lab (tutoring students on stats, teaching workshops, doing projects, etc.) I spend another 4-5 hours a week in seminars for my fellowship. I then spend a variable number of hours per week on my dissertation. It probably should be about 30-40, but in reality it really depends on how lazy I am in a particular week. (I have been *very* lazy this last week, but there have been weeks when I have definitely put in 40 hours towards this dissertation.) Earlier in my program, I spent far more time. During my coursework phase, I think a typical week was something like this: 12 hours a week in classes ~15-20 hours a week doing homeworks and readings for class ~20-30 hours a week doing research So that could be 50-60 hours per week doing stuff. During qualifying exams I think I spent about 15-20 hours a week studying for my quals, about 15-20 hours a week teaching and grading (I didn't start teaching until I was almost done with coursework), and maybe around 30 hours a week on research. So again, maybe like 50-70 hours a week depending on the week? The toughness about the hours isn't the hours themselves, but how intense and irregular they are. Sometimes I do dissertation work for 6 hours straight; sometimes those 6 hours are between 6 pm and midnight. Sometimes they're on Saturday. When I was taking classes and in coursework, sometimes my studying went into the wee hours of the morning; I remember staying up for 36 hours straight during the finals week of my first year in grad school because I hadn't yet learned how to manage my time and I had a lot of papers due. And the work is intense; you're using your brain very hard the whole time. Also, grad school for the most part is less about the exact number of time and more about productivity. I find myself productive when I work a moderate amount of time (50-60 hours a week). There are people who work 80 hours a week, but work inefficiently (or are counting the time they surf the internet and sit and watch the centrifuge as "work") and so they aren't very productive. Because of the intensity of the work, I question the motives of the professors who call their labs at 2 am on a Saturday night and the productivity of their students. Really, how much high-level stuff are you getting done at 2 am on a Saturday night if you've already been in the lab for 16 hours that day? Is your advisor expecting you to be there because he really thinks it's best for your research and your development, or does he just want a research grunt to carry out his work for him? After all, the reason he's calling in is because he himself is not there. WornOutGrad, I realized around my third year that I needed to decide for myself what I was willing to sacrifice on the altar of science. I urge any student to do that BEFORE they begin a program (I spent a very stressful first two years trying to keep up with colleagues who were far more dedicated than I was). For some people, science IS their passion; they don't want hobbies, or friends, or a spouse. What they want to do is spend 80-100 hours a week trying to discover the secrets of the universe. POWER TO THOSE PEOPLE. They will likely win a Nobel Prize and discover something really important, and get tenure at Harvard or whatever. Yay for them! The point is, you won't really be competing with them. Maybe for grants, but if you know at the outset you don't want to work 80 hour weeks, you're not going to go pursue an AP job at Michigan or UCLA or Harvard. Maybe instead you want to be a professor at UNC-Greensboro, or Cal State Fullerton, or Reed College or Lawrence University (SLACs). Maybe you want to go work for the NIH or RAND (although I hear RAND scientists have busy weeks, too). Obviously if you want to get a job at Harvard or Michigan you need to work your tail off and get some grant funding in grad school or your postdoc plus like 15-20 pubs, but if you want to teach at an R2, you need fewer; at a SLAC or a regional comprehensive or master's level place, maybe you need still fewer. It's not that the quality of research is lower, just the quantity. I have a colleague (now friend!) who just graduated who made me really anxious early in my program because it seemed like she was always working, and I was not; she was always collaborating, and I was not; she was always...whatever. I got burned out just thinking about her schedule. Then I realized that we had very divergent career paths and desires. She's R1-bound. I knew coming into my program that I never wanted that kind of job or lifestyle. So while I am no worse a scientist than her - and could probably do the same quantity of work if I chose to - I don't. If we applied at the same job at Michigan, she'd likely get it over me - but that is unlikely to happen because I have exactly zero interest in being a professor at a big R1 like that.

I would imagine that this depends on your field. I don't feel that way (and both of my advisors are men) but both of my fields & departments are roughly gender-balanced (I'm in the social sciences). If I was in physics or math where the perception is still that men are inherently better, maybe I would feel that way. I sometimes feel that way about my race, but not often, and when I do it's not because of my departmental colleagues and professors. Everyone so far has been really supportive and awesome and encouraging, sometimes *because* I am black ("Black women are underrepresented in X, so it's neat that you want to do that.") It's just because of the general racial makeup of my field and the knowledge that wherever I go, I will be in the minority in that way.

Harm's way? I doubt the vast majority of TFA teachers are at any significant risk of harm. Anyway, I think this is a good post AND goes for leaving many things early - a PhD program, an MA program, or any other kind of professional master's program or fellowship program. Sometimes things just don't work out. It's better to leave once you realize that than to struggle on, miserably, with some vague notion of having to finish. If you can articulate clearly and maturely why you decided something was not for you and decided to go pursue some other thing instead, I think most admissions committees and employers will respect that.

Well, I think it depends on whether you think the additional MA will help you get into PhD programs the second time around. If the reason you don't get admitted is low GRE scores, an extra MA won't help you; you should instead spend the time improving your GRE scores. If you think the reason you didn't get admitted is instead due to the lack of experience and preparation you have in rhetoric in comics, then the MA would be a reasonable thing to do. So I think you should go ahead and apply to the MA program, and then see what happens. If you don't get admitted to the PhD programs, ask for some feedback from the departments: how could you improve your application for the future? (This is easier if you have some established contacts in the department.) If they offer you some feedback, then you have your answer. If they don't, then you have to kind of go based upon a gut feeling looking at your application. You may also ask for some feedback from your undergrad professors.

I agree with the previous three comments too, but also want to argue that less than 10 hours a week probably isn't enough for this undergrad to learn much of anything, anyway. That's less because they wouldn't do anything important during that time and more because they wouldn't learn the things necessary in a research environment in just 5 hours, for example. I wouldn't want them putting on their grad school app that they did research with me for 6 months when it was only 5 hours per week.

The military offers a health professions scholarship that pays for a few of their officers to go get health professional degrees (MDs, DDSs, DOs, nursing degrees, clinical psychology, and MSWs depending on their service) in return for returning to military service for a few years as a clinical specialist. It's been my very limited experience that most of the small number of men doing an MSW at my university were there for clinical social work (as opposed to community/child services type work) and many of them were there through HPSP, but that's because my university is a military-friendly institution. It may differ in different places. Of course you aren't limited to your program, either. All of the universities to which you applied have several graduate level schools - probably a medical school, maybe also a dental school and other health professional schools, definitely a graduate school with traditional departments (like biology, English, etc.) and maybe also some other professional graduate schools (business, architecture, engineering, international affairs, that sort of thing). These graduate institutions probably have cross-school mixers. I've gone to several of these and although my own primary department is predominantly female, the mixers are always more balanced because they bring in people from more male-dominated departments/programs as well as from more gender-balanced departments/programs. I always joke that our mixers are partially intended to help students find a partner; while that's tongue in cheek, there's some truth to it. A LOT of graduate students are at the point in their lives when they want to make a serious connection with someone else with the potential of it turning long-term, and they go to these mixers for that reason. And there's nothing wrong with that, of course; I think it's good. Graduate school IS a great place to potentially meet a long-term partner. And if you're willing to move wherever your spouse needs to and potentially sacrifice your career for his (which I think is also a valid choice), then you may be the perfect academic wife, lol. Academics tend to have less flexibility and control over where they move, and finding a faculty position might involve moving to the rural Midwest or suburban New England or wherever. If you JUST started talking to the guy, as within the last few weeks, I wouldn't make any life decisions based upon that. That's just me though. * Of course it bothers me - we're not doing it now (my postdoc begins over the summer), but we have done it before. It's rough, and we haven't yet done it as a married couple so I imagine it will be rougher. I think it all depends on the field. I can't imagine getting a permanent job that's great enough that it makes me want to live apart from my husband indefinitely, but for two years, this is literally the perfect postdoctoral position for me. It will help me advance my career in a really big way - I'll be learning techniques for my field and working with some big names in it. The salary and fringe benefits are at a higher level than most other postdocs I can get. It also helps that they are completely aware of my situation and are being extremely flexible on a work-life balance level (e.g., making arrangements with me to take some Fridays off or work from home so I can leave Thursday afternoons to go stay with my husband for a weekend every so often). I also tell students that often more flexibility at the earlier stages of the career mean more flexibility at the later stages. I chose my top 10 PhD program even though it meant living apart from my then-long-term boyfriend for a few years; we survived that and got married. I also chose this postdoc knowing that it means a short period of time living apart. But I have reason to believe that both of those choices - a top PhD program and a top postdoc - will mean that I have a greater variety of positions for which I am competitive when I go on the job market in 2 years, given my productivity so far. That's because in academia, where you can seek positions is somewhat limited by the department in which you did your PhD and who you worked with. It's not the same in all fields - social work isn't necessarily like that. But other fields like law and business are also kind of prestige-driven, so a JD from a top 15 law school has more choices from a JD from the bottom 100, if you know what I mean. But yes, it's true that I am not very needy and I don't need to be around all the time. That also comes with time, though. As you get to know your boyfriend/spouse over the years, you come to trust them and know them more and more, and your need for your own independent space increases. My husband and I dated for 11 years before we got married, so we know each other very well and I trust that we can work things out long distance for 1-2 years. However, a long-distance requirement is a deal-breaker for me career-wise - which is why I am doing all of these inconvenient things now, to give myself more options later. I wouldn't search for a job in places where my spouse couldn't live.

To be fair to Pinkster12 I do think people are making it sound much more complicated than it actually is. I'm married. Marriage IS hard work, not gonna lie - much harder than I thought it would be. You think it'll be like dating on steroids and it's not, it's a completely different animal. Buuuuut it's not like married people talk about every potential problem that might arise, or independently think about each independent issue and analyze how they will handle it. And besides, human beings are terrible predictors of how they'll feel in a situation. You can say "If my husband cheats on me, I will do _____" but if it actually happens...you may react completely differently than how you expected. Marriage, at least in my experience, is about being able to take things one day at a time together and tackle the problems as a team. That just requires open lines of communication - being with a partner that's as willing to listen to you as they are to explain, and vice versa. And it means realizing that love doesn't mean that you won't ever want to stab your husband. Or even that you won't ever (rarely) feel like giving up and moving out. It simply means that you have the wherewithal to try again and again and again. Anyway, I agree that the poll isn't well set up for married folks - I was dating my husband long-term when I started and we got married at the beginning of my fifth year. I expect that if we have children it will be while I'm on the tenure-track or starting out at a non-academic job (haven't decided which way I am going), so in the next 5ish years. I'm in my late 20s, and I'd ideally like to have kids in my mid-to-late 30s or early 40s. When I was 22 I also thought the idea of having kids past 30 was horrifying, but as I've gotten holder I realized 1) there's just not enough time in your 20s to have children if you want to put education first, 2) I'm too broke to have kids and 3) despite all of the shock and awe surrounding having children post-35, there are thousands of very healthy women who have very healthy babies in their early 40s. It's really not that bad. And with the average woman living to be 80 years old, your kid will likely be middle-aged before you leave this earth. Worst-case scenario she'll still likely be finished college. So I am perfectly okay with waiting until I'm in my mid-30s to early 40s to have kids, especially because I would really like me and my husband to have the opportunity to be selfish with real incomes for a few years rather than popping one out the minute we secure reliable income, lol. Travel! Extravagant gifts! Spoiling the dogs! Also, the two-body problem isn't as easy as that if you really want to work. For example, let's say that you meet a guy who's on a military scholarship to get an MSW and do counseling for the military when he's out (most of the male MSW students I knew were doing this). After you both graduate, he gets stationed in North Dakota. Great! Except that there aren't any jobs for *you* in ND. Many women are like "That's fine, I'll just be at stay at home mother." And you know what? That's great for them. But not for me, and many of the other women in grad school. And sometimes, it just happens. I don't intend to live apart from my husband for any extended period of time, but I got offered a great postdoctoral fellowship in a location about a 4 hour drive from where I currently attend grad school, and where my husband is a non-traditional undergrad. He won't graduate until next spring, though, so we'll live apart for at least a year (and possibly two) while I do my postdoc and he finishes up here. I say possibly two because he may decide to begin his career back here in our home city - he's not really keen on the idea of moving to my postdoc location. And you know what? That's okay, or at least we've decided it is. It's only 2 years and we've done the long-distance thing before. Many professional couples do. I don't intend to do it as a long-term thing, but I'm definitely not just living wherever my SO needs to live and neither is he. We intend to make location decisions jointly to make sure that we can both find fulfilling careers in our new hometown. This does require some flexibility - for one, I'm not 100% set on being an academic, and he's not 100% set on any one career field either. We just both want jobs that we like and can grow in, and a location we like. But that's how it works - hopefully, you don't just up and move wherever your spouse tells you to; you make an adult joint decision together about what's best for both of you, both professionally and personally.

No, it wouldn't ruin your resume not to finish the degree. You don't even have to put it on the resume if you don't want, although you will need to explain the missing year if you're not otherwise working. If you do leave it and are asked to explain, you can simply say that you discovered that that field was not for you and left the program before it was complete to do law school. But I can't help feeling like you're falling from the frying pain into the fire, so to speak.

Have you MET the people who hang out around here? They live for academia, not because they give even the slightest crap about science, world peace, or anything altruistic. They want gold stars and if someone with a higher rank isn't patting them on the head they don't understand how they can be allowed ti exist. Very nice sweeping generalization of all of the graduate students on this forum, Loric. Will going to the number-4 ranked school over the number-5 ranked school make you a better thinker than you otherwise would've been? No, probably not. But assuming that there's fundamentally no difference between programs is a mistake, I think. Different programs have different atmospheres, environments, resources - things that can certainly shape your personality and the science that you choose to perform, as well as the career options you consider. But I think it IS good to realize that you will be a person of worth and value regardless of whether you go to grad school, and regardless of whether any particular program accepts you. I do disagree, though, that 1) there's a correlation between GRE and research capacity (the GRE correlates - weakly - with grad school GPA, but your performance in classes has very little to do with your capacity to do research. And there's definitely no evidence for any, much less a "large" correlation between "competency" and the GRE. Plus there are plenty of PhD programs that don't require facility with high-school level math.) 2) that "graduate schools want students to be healthy" (certain professors within programs may. But overall, the enterprise is not a healthy one).

It doesn't mean they won't admit you, but controlling their yield is a factor. I am reading a book by a senior scholar (about academia) and he comments that it is not uncommon for mid- and lower-ranked program to strategically admit applicants based on how willing the program perceives the applicant to attend the program, wrt what other schools to which the applicant has applied. The example the scholar provides is because the university offers a finite number of fellowships to the entire university, and if a student turns them down and they are unable to replace them with another, they can lose one of their fellowship slots to another department. Just as they are strategic about the information gathering I would be strategic about how I released information to them.

12 is just at the limits for what people in my field (psychology, specifically social psychology) apply to.

Where are you most frequently? Where will you be using the car most? How long will you be in VA doing research? I think the answers will drive the overall answer. I don't have direct experience with this, but I would imagine you'd probably just want to buy a car where you already are in VA and just register it and get insurance in VA. Most states require you to get an in-state license and registration if you intend to be somewhere for more than 30 days, although practically that is impossible to enforce. The only exception would be if you intend to be in VA for a short period of time ( <1 year, I suppose) and you really want to register your car in CO for some reason, or you have to have a VA driver's license to register the car in VA and you don't want to change your driver's license for whatever reason. Personally I wouldn't want to put all those miles on my car on the drive from CO to VA if I didn't have to, and unless you also drive a lot in CO, it may be worth it to just exchange your CO driver's license for a VA one, buy the car in VA, and register/insure the car there. The least complicated way would be to take care of everything in VA, of course. Whether that's better depends.

Let me tell you, I had Amazon Prime before they started the Amazon Student program and the $80 a year is totally worth it. Even if we're just talking about regular shipping, if you buy more than 10-15 items on Amazon.com per year then you've made up for the cost of shipping, and I get pretty much everything that's not food or cosmetics from Amazon. But when you factor in the fact that it's 2-day shipping AND you get $4 per item one-day shipping for those things you need like tomorrow...it's so totally worth it. I will gladly fork over my money to Amazon every year, lol.

^I think the above, omitting the part about advisees (given that you don't get one until after you arrive) is good. Keep it brief.