juilletmercredi

If there was only a $45/month difference, personally I would take the one with the dining area. But I like to cook, and I like to have friends over, so I would welcome the space to have dinner parties or even just friends over for dinner. If I didn't live in a tiny studio and had space for drinks I would have people over all the time.

I'm usually somewhere between dressy casual and business casual. Typically jeans or slacks with a nice blouse or sweater, and some nice shoes. Occasionally if I'm feeling relaxed I'll wear a t-shirt (typically a geeked out one, like a video game or comic t-shirt) and some jeans and Keds. I wear Uggs too, but that's because it's NYC and if it's 25 degrees outside I'm usually walking to get where I need to go. Uggs are comfortable and warm, and honestly, I don't care whether someone else is judging me from across campus. I also don't care if I look like an undergrad, at this point. While I dress nicely when I teach and present because I want to be respectable, I've pretty much accepted the fact that dressing up is not going to make me look like the teacher. It's going to make me look like an undergrad who has a presentation in another class, lol. I have found that regardless of how I dress, though, after the first day the undergrads are pretty clear on who their teacher/TA is.

Subways aren't too crowded unless you live on the 4/5/6 line and try to ride at rush hour! With that said, within the next few years (decades?) that should be alleviated when they complete the Second Avenue line (the T). I'm going to disagree with some of the blanket characterizations of the Brooklyn neighborhoods. It depends on where you are from and your comfort level, of course, but I have friends who live in Bushwick perfectly comfortably. I also have a friend who lives in Fort Greene and absolutely loves her neighborhood, and another grad student friend who had a share in Carroll Gardens at a decent rate (although most things in BoCoCa are pretty expensive). Her neighborhood is *beautiful*. Also, East Flatbush is a HUGE neighborhood and not all of it is the projects, obviously. A larger issue with East Flatbush is lack of subway access.

I'm not entirely sure what is going on here, so take my advice FWIW. 1. I personally would not worry about being perceived as the "African kid who can't take a joke." You said yourself that your career is more important than friends, and I am pretty sure that you don't want to be friends with this guy anyway. So next time he makes a racist remark, tell him to knock it off and that it isn't funny. Or you can tell him that you don't really think that's appropriate for the lab. Even if he's like "Damn kid can't take a joke," he'll most likely stop. I don't tolerate that stuff and I've had a few people who thought I was uptight because I don't like sexist or racist jokes - or jokes about my age - but they're not people who I really care what they think about me anyway. 2. This is the part I don't understand…but as far as I can tell you need to set expectations and roles with your colleagues who are working on the project together. Call a meeting with one or both of them and have a mature discussion about who is doing what. Write it down and then send the meeting notes to everyone involved. Their relationship should not affect your productivity, so you need a good chat and a plan. Don't expect your PI to do it - part of your training is professionalization and learning how to handle this kind of thing, so take the reins and do it. Also, just as a note, at least in my field publication authorship is based upon the work done on the actual publication and the research leading to it, not just based on who "started" the project or "owned" it. There are people who were former members of my lab who are NOT on my publications, even though they collected data or managed the project, because they didn't do any significant writing or analysis of the data involved in the paper. Besides I make it a point that before I start a paper that we work out the authorship order so everyone is clear and there are no nasty surprises.

A lot of the things I would say have been said already. So in an effort to say new things: 1. Decide as early as possible what you are and are NOT willing to sacrifice for grad school and academia. Anything worth doing is worth sacrificing a little bit for, but you have to make that decision up front here. Your relationship? Your ability to control where you live? Your free time? Your fertility? A stable job market? Your sleep? Make decisions and then stick to them. You will adjust as you become more advanced - for example, I am much less willing to sacrifice sleep now than I was when I first entered, but then again, I don't have to as much since I have no coursework. I get a good 8 hours almost every night now. 2. Even if you don't currently exercise, consider starting a program. Exercise made me such a healthier person; I felt tired at appropriate times (by that I mean between 11 and 12 at night instead of between 2 and 6 in the morning), I was motivated to eat more healthily, and my mood and energy improved overall. 3. Self-deprecating language aside, remember that you are a "real person" and have a "real life" in grad school. You are not waiting for your "real life" to begin; you are living it. If you remind yourself of that often - even tack it on the wall - remembering to indulge yourself in hobbies, friends, and relaxation time will be easier. 4. Don't expect your cohortmates to become your best buddies. One or two of them may become close friends; you may even date or marry one. But I'd say far more often they become acquaintances or happy hour buddies. My closest friends in grad school are grad students in other departments I met through various means. 5. Go to some of the shit in your department. I know, you're going to get about three zillion emails and you can't do it all, and especially introverted people will feel the temptation to just hit delete and go to *nothing*. But at the very least, when you see professors and they see you, they remember you and think about you when opportunities come up. They see you as a team player and someone who wants to participate in the department when it's time for them to write you recommendations. And sometimes that brown bag or colloquium is really interesting and may get you thinking about your research in new ways. I never thought I'd be interested in social neuroscience, but I love going to the SNS colloquia and it's definitely a consideration for future research. And research excitement is infectious. Even if the topic is the most boring thing you've ever heard, seeing someone else all fired up about their own research sometimes has the effect of making YOU feel more excited about your own, and more motivated to do some work. So don't go to everything, but go to some things, and be thoughtful and ask questions and make comments. 6. Write EVERY DAY. Even if it is just a paragraph, even if it is not academic, set aside some time to write something every day. Getting in the habit of writing every day makes it easier for the words to flow when you sit down to do academic writing. If you have the most ridiculous writer's block, then just start babbling about your day on paper, or even just writing about how frustrating it is being blocked. The only way to bust writer's block is to get in there. I used to be one of those students who would wait for flashes of inspiration to come along before I sat down and wrote. Not only is that untenable given the amount of writing you will have to do, it also encourages marathon writing sessions, which in turn encourages being up until the wee hours of the morning and getting no sleep. So do yourself a favor and write often. 6b. And just write. Your first draft will be crap; that's what editing is for. Don't worry about that perfect citation or trying to remember the quote exactly right or the exact percentage. That's what editing is for.. Just make a note of it and move on. You can fix it later, but if you break your stride, it's more difficult to get started again. 7. I think what helps in learning to say "no" is developing a thicker skin. Sometimes we say "yes" because we are worried about what others thing about us. And while yes, I do think we need to worry what SOME others think about us, some of the time, don't spend too much too worrying about it. The less of a damn I gave the easier it became for me to say "No, I'm sorry, but I don't think I can do that." And you don't always have to give an explanation if you don't want or have one. It depends on who you are telling no. I think this can be especially hard for women because we are used to being expected to (or wanting to) take care of everyone and want people to like us personally. I've given up on trying to make everyone like me personally. I have friends for that. Now I just want people to respect me as a scholar and a professional. And sometimes, that involves saying "no." Because people will perceive you a lot better if you do a few things very well than if you do a lot of things poorly because you don't have enough time. 8. MOST importantly, remember that a PhD is a means to an end. Enjoy it. But everything you do in the program should have an end goal of getting you a job. Do the things that will help you get there and eschew the things that won't. And your goal from Day One is to get that job, so start putting the things on your CV that will help you achieve that goal. If you need teaching experience in your field because 95% of the jobs are at teaching institutions, then TA or adjunct regardless of whether your professor (who is probably at an R1 and likely got his job in the 1980s or 1990s when things were marginally better) tells you you don't "need" to. If you want to go into industry, find a way to quietly do an industry internship or two during grad school (and yes, a lot of them will take PhD students. I did one).

Doing a PhD part-time is an option at some programs, and I understand that this is more common in fields that lend themselves to industry, but I would still wager that most programs would be against that. I don't think it's damaging at all to admit that you tried geoscience for a while and realized that the research you really wanted to do is being done in microbiology, and realizing that you want a micro PhD so that you can do that research. None of the decisions are going to be ideal, so hopefully you aren't looking for ideals. You need to look for what will suit your career goals best. What do you want to do? You can do research with an MS, but it's going to be more limited and you won't have control over your projects. Is that what you want? If not, then you'll need a PhD, so you can rule out abandoning the PhD altogether. You could take a leave of absence, though, and work in industry and see how you feel. B and C have the same problem. You would still be starting graduate school over again from scratch, regardless of whether you got into new programs or the micro program from last year. So first, you have to evaluate whether you are willing to do that. Honestly, you're only halfway through one year so you wouldn't be "losing" much, and you are only one year older than when you originally started, so the "starting grad school in my 30s" is a bit curious here. Really think about whether you are willing to start over, and if you are, there's no harm in contacting the micro program and seeing if they would readmit you. The worst they can say is no, and then you're right back here. I also advocate the investigate whether you can switch departments at the same school option, as long as there are people doing the kind of research you want to do in the micro department at your university. D doesn't sound like a good choice. You don't seem like you can reach your goals in geoscience, if you really want to work on more applicable research, and it's far easier to detach yourself after 1 year than after 3 or 4. Why make yourself miserable for another 4-5 years in a program that you dislike and that won't get you the kinds of jobs you like?

My advice is to stop comparing yourself to other people. I know, it's inevitable. We compare ourselves to others. But there is ALWAYS going to be someone "better" than you. After grad school, it'll be that postdoc in the lab at the university down the lane who's always scooping your topics and publishing faster than you and has the K award. If you go tt, it'll be that hotshot new AP who managed to get an R03 while teaching 3 classes a semester and all the students love him. So on and so forth. You have to decide on your own personal pace and what you're willing to give up, or how hard you want to push yourself. If you want to write more papers, you can, but you have to become a machine - live and breathe research most hours of the day and write, write, write like a maniac. I know some people like that and they are really annoying to me, but they get shit done. On the other hand, you can choose to be a little more normal. Most people fall in the "normal" range - they publish okay but not spectacularly, and they also have time to do other things. It also depends on your goals. I initially felt a bit inadequate compared to some of my peers. Then I realized that 1) my advisor adored me and thought I was doing fine and, even more importantly, 2) I just didn't care as much as they did. I love research but I didn't want to live and breathe it 16 hours a day, and I wanted to end up at a teaching-focused institution anyway. Once I stopped comparing myself to them and to people who had similar goals to ME, I felt muuuuuch better. Even if you continue to compare yourself to other people, though, don't compare yourself to the superstar. That's just setting yourself up for insanity. Compare yourself to the other average joes. There's always going to be a superstar; you have to decide whether you want to be the superstar, or compete with the superstar. If you do, power to you, go for it. Most people don't, though.

Academic: Have at least 3 first-authored papers at least in press by the time I finish. (This is easy, as I have one published already and two more in the pipeline). Win an award for my dissertation, maybe. Social: Make friends. (Accomplished!) Go out twiceish a month. Emotional: Learn to balance my academic life with my social and personal one, and feel happy and fulfilled - busy without being overwhelmed. I'm getting there. Write every day - not necessarily academic writing, but personal writing. Get back into fiction writing. I love this, and I love your attitude about grad. school. I have one big goal on my bucket list, and your post is emblematic of it: 1. Thrive. Don't just get by...but thrive. I can't pursue grad school (and thus a whole 5-7 years of their life) as though it is something to merely get through or survive. Life is too short. My goal is to find a way to truly thrive academically and personally...by my own standards of course, not anyone else's.

I work in student affairs in addition to being a PhD student (part-time - I'm in a role specifically designed for graduate students) so I do attend athletic events, RA-sponsored events, and other things that appeal to me. I "hang out" with my undergrad supervisees, too, although it's not quite the same as hanging out with grad student friends. I supervise them, so it's not like we can go get trashed together. I don't join undergrad student clubs, but I have entertained joining the club sports they have in the physical education department. There are usually graduate student clubs to join, too. I think schools don't do full-blown orientation weekends because really, graduate students aren't as integrated into the life of the campus as undergrads. We're so busy, there's not time and often not desire. But I think as long as you aren't in a capacity where you're going to be teaching or advising the undergrads frequently, you can do whatever - if you're fresh out of undergrad yourself you may not be that much older than them. Me, I keep the socializing to a minimum because I supervise some of them, teach some of them, and show up at the hospital at 3 am to assist some of them.

No, it's not selfish to take or turn down the funding; you earned the funding on your merits, and you did it with good faith: you're in a PhD program, you are doing research, and you weren't one hundred percent sure that you were going to drop out with a terminal master's. In fact, YOU were convinced by the department to do the PhD instead of the master's. Who knows, next year you may change your mind and stay on. It's not your fault that you were awesome and got an NSF. Lots of people choose to leave after being awarded some fellowship or another; the presence of funding shouldn't deter you if you've determined that a PhD and a research career with one is not for you anymore. And dear god, NO, it's not unethical to put the PhD on hold for a year and see if you like working and whether or not you want to return. I think that's the best way to do it, if you really want out but aren't sure whether you want to come back. You'll have that assurance that you can return. Just a note, though, that if you take a leave of absence for a non-medical related reason you may have to terminate your NSF. I checked the rules and there don't seem to be a provision for those of us who want to take a year or two break.

Definitely the research. PhD programs are about research. Depending on the program they may also like that you have the teaching experience, since many STEM programs do encourage their students in teaching careers and either require or strongly recommend that you TA and teach courses in their own departments. But PhD programs are about research primarily, so to gain admission into a PhD program your research experience will be of paramount importance.

This depends entirely on your university's policies and the policies of the chemical engineering department. I suggest that you contact the Director of Graduate Studies of the ChemE department at your university and make an appointment to chat with him or her about what the policy would be for transferring departments within schools. I would also keep your own DGS and/or advisor in the loop once you have made an actual decision to transfer, as you will need their support as well.

My lab is mixed-methods and we use NVIVO for our qualitative work. I don't use it because I do the quantitative side of the mixed-methods, but I've seen it in action and it looks pretty cool. The rest of our med center (lots of medical sociologists and anthropologists) use Atlas.TI, which is another qualitative software. I think it's mostly a matter of preference between the two, but I've never used either. As far as quant packages go, R is the most robust as far as handling a lot of different kinds of models well and it's FREEEEEE which is always nice, since stats packages cost in the hundreds. After that, SAS and Stata are both good for different things. I think Stata is more intuitive, but I taught myself how to use SAS because it was on all the computers and that's what we used in our Analysis of Change class. It's been useful because a lot of the health departments want people with SAS skills instead of Stata, for some reason, but I think Stata is better for certain types of data. SAS is great at manipulating data though. I would wait to get on campus before purchasing, though. Your university probably has a discounted licensing scheme (here students can do a 12-month license of SAS for $99) and your advisor may pay for your license out of his grant (that's how I got SPSS, although I've been begging for SAS. I always come at the wrong time - our license starts in August and it is not prorated.) I think SPSS is the worst of the crew, BUT it's the easiest to get on a student computer and I think it's the easiest for learning stats because of all the point and click and neat little tables. They have GradPacks where you can buy up to a 3-year license for student use. You can find some here: http://studentdiscounts.com/spss.aspx?gclid=COXI2Mqyj7UCFQ2i4AodIhkAqg There are specialized packages for special functions, too. My advisor is fond of MPlus because he does a lot of latent variable and longitudinal modeling. But MPlus is expensive! Good news is that there's a student price that is like 1/3 the original cost.

Yeah, this isn't really a huge consideration - the income tax thing, I mean. I'd much rather ow $10,000 than $41,000. The biggest "catch" seems to be that you have to make all 300 payments on time (or 120 in the case of the public service forgivenness), and if you miss even one, you can be rendered ineligible for the IBR.

I would say it depends, but yes, there are pros and cons. The biggest con is his lack of a network, both in the field as a larger whole and in your department. But even that varies - my department just hired a new prof who is a rising superstar in the field, so lots of people are familiar with his work, plus he was a postdoc here so he knows people in the department. I actually don't think new profs offer less opportunities for authorship - on the contrary, their focus on pushing out papers may get you more opportunities, since they are actively collecting data and may have 2-3 or more projects going on at once. My advisor is just a year away from tenure, but when I first arrived in 2008 he had only been here 3 years. We have a variety of data sets for me to choose from in my areas of interest. Some of them I am second or third author on, but I can also select my own topics and write to get first authorship (and my first ever paper was a first authored paper in a top journal in my field). He's also a great mentor, despite his "inexperience" in terms of having had doctoral students (there was only one before me, and there's another who came in at the same time as me). I thought about the tenure thing, too. For me, if my advisor were denied it would be late in my PhD (at this point, if he were denied his last year would overlap with my last year, so it wouldn't matter) so my decision was to stay and finish and be mentored from afar. But I also developed relationships with other professors who could mentor me if necessary. My other mentors are more senior, so I benefit from their networks as well as the frenetic productivity of my primary advisor.

Schools will let you know if you have been rejected. Sometimes they send them out in waves, so just because you haven't gotten one doesn't mean that you won't. Sit tight

For social psychology PhD programs, what would be far more useful than a MA in psychology is 2 years spent as a research assistant, lab manager, or project coordinator in a psychology lab (or a related field - cognitive science, psychiatry, public health, etc.) But yes, barring that I would look into public universities. For the CUNY system in New York, Hunter, City, and Queens Colleges have an MA in psychology; Queens College has an MA in applied behavior analysis; Brooklyn College has an MA in experimental psychology. Also, Brooklyn and Queens Colleges offer an MSED in School Psychology, if you're interested in research with children, but that will mostly teach you to practice school psych. For SUNY, SUNY-New Paltz offers an MA in psychology and it is about 1.5 hours north of New York. SUNY-Buffalo, Geneseo, Oswego, and Plattsburgh also all offer MAs in psychology, but they are a bit further afield of the city. In the Boston area, Bridgewater State offers an MA in psychology. UMass-Boston may, too, but their webpage is loading far too slowly for me to find out.

If you don't know, then don't go. If you're not sure that you want to teach geography, and may be changing your mind to other career fields, don't attend the program (and pay the money). Instead, take the time to decide what you really want to do. It's far better to go a year or two later than it is to be $40K in debt (or more) for something that is now useless to you because you have to go back, get another degree, and won't use the first. If you want to weigh teaching English abroad, you can do that without a TEFL certification. There are a variety of programs that allow you to do that - JET (in Japan), EPIK (in Korea), CIEE (various countries), and Fulbright (various countries). This website shows you a variety of teach abroad options in different countries. You can get the experience first and then decide if you want to get the TEFL certification to do it as a long-term career. The other thing is that you don't have to do everything now; you could teach English abroad for several years and then return to the States, get an M.Div, and go into ministry. Or you could teach abroad for several years and realize that you want to teach geography after all, so you return and get an MA in that.

^Yes, but the only reason they would rescind in those circumstances would be: -If you failed to graduate, either by dropping out or failing a lot of classes -If your GPA dropped WAY lower than they anticipated (like you were admitted with a 3.5 but got Cs and Ds in your last semester) -If you didn't fulfill required prerequisites that you said you would (like you need quantum physics but you failed quantum physics, or dropped it, or got lower than a C) Otherwise I don't think you have to worry.

Going to chime in for no here, as well. But definitely tell them that you don't want to go anymore.

Go to the interview! You've already been accepted to the other school AND this one is higher on your own list, so it only makes sense to go to that one. But yes, I would also see if I could reschedule the other school's.

I think they should have at the very least a vague idea of how much funding they can offer you - perhaps a range, or an indication of what percent it would cover (full funding? Half tuition?). So I would go ahead and ask them now. The worst they can say is "We don't know yet, but we can get back to you by X date and let you know."

I think the 12 months in the field thing is kind of like p < .05 in our quant fields. It was an arbitrary number selected by some dead white guy decades ago. Most people don't understand why we use .05 - it's the probability that we found a difference in our samples just by chance instead of because there actually is one. Well, what's really so different between a 5% chance of error and a 6% chance of error? Is a new intervention for, let's say, improving executive functioning in children with autism or condom use amongst at-risk teenagers worthless if the big differences we found between control and treatment groups has a 6% chance of being wrong instead of 5% (or even a 10% chance)? No, not really. But still if you find a huge difference and your p = .06 or even .057, you're screwed. You can't publish it, you can't implement it. Anyway, for the OP, I think what you need to do is explore the reasons that you want a PhD and think about whether you need one to do what you want to do. Remember that teaching and presenting happens in more than just academia - you can give presentations to workplaces, you can adjunct in the evenings while working full-time, you can teach classes for your own employees, etc. You said you want to do applied work - the job is to look at people who are doing what you want to do or something like it, and determine: Do they have PhDs? Do they think a PhD is necessary or useful in their work? Versatile PhD will help a lot with that, I think. Even through that, a PhD is primarily a research degree. In your comments, I see you say you want to "further the goals" and "further the aims" and do applied work, but never once do you say that you love research and you want to work in creating new knowledge or answering the pressing questions in your field. There are a lot of ways to 'further the goals' of a particular field without getting a PhD and working as a researcher. I'm in a related field (public health - we have lots of anthropologists) and there are SUCH a variety of ways that I could further the goals of my field without being a researcher - I could be a doctor, a public health nurse, a dentist, a nurse practitioner or physicians assistant, a social worker, a health education teacher, a health promotion worker, the director of a college health center, an epidemiologist, a biostatistician, on and on and on. If you want to do direct applied work with populations, there are many ways you can do that and even use your anthropology training in that work without being a research anthropologist. Think about that. Remember the sunk cost fallacy, too. Those 6 years you have spent getting a PhD - you will never get them back. Regardless of whether you choose to continue or quit, those are 6 years of your life that will stay the same. If you are miserable and the misery comes truly from the PhD program and not periodic depression/setbacks, are you willing to spend another 3 years being miserable just because you've already spent 6 of them being miserable? It's like if you were digging a 6-foot hole in a specific spot and you hit rock at 3 feet, would you continue to try to dig right there just because you've already started the hole, even though it will be nigh impossible for you to get through the rock anotehr 3 ft? Or would you move somewhere else where there's no rock? Stubborness can be good and bad - perseverance springs from it, but so does wasting time, unfortunately. Maybe you need to be clearer and more direct about your plans and goals? The word "applied" is nebulous, and to an academic, "applied" means you want to do applied work within academic research (like my entire field is technically "applied," but it's still very much academic). Perhaps you should clarify the types of positions you are trying to prepare for. I don't know if this would work, but since your project is in East Asia, can you apply to one of those "teach abroad" programs through like CIEE and still have time to do fieldwork? I think most of them only expect about 20-30 hours a week of work. Are you eligible for a Ford Foundation dissertation grant, or maybe the NSF's SBE dissertation grants? You'd have to wait until next November to apply so you wouldn't be able to go until 2014-2015, but it may be worth it. I agree that you shouldn't rush, but a PhD is a means to an end. You have to finish at some time. Don't buy into these lines that professors often feed you: Why rush? Quite frankly, they need students to teach their classes and help them with research, so of course they're not necessarily going to encourage you to get done.

Well, "worth it" is subjective. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average social worker makes about $42,000 a year. The top 10% make $70,390 on average, which still isn't at the level you need to repay $84K in loans. However, USC's placement may make the program worth it. Investigate where their graduates go when they leave USC, and investigate other programs as well. Personally, if I were doing an MSW (and I considered it strongly before deciding to get a PhD), I would go to a in-state public flagship school (in my case, UGA was my goal before I changed my mind). You can learn the clinical skills you need there and intern at a nearby VA hospital or base. Sometimes you don't need coursework to learn the relevant stuff; I am willing to bet that the vast majority of social workers in the military did not have a subconcentration in military and veteran social work at their programs. Many of them may not even have intended to do social work in the military. Clinical social workers are in such high demand, especially at VA medical centers and in the military, that I doubt your lack of a concentration will hurt you if you attend a reputable school.

Why the rush? If you don't even know how the admissions process works, you will have to learn that before you can even begin writing a statement of purpose. Your recommenders may not be able to get their letters together in time. Deadlines for best fit programs may have passed, so you will be relegated to only applying for programs at which the deadlines are still open. Do you have all of the prerequisites for a degree in structural biology? You may need to take some biology courses. I know in some fields in the sciences you can move from one degree to another with little additional work (for example, in psychology, we'd readily take a biology major with few psych courses if he was interested in neuroscience work or a math major who wanted to do experimental or quantitative psych) but do you have ANY? I think you need to at least wait until the next cycle and apply for Fall 2014. Then you won't be rushing, and you have time to figure out your course of action, write your statement, get letters, etc.