juilletmercredi

Her last chance to be a mom? Being a mom doesn't mean helping you with stuff all the time. She's still your mother regardless of what she is doing, and her last chance to be a mother will be the day her last child dies. My mother has never helped me (physically) move into a space beyond my first res hall in college, but she's been my mother in other more important ways. The mothering relationship simply changes as one grows older. I have a slightly different perspective than the rest of the commenters. Your mother may really want to help you, but honestly, I think that you need to consider your needs as well. If you don't mind and are only afraid of looking young and being annoyed, then go ahead and let her. But if you want to embark on this new identity and place on your own, and really need to do this independently, then gently tell her that you appreciate all of her caring but that you'd really rather do this by yourself because it's time for you to fly the nest now. Your mother will always be your mother, and will never lose her parent role. It's just that the things she does for you as a parent will change over time as you get older. She needs to learn to accept that, and if she's having trouble with it perhaps you have to give her a little push.

I definitely have a life but I don't think grad school lends itself well to a 9-5 all the time. First of all, as others have mentioned, I think it's more realistic to think of it as a 60-hour per week job instead of 40 hours per week. You may have classes that are scheduled after that time, or you may have classes scheduled in such a way that you have to work until 7 or 8 some days to get your research done. It also depends on whether you work in a lab (where you have to go every day) or whether you do the majority of your work at home. Everyone (at least in my department, which is psychology) works towards the PhD over the summer. Summers are lighter, but not nonexistent. That's when you do your research in full force. Some people teach classes over the summer. My biggest challenge in scheduling time is that I often procrastinate during my work time, and so it extends into my play time. I'm trying to be better about it this year by creating a schedule for myself, because I will be dissertating!

"If your purpose is to take notes and write, then a netbook is the easy winner." Not sure if I agree with that. I take notes and write on my iPad with an external keyboard ($30 on Amazon.com. Works like a charm). It's almost as easy as using a netbook; the screen is actually about the same size. Plus I can use it without the keyboard when I just want to read the news or watch a video without booting up the netbook. I had a netbook. I used it intermittently for about one year, and then stopped using it altogether. I gave it to my sister once I got the iPad. I use my iPad every day.

It depends on your field. In one of my fields (public health) a master's before PhD is common and even the few direct-entry programs are mostly filled with people with master's degrees. In the other field (psychology), it's far more common to work as a lab tech or research coordinator and then go for the PhD if one has a lower GPA and not enough research experience. If you have a strong GPA and research experience, and you know you want a PhD, apply directly to PhD programs and apply to some master's programs as well. In the case that you don't get into any PhD programs, going for the master's can be your backup plan. But I see no reason to go to (and pay for) a master's if you can get direct entry to a PhD program, if PhD is your goal.

I agree with the latter comment; there's no reason for a phone conversation at this point. You haven't even applied. There may be an opportunity for that later if you are invited for an interview or during the deliberations process, but at this point I would let it be professor-initiated. Phone calls right now are for questions that aren't answered on the website and cannot be answered over email, which are rare, I think.

The vast majority of scholarships are based on academic achievement, especially at the graduate level. I've actually never seen a scholarship that was based solely (or even primarily) on racial/ethnic identity. Your profile thing says you are in the social sciences. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship funds some social science fields (most, actually). The Javits Fellowship does also. But only on the PhD level. There aren't actually a lot of fully-funded external scholarships for MA students.

My closest friends are the ones I made while in graduate school. I still talk to some friends from college and high school, but the ones I actually engage with are grad school friends. I did things to find friends in graduate school, though. I went to the mixers, I hung out with the master's students (I'm a PhD student), I joined student groups, I worked in residence life. You can't hide in your office all weekend and expect to have friends - we're all busy, but come out for a margarita once in a while I disagree with this article, because I think it really depends on the experiences you have. I wasn't a joiner in college and I was far too involved with my boyfriend at the time to make any really close, lasting relationships (or join a sorority, which I really wanted to do). I came up for air, so to speak, once I got older and realized that it was possible to be in love without being attached to someone. My friendships post-college are much more meaningful and deep. If I were having a crisis, the friends I would call are all friends I made in graduate school. I also became more sure of myself and confident in my personal identity in graduate school, which made it easier for me to make friends because I have no shame and I am not at all shy. I feel BETTER able to have meaningful friendships, not less.

I mean, if you went to Harvard and the best program in your field is at Harvard…why wouldn't you go back there? I think you should take that advice with a grain of salt. If the best and top people in your research field are at your alma mater, then don't rule it out.

I started at 22, but I was the youngest person in my cohort. (I finished undergrad at 21. I turned 22 over the summer between grad school and undergrad. If my birthday had been in September or October, I would've been 21 when I began, so that explains beginning at 21 without skipping any grades or graduating early). The ages above me ranged from 25 to 34. In my psychology cohort (I have two cohorts because I am in a joint program) I'd say about 50% of us started in our mid-to-late 20s. 27 is definitely not "really behind." Don't feel behind - it's actually a lot less common than it used to be to go straight from undergrad to graduate school. I also want to point out that you will have a "real income," it'll just be smaller than you probably want it to me, and you can begin saving or whatever. One of the most valuable pieces of advice I heard about graduate school is don't wait to start living your life, because you are *already* living your life. Be you. Anyway, the grass is always greener, right? My older friends tell me they are envious of my youth; I say I am envious of their life experiences and the things they did before they came to grad school. I often wish I had worked and traveled for a few years after undergrad. I also agree that the older students were more motivated and had better ideas of why they were here and what they wanted to do.

The M60 drops you off directly in front of Columbia's gates. Astoria is a neighborhood on the western edge of Queens. Strangepeace: I think using a broker could be a good alternative if you can afford it, but as was already pointed out, they typically want 12%. There are some brokers that get their fees from the the apartments themselves, but I doubt that they will be showing apartments in your price range. If you want to be less than an hour by train, there are a lot of relatively safe neighborhoods in that price range. Harlem (the western part OR the eastern part, really), Washington Heights, and Inwood are all in Manhattan and would take you 40 minutes max to get to Columbia. I used to live on 172nd St and it took me 20 minutes door to door to get to Morningside Heights. You could easily find a studio or even a one-bedroom for that price in Washington Heights/Inwood. Harlem is gentrifying, but I contend that you could still find a nice studio for that price there and could certainly find a nice place sharing. I think if you want to keep it down to under 1 hour most parts of Brooklyn get a little dicey; the closer parts to the city are more expensive. Prospect Heights or Flatbush would be pushing it (if the trains are running well and you don't have to take a bus, you could make it in about an hour) and you could definitely find a place there in your range. Bushwick could also be affordable and workable if you lived on the L or were willing to switch trains twice. You can also live in Queens, which would be a closer and better commute, honestly. Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Astoria are commutable within 35-45 minutes. Woodside would be more like 50 minutes but it's nice there, too. Could you rent a unit in a brownstone? Sure, but it's likely to be more expensive. I had a friend who shard a 2-bedroom in an apartment in the 130s in central Harlem. It was newly renovated, with stainless steel appliances and exposed brick - really nice. She and her roommate paid $2,000 for it. There are a lot of those type of deals in Harlem, and they are less expensive the further north into Harlem you are willing to go. I found a studio in one of those for $900 in the 140s when I was looking for apartments. It also depends on what you mean by "smaller building." My building on 172nd wasn't very small (I'd say smallish/medium - about 5-6 units on each of 5 floors) but it was still quiet and I knew a lot of my neighbors. Pianoise: I have a lot of friends who live in Harlem and East Harlem (although not too far into East Harlem). I would consider regular Harlem (which is the west side of Harlem) first. It's closer to Columbia, if you are going there, and there are many affordable apartments that are actually walking distance to Columbia. I had a friend who shared a luxury apartment with a roommate - granite countertops, doorman, elevator building, laundry room inside, in the nice part of Harlem, walking distance to campus - and she paid $1200 with utilities for her half of the apartment.

First of all, I agree with everyone else in that guilt is a horrible reason to stay in a PhD program. You have to live your life for you and not for anyone else. You will soon come to be miserable and resent your advisor...graduate school is hard enough even when you are really passionate about it; it's even harder when you simply don't want to do it. (Trust me!) Your advisor will find a way to keep his lab afloat; that is his job. I agree with everyone in that you have to tell your advisor firmly but gently. I eventually changed my mind and didn't leave, but I did tell my advisor that I was leaving. I told him that I wasn't interested in an academic career and that doing this PhD was really detrimental to my mental health, and so I felt like leaving was the best option for me. I also have a great relationship with my advisor and he was very understanding. (Like I said, I changed my mind and came back, but still.) I am of the school of thought that believes in holding your cards until you are ready to play them. I see nothing ethically wrong with building skills and getting the most out of your program while you are still there. After all, you are still a student, and your work still benefits them. Somehow academia has managed to trick graduate students into believing that we are 100% on the taking side and that the program is doing all the giving; realize that you are a person of value to this lab and your program, too. It's not like they won't get anything from your work. By "in the fall" you seem to indicate that you are planning to leave at the end of the fall semester 2013. If you are not yet ready to tell him, I would wait until you WERE ready to tell him, and just go on about your business. Doesn't matter if he thinks you are weak and can't live the lifestyle. Doesn't matter what anyone thinks, really. Many people will assume that about PhD students who drop out without having gotten PhDs themselves, or with having much smoother PhD experiences than those of us who do leave.

I agree with the advice to not buy the cheapest mattress, but I extend that to other things especially if you are in a PhD program (which can take 5-10 years). Buy things that will last if you can afford to do so. With furniture that may not be as doable because it's very expensive upfront, but I will testify that IKEA furniture actually does not last long - at least not the particleboard stuff, even if you don't move it very often. Especially things like dressers that you have to open constantly. (But the upside is that IKEA uses metal slider racks for their drawers; most particleboard stuff from Target and Wal-Mart use plastic ones.) I had a solid wood bed frame from IKEA's Hemnes line; it's more expensive but it held up beautifully. But stuff like cookware/bakeware, drinkware, flatware, desk chair...those are cheaper items and with the food stuff, you're going to use it every day for 5 years or more. Go a little more expensive - not top of the line Lenox stuff, but something like mid-level, so that the stuff will hold up with daily wear and tear and perhaps dishwasher use if you have one over the course of five years. That's especially true for cookware if you plan to cook - I had to replace a pan I bought from Target for really cheap pretty fast, but the T-Fal set I got is actually pretty nice and it was relatively inexpensive ($40 at Wal-Mart, actually). I'd say under normal circumstances I cook 4ish days out of the week. Desk chair is important, too, if you have back issues. The desk chair is probably where you'll spend the second most amount of time, after the bed. One other thing - in some cities IKEA does contracted shipping services for pretty cheap relative to what shipping furniture costs, so you don't have to bring a U-Haul. I went to IKEA in Brooklyn and they deliver everything to Manhattan for a flat rate of $90, which is way cheaper than ordering it online (UPS charges by weight). They also offer student discounts on shipping in the beginning of the year - last year they had half off, so all your haul is shipped for $45. I bought all my furniture from there my first year of graduate school, and they brought it up my 4th floor walk-up, too. You can also pay them to put it together, but I'm handy with stuff like that so I assembled it myself. (The dresser was a nightmare, though. Everything else was fast and easy, but that dresser took me a while.)

Your Mac is still relatively new, and all of the tasks you plan to do you will be able to do on your Mac (even SAS, if you boot up Windows). I don't see the purpose of spending $700+ on a new machine just because you aren't interested in running Windows on a Mac - why not? A copy of Windows will be far cheaper than buying a new computer, and you may even get it free of charge from your university (I did). Then I just bought a copy of VMware Fusion, which a was $50 at the Apple store, and voila - I can run Windows programs on my Mac without rebooting. I also second finding out if you get a computer. I have a little space on-campus that has a Windows computer - I share it with another student, but our schedules almost never overlap. I use that when I want to use SAS or do heavy duty stats use on SPSS. I also live on campus and all of the Windows computer labs here have SAS on them; next year, I'll live in a residence hall that actually has a Windows computer cluster in it. Even if I lived in graduate housing, though (I live with the undergrads because I'm a residential director), the libraries with SAS in them would be a short walk away. The SPSS GradPack is $200 and works on Mac and Windows (one disc for both installations). Before you buy a new machine, why not purchase the copy of SPSS (unless you get it for free at your university) and try to run it on your Mac? Then you can test for yourself whether it runs well enough for you to do what you need to. I do have a Mac and I agree that SPSS runs better on Windows, but it still runs well enough on a Mac that I can do the majority of what I need to do from my Mac. When I can't, I go to the library.

Make sure you see an accountant who knows about fellowships and scholarships and can do them properly, and be aware that in many parts of the country seeing an accountant will cost you more than $50. I have an NSF GRF and the stipend is taxable. See this page: http://www.irs.gov/t...pics/tc421.html The page says that anything you use for room and board and personal expenses, regardless of whether the scholarship is considered "compensatory" or not, is taxable. Now if you want to individually wrangle with the IRS to figure out whether or not that applies to your fellowship, you can go ahead, but I'd wager in the vast majority of cases you'd lose. To me it's safer to pay the taxes. I know quite a few people on a variety of external fellowships (including the NRSA) and we all pay taxes on our stipends. I will also say different stipends are different. At my university, the first two years my NIH stipend required me to be hired as an officer of the university, and so I was paid monthly, had taxes automatically withheld, and received a W-2 at the end of the year. That was awesome, because I didn't have to think about it, and I never owed anything in April. Now that I am on external, I have to withhold them myself and am supposed to pay quarterly. The GSAS funded fellowships here are also paid monthly and are taxed before you get them.

One year is not a "lot of experience" - I know it may seem that way, but you will be competing with people who have 2-3 years in undergrad plus some who have 2-3 years in undergrad plus an additional 1-3 years afterwards, and perhaps a master's. With a 2.8, yes, you'd likely have to take some time off and either work, earn a master's, or both. A post-bacc is also a good option - the NIH offers one in which you do research for 1-2 years in a formal program.

I'm going to guess the same thing - I think by requiring this Ford is trying to get people who are still early in their doctoral studies (second or third year at most) who are still taking coursework. If you're finished taking coursework, or only have enough coursework left that you only need one or two classes a semester, then you're not taking full-time coursework. But I would certainly ask to be certain since so much money is at stake.

If the papers are on the same or similar topics, I would expect that the sources would be pretty much the same...

I'd say your chances are pretty decent. You may want to have one of your recommenders address your inconsistent performance in their letter, and state that despite earlier setbacks you are an excellent student who has found your place and excelled.

Thanks - I just started writing and writing and then everything just poured out, lol. It was totally worth it - I see it as my duty to pass it down, as a bunch of people passed down a lot of the information on that list to me and some of it I learned on my own through hard trial and error. If we can prevent that, we should!

I own a Mac, and I feel like Apple often prices its products outrageously or will offer a "refresh" on things that aren't really that big of a difference. IMO the additional "upgrades" they've made in the 15" Pro with the Retina display (primarily the screen, but they've added a separate HDMI port and the HDD is a solid state drive) aren't worth the additional $400. I will say that I wish I had a larger screen. I would've liked a 15-inch Mac, but I didn't have $1700 to spend on a computer. (IMO it's really ridiculous that they charge $600 more just for a larger screen and a better processor. Pretty much everything else on the two models are the same. I have issues with Apple, obviously, lol.)

My first computer was a Thinkpad, back when they were still owned by IBM. My current is a MacBook Pro. I love my Mac but honestly you get better bang for your buck with Lenovo, methinks. My campus is a Mac campus, so we have all the stuff you need to make Macs play nice with statistical software. I run SPSS on my Mac just fine (although I needed to download a patch to stop it from crashing, but it was free and on the IBM website) and although I don't yet have a personal copy of SAS, I know tons of doctoral students who run SAS in Windows on their Mac. I run Windows Vista on my Mac pretty fine, too, although I think I'm going to delete it and install Windows XP instead. Perhaps it'll run faster.

Mug shots are worse than most people's actual appearances, and you can't tell whether someone is a psychopath just by looking at them. I've always lived with flatmates, with the exception of the three years in college I was an RA, and I've always enjoyed the experience. Two of my flatmates are lifelong friends, and two of the people I've stayed with during summer programs are still friends with me, too. I love living with others; I feel lonely by myself. It's nice to have someone else for the companionship. Plus I don't think it's worth paying the extra $300-400 it would cost in my city to live alone.

I've had 12 months of funding, and my first two summers I worked as an RA on that funding. But last summer I worked a corporate, non-academic internship. If you are at all interested in non-academic work after the PhD, you may consider doing this. Your adviser will probably not like it too much, but we do what we must. In my case, the internship was great and the people I worked with liked me so much I am pretty sure they would hire me if I decided to work there post-PhD; they say almost any of their interns who want a job there get one. (And it was somewhat related to my field: I'm a psychologist, and it was market research.)

About your dog: I think that depends entirely on you and your program. I am in a social science program where the majority of my analysis and writing can be done from home, and I prefer to work from home or from a library (as opposed to my cube in the windowless cube farm). When I was taking classes I was generally there from 9-6 or so, but now that my coursework is finished I am rarely at the school itself. I go for meetings, seminars, interesting kinds of things and I do most of my work remotely. My time is verrry flexible, and if my building didn't prohibit it I would get a dog in a heartbeat. Another thing to keep in mind: a dog can be a great comfort when you're all stressed out over graduate school. Advice? Age: -Don't feel like you have nothing to offer just because you are younger. I was 22 when I started graduate school. You got accepted to the program for a reason, and chances are you are just as equipped as any older students are to successfully complete the program, just in a different way. -Your older classmates may be just as terrified as you. Talk to them. You have a lot in common. You are, after all, in the same place. -You will feel like an imposter, like you don't belong, or like you are constantly behind. Or all three. It's normal. It will pass. (Well, sort of.) People of all ages go through this. Adviser related: -If you are lucky enough to get both research interest fit and personality fit perfect, congratulations! But sometimes, personality fit is more important than research interest fit as long as the research isn't too different. A great adviser is interested in your career development, likes you as a person, advocates for you, and wants to hear your ideas. Even if his or her research is quite different from yours, they may give you the autonomy to work on your own projects and just supervise you. A bad personality fit will drive you nuts, even if you love his or her research. Consider that when evaluating your adviser fit. (This will vary by field: research fit may be less important in the humanities, more important in the natural and physical sciences. Social sciences are somewhere in-between.) -Don't be afraid to be straight up blunt with your adviser when it comes to asking about your progress. Ask if you are where you should be both academic program wise and getting-a-job-after-this-mess-wise. -Be proactive. Advisers love when you draw up an agenda for your one-on-one meetings, come with talking points and progress to share, have concrete questions to ask, and have overall shown that you have been thoughtful and taken control of your own program. Of course, this won't immediately come easily to you, but in time you will work up to it. Every semester I type up my semester goals, and at the beginning of the year I type up annual goals. I show them to my adviser and we talk about whether they are too ambitious, or whether I need to revise them, and how I can meet them. -Don't expect your adviser to actually know what courses you have to take to graduate. They will know about comprehensive exams and the dissertation, but a lot of professors don't really keep up with the course requirements, especially if their program is in flux. Get you a student handbook, and find out what you need to take. Map it out in a grid, and check off things when you finish them. Show this to your adviser every semester. You may have to explain how such and such class fills a requirement. -Nobody loves you as much as you, except your mother. Keep this in mind as you take in advice from all sources, including your adviser. Your adviser is there to guide you, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything he says. Studying: -You will have to read more than you ever did before, in less time than you ever have before, and you will be expected to retain more than you ever have before. The way that you studied in undergrad may need some tweaking. Be prepared for this. -Corollary: you may find that your methods change with age or interests or time. I preferred to study alone in college, but in grad school, I prefer to study in groups. It keeps me on task and the socialization keeps me motivated. You may find that you shift from being a more auditory learner to a visual learner or whatever. -You will feel behind at first. This is normal. -At some point you will realize that your professors don't actually expect you to read everything they assign you. This, of course, will vary by program, but there will be at least one class where the reading is actually impossible to do in one week. The point is to read enough that you know the major themes and can talk intelligently about them, and then pick some of the readings to really dig into and think more deeply about. -For most programs, don't worry so much about grades. If you stay on top of your work and do what you're supposed to, you will probably get an A. How much grades matter varies from program to program. In some programs, a B is a signal that you are not up to par, and more than a few Bs will warrant a discussion with your adviser or the DGS. My program isn't like that - A, B, it's all meaningless. My adviser doesn't even know what my grades are. But at almost all programs, a C means you need to retake the course, and two Cs means you have to convince the DGS not to kick you out. Extracurricular activity: What's that? No, seriously: -A lot of your time will be unstructured. You will have coursework, but most grad classes meet once a week for two hours and you may have three classes. You may have meetings with your adviser every so often and some seminars or things to catch (like we have grand rounds and colloquia that are required), but a lot of time will be unstructured. However, since you have so much more work than you had in undergrad, you actually will have less free time than you had in undergrad. This may initially cause you great anxiety. It did for me. Some people love unstructured time, though. (I don't.) -Because of this, you'll have to be planful about your non-grad school related stuff. -TAKE TIME OFF. DO it. It's important for your mental health. However you do it doesn't matter. Some people work it like a 9-5 job. Some people take a day off per week (me) and maybe a few hours spread across the week. Some people work half days 7 days a week. However you do it, there needs to be a time when you say "f this, I'm going to the movies." -Find your happy place, something that keeps you the you you were when you came in. I love working out. It gives me energy and I feel good. I stay healthy. I also love reading fiction, so sometimes I just curl up with a good book, work be damned. You have to give yourself permission to not think about work, at least for a couple of hours a week. You may also discover new hobbies! (I never worked out before I came to graduate school.) -Your work will creep into all aspects of your life, if you let it. This is why I hate unstructured time. You will feel guilty for not doing something, because in graduate school, there is ALWAYS something you can do. ALWAYS. But since there will always be more work, there's no harm in putting it aside for tomorrow, as long as you don't have a deadline. -You may need to reach outside of your cohort for a social life. None of my close friends are in my doctoral cohort. I've met master's students in my program, master's students in other programs, and I know a few non-graduate students I hang out with, too. Go to graduate student mixers. (If your university doesn't have any, organize some, if you like planning parties.) Join a student group that doesn't take up too much time. I had a doctoral acquaintance who kinda laughed at me because I joined some student groups other than the doctoral student one, and I was usually the only doctoral student in those groups, but I met some close friends (and future job contacts) and had a good time. -DO NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR WANTING A LIFE OUTSIDE OF GRADUATE SCHOOL. This is paramount. This is important. You are a well-rounded, complex, multifaceted human being. NEVER feel bad for this. Everybody wants some kind of life outside of work. Yes, you may loooove your field, but that doesn't mean you want to do it all day long. Some other doctoral students, and perhaps professors, may make you feel bad about this. Don't let them. Just smile and nod. Then disappear when you need to. Career: -This is job preparation. Remember that from Day One. Always be looking for ways to enhance your skills. Read job ads and find out what's hot in your field, what's necessary, what's in demand. For example, in my field statistics and methods are a hot commodity, and they're not a passing fad. I happen to really like statistics and methods, so I have pursued that as a concentration of mine. -Don't be afraid to take on volunteer work and part-time gigs that will give you skills that will be useful both inside academia and out, as long as it's not against your contract. Your adviser may be against it, but he doesn't have to know as long as it doesn't interfere with your work. -If you want to work outside of academia - if you are even *considering* the possibility - please please definitely do the above. Even if you aren't considering it, consider the possibility that you won't get a tenure-track job out the box and that you may need to support yourself doing something else for a while. You will have to prove to employers that you have developed usable, useful skills and this is one of the easiest ways to do it. But don't overdo it - get the degree done. -For more academic related ones - always look for opportunities to present and publish. Presentations look good on your CV. Publications look better. When you write seminar papers, wonder if you can publish them with some revision. Write your seminar papers on what you maybe think you may want to do your dissertation on. Even if you look at them three years later and think "these suck," you can at least glean some useful references and pieces from them. Discuss publication with your adviser early and often, and if you have the time and desire, seek out publication options with other professors and researchers. But if you commit to a project, COMMIT. You don't want to leave a bad impression. -If you can afford it, occasionally go to conferences even if you aren't presenting. You can network, and you can hear some interesting talks, and you may think about new directions for your own research. You can also meet people who may tell you about jobs, money, opportunities, etc. -Always try to get someone else to pay for conference travel before you come out of pocket. Including your adviser. Do not be shy about asking if he or she can pay. If he can't, he'll just say no. Usually the department has a travel fund for students, but often it's only if you are presenting. -If you are interested in academia, you should get some teaching experience. There are two traditional ways to do this: TAing a course, and teaching as a sole instructor. If you can help it, I wouldn't recommend doing a sole instructor position until you are finished with coursework. Teaching takes a LOT of time to do right. You should definitely TA at least one course, and probably a few different ones. But don't overdo it, if you can help it, because again, it takes a LOT of time. More than you expect at the outset. If you are in the humanities, I think sole instructor positions are very important for nabbing jobs so when you are in the exam/ABD phase, you may want to try at least one. If your own university has none, look at adjuncting for nearby colleges, including community colleges. (I would wager that the majority of natural science/physical science students, and most social science students, have never sole taught a class before they get an assistant professor job. At least, it's not that common n my field, which straddles the social and natural sciences.) -Always look for money. Money is awesome. If you can fund yourself you can do what you want, within reason. Your university will be thrilled, your adviser will be happy, and you can put it on your CV. It's win-win-win! Don't put yourself out of the running before anyone else has a chance to. Apply even if you think you won't get it or the odds are against you (they always are), as long as you are eligible. Apply often. Apply even if it's only $500. (That's conference travel!) Money begets money. The more awards you get, the more awards you will get. They will get bigger over time. If you are in the sciences and social sciences, you should get practice writing at least one grant. You don't have to write the whole thing, but at least get in on the process so that you can see how it's done. Grant-writing is very valuable both in and outside of graduate school. -Revise your CV every so often. Then look and decide what you want to add to it. Then go get that thing, so you can add it. -The career office at big universities is often not just for undergrads. I was surprised to learn that my career center offers help on CV organization and the academic job search, as well as alternative/non-academic career searches for doctoral students. In fact, there are two people whose sole purpose it is to help PhD students find nonacademic careers, and they both have PhDs. This will vary by university - some universities will have very little for grad students. Find out before you write the office off. -It's never too early to go to seminars/workshops like "the academic job search inside and out", "creating the perfect CV," "getting the job," etc. NEVER. Often the leader will share tips that are more aimed towards early graduate students, or tidbits that are kind of too late for more advanced students to take care of. This will also help you keep a pulse on what's hot in your field. It'll help you know what lines you need to add to your CV. And they're interesting. Other: -Decide ahead of time what you are NOT willing to sacrifice on the altar of academia. Then stick to it. I'm serious. If you decide that you do NOT want to sacrifice your relationship, don't. If it's your geographical mobility, don't. I mean, be realistic, and realize that there will always be trade-offs. But you have to think about what's important to you for your quality of life, and realize that there is always more to you than graduate school. -If you don't want to be a professor, do not feel guilty about this. At all. Zero. However, you will have to do things differently than most doctoral students. Your adviser will probably never have worked outside of the academy (although this may vary depending on the field) so he may or may not be able to help you. But you have a special mission to seek out the kinds of experiences that will help you find a non-academic job. Test the waters with your adviser before you tell him this. My adviser was quite amenable to it, but that's because I told him that my goal was to still do research and policy work in my field just not at a university, AND because it's quite common in my field for doctoral students to do non-academic work. If you're in a field where it's not common (or where your professors refuse to believe it's common, or it's not supposed to be common)…well, you may be a little more on your own. -Every so often, you will need to reflect on the reasons you came to graduate school. Sometimes, just sit and think quietly. Why are you doing this to yourself? Do you love your field? Do you need this degree to do what you want to do? Usually the answer is yes and yes, and usually you'll keep on trucking. But sometimes when the chips are down you will need to reevaluate why you put yourself through this in the first place. -To my great dismay, depression is quite common in doctoral students. Graduate work can be isolating and stressful. Luckily your health insurance usually includes counseling sessions. TAKE THEM if you need them. Do not be ashamed. You may be surprised with who else is getting them. (I found out that everyone in my cohort, including me, was getting mental health counseling at a certain point.) Exercise can help, as can taking that mental health day once a week and just chilling. Don't be surprised if you get the blues… -…but be self-aware and able to recognize when the depression is clouding your ability to function. Doctoral programs have a 50% attrition rate, and this is rarely because that 50% is less intelligent than, less motivated than, less driven than, or less ambitious than the other 50% that stays. Often they realize that they are ridiculously unhappy in the field, or that they don't need the degree anymore, or that they'd rather focus on other things in life, or their interests have changed. All of this is okay! -You will, at some point, be like "eff this, I'm leaving." I think almost every doctoral student has thought about dropping out and just kicking this all to the curb. You need to listen to yourself, and find out whether it is idle thought (nothing to worry about, very normal) or whether you are truly unhappy to the point that you need to leave. Counseling can help you figure this out. -Don't be afraid to take a semester or a year off if you need to. That's what leaves of absence are for. Lastly, and positively… …graduate school is great! Seriously, when else will you ever have the time to study what you want for hours on end, talk to just as interested others about it, and live in an intellectual community of scholars and intellectuals? And occasionally wake up at 11 am and go to the bank at 2 pm? Sometimes you will want to pull out all of your hair but most of the time, you will feel fulfilled and wonderfully encouraged and edified. So enjoy this time!

Most research PhDs cover your tuition and then provide you with a stipend (usually between $15,000 and $30,000 a year) plus health insurance in exchange for "20 hours a week" of research and teaching (realistically, it's more than that). I don't know if the health insurance is always premium, but my student health insurance is actually pretty good.