UnlikelyGrad

Sounds good! But I usually just make pie. It's one of the few things I spend effort on nowadays.

Protein source (beef or chicken), veggies (frozen if I'm feeling lazy), and a smidge of hoisin sauce and sesame oil.

I just passed my quals too. They are draining. I had 5 days of written exams plus two hours of orals--and if a couple of professors hadn't had a meeting to attend, I think the orals would have dragged on more than 2 hours. Like you, I also came out feeling disheartened. It's normal--everyone I know, even the most astute grad students, said they felt the same. [My sister, a tenured prof, told me afterwards that she classifies students into three categories: "Definitely fail," "he/she'll get there eventually but is still lacking," and "he/she's hot stuff but we don't want him/her to get too cocky."] I think the thing to do is to move pas it--focus on your project, focus on what weak spots you need to strengthen (that were turned up by the orals), etc. Within a week, I felt much better about myself (see my blog).

I don't bike much but my advisor does. She keeps a couple of changes of clothes in her office in case her outfit gets wet. (She then puts the wet outfit back on for the ride home, thus preserving the dry clothes for another day.)

I started at 37, expecting to be the oldest student in the department. I wasn't. We have one guy who's doing a part-time Ph.D. who's got to be at least 55--he's been working on his Ph.D. for 15 years!! Most people nowadays think I'm 30 tops, not 40 (thank you mom, for the good anti-aging genes). I don't know if this changes things or not, but I have no trouble fitting in: my friends at school range in age from 24 to 36. I'm the same age as many of the profs and the department chair, but it hasn't hindered my interactions with them much, if at all, either.

I use a hard-copy notebook and it never leaves the building. (My advisor lets me take it to my office for data crunching, but normally it's up in lab.) When I go out in the field I have a separate hard-copy notebook that comes with me. This stays in my office unless I'm out at sea. When I graduate, both of these notebooks will stay behind. That's the rule. (My predecessors' notebooks are all sitting on a shelf in our lab.)

Did your POI mention where he usually gets funding from? Different field here, but I had the same issue with Davis, my dream school, a few years back. My POI said he usually got his funding from two state-of-California departments. Given the budget crisis in CA at the time (and I don't think it's gotten much better in the last couple of years) I assumed that meant that he wouldn't be getting funding any time soon. I haven't regretted my decision.

My vision has definitely degraded over the last year or so. I attributed it to getting old (just turned 40) but I am spending substantially more time on the computer, so maybe not...

You get over them the way you are right now: by asking yourself, "What went wrong? How can I stop this from happening in the future?" and then taking action on what the ideas you come up with.

I would say 'B' too. My younger sister was in a similar predicament and chose 'A'. She ended up leaving with a master's because she couldn't get along with her advisor. Prestige is not worth it if you can't finish.

I honestly don't know how grad students survived their advisors' sabbaticals before Skype/email...both of which were invaluable to me last year. You can get a LOT of mentoring that way.

It also depends (1) how much research is going to be done in the first semester and (2) how much your project is linked to other projects in the group. Regarding (1): Some profs don't expect you to get much done during the first semester if your program has a moderate to heavy course load, in which case it wouldn't matter if the POI was gone. Regarding (2): My advisor was gone during my second year, which happened to be my labmate's first year. So, you guessed it, I got to bring him up to speed on lab procedures like how to run the equipment. My advisor is rarely in lab anyway, so I probably would have done it even if she hadn't been on sabbatical...

Agreed, though there are still some schools left that do (Michigan State is the one that comes to mind). FYI, if you like analytical chemistry/methods development, look for a place that does environmental chemistry...environmental chemistry is VERY heavy on analytical stuff. (Says UnlikelyGrad with a sigh. Method development is HARD and takes FOREVER.)

Congrats! Since you'd be doing research, I think NASA recommendations would be mostly OK...though do try to get at least one professor. If you don't mind sharing, which NASA center will you be working at? (I have several ex-NASA friends.)

What's wrong with fun? I have two really fun people on my committee. One of them even wrote me a fun question as part of my written exams.

Even if you are married, it's not a shoo-in that your spouse will get a visa. One of my officemates had this problem. She and her husband did a very-long-distance relationship for two years while her husband frantically tried to get accepted to programs in the area (and looked for jobs, too). He ended up getting into grad school about 500 miles away, which was the only way he could get a visa. So now they're in a not-so-long-distance relationship. At least they now see each other every month instead of once a year.

No wonder you play the ukelele so well! I got my undergraduate degree in chemistry (with biochem emphasis) and am now doing geochemistry. It's taken a lot of work to get up to speed on the geology stuff, but I'm having fun.

If your mentor at the small school is accomplished, I would go for that program. What you need as much as (if not more than) school ranking is NETWORKING...and a good mentor will do that for you. I'm not at a "brand name" school but my advisor has connections at Ivies and other well-known schools. I'm meeting (and collaborating with) people who could write high-impact letters of recommendation. (Actually, in my field, my advisor is a high-impact person despite being at a small school.)

I would worry about whether or not that would hold the weight of your books. But if it can, shippers generally don't mind. (We FedEx equipment in ice chests and Rubbermaid Action Packers all the time. In fact, Action Packers seem to be the oceanographer's shipping container of choice.)

With today's current interest rates, that's not necessarily the case. I know several students who have bought (besides myself; I'm a special case). In at least a couple of cases, their plan is to rent the house out after they're done with school rather than selling it. Since the homes are close to school, they know they can always find renters.

You call it a scourge...but for me, it would be GOOD to pay into. (I was a stay-at-home mom for long enough that, at age 40, I still don't have enough "credits" to receive a payout.) It's hard for young people to think about retirement but us older folks think about it a lot. And yes, I do contribute to my Roth IRA every year even though it is a real squeeze. Eigen: do you really make $40k/year? Wowza.

I agree. If I'm going to be taxed on my stipend, I want it to count as Social Security earnings.

Just FYI for the folks from India: On El Camino Real, on the border between Sunnyvale and Santa Clara (a few miles east of Stanford) is an area called "Little India". Lots of Indian groceries and restaurants. You can take the bus (route 22 or 522) if you don't have a car. Have fun!

If you really do think that the onus will be on you to keep the conversation going, think of a few topics/questions in advance that you can utilize to do away with awkward silences. I used to be pretty socially crippled in high school and this was the thing that saved my bacon. I'd even run through imaginary scenarios in my head, having fake conversations with the "scary people", over and over, until I started to feel a bit more comfortable with the idea of talking to them. It takes practice, but it does get better if you're willing to put forth an effort.

Generally, you put it on your resume, like this: Education Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA June 2013 MA, American Literature UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA June 2011 BA, English To be honest, I've never heard of an employer asking for your GPA. They may find out from your references (no doubt including your advisor) whether you worked hard or not, though.