Kaeira

There's a bunch of options, depending on how much you want to pay and how close to campus you want to be. I would recommend the southern part of the circle (around Tates Creek, Chinoe Rd). That's a really nice residential area not too far from campus and close to the shopping and stuff on Richmond Rd and Nicholasville. There's a bunch of apartment complexes there. I live in Chinoe Creek apartments, which I really like, but I can't think of any of the names of the others off the top of my head. The only bad area I know of is on North Limestone St. There's also a lot of apartments in downtown Lexington, but those are more of the student/party central ones. I bet you could find some that weren't as much, but I'm not as familiar with apartments around there.

Awesome! Definitely message me when you get into town. I would love to hang out!

Wow, thank you guys so much for taking the time to write out long, well-thought out replies to my post. Especially with the lack of a support network at school, it is really helpful to hear advice from fellow grad students. As fuzzylogician mentioned, since the application period is over by this point, it's not really the time for drastic action, but more a time to see if I can have this kind of talk with my advisor and can change things to be the kind of environment I want to work in. I think the idea of a midyear check-in is a really good idea, because as you mentioned, it really isn't a good idea to approach it from the frame of you are doing something wrong. Although, do you think we'll still be able to discuss these issues that I'm worried about? Despite the fact that he's in psychology, my advisor really isn't the most socially perceptive person, and I could definitely see this conversation turning into him just criticizing me. As for his tardiness and late paper-editing, I think the problem is more that he is super busy. One of the reasons I came to work with this advisor was because he publishes a LOT, and for going into academia in social psychology at least (I don't know how it works with other programs), publications are everything. I do realize that I am very lucky in that way, and perhaps compared to those people who's advisors won't let them in on any papers at all, my complaints might seem like not a big deal. But I'm just worried because it seems like he's helped his other students more with publications. I talked with his other graduate students and asked how many papers they worked on their first year. They mentioned that they didn't do a lot of first authoring, but our advisor often sent them methods sections or parts of papers to write so they could be second or third author. They also came in early (over the summer) to work on a book chapter with him. I was a little disappointed to hear this, because I've never been included in being asked to come on to a paper as a second or third author or anything like that. I came early to school as well to work on a paper with him and he basically just told me that he didn't have time to do it then and we would have to postpone it for several months. And now he's just taking a really long time to get back to me with a paper we're working on together, when he is the one who suggested we try to get it submitted by January 1st. Maybe it just sounds like I'm complaining now, but I've often heard that good advisors prioritize their graduate students' work, and it just really feels like my advisor isn't doing that. It seems like he doesn't really care that I'm there besides the fact that I just help him out with running his own studies. Is this typical of advisors or of new advisors (he's been a professor only for 3 years)? As for the social advice, that was really helpful as well. I'm definitely not writing off possibilities of social events. I do spend time with some of my co-workers, but it's usually just in a large group, which can be isolating when it's all couples and then me. I've only ever been invited to hang out with one of them like one on one once, and it was kind of recently. I've sort of felt a little shy about inviting them to do something, because I don't really know the area and I'm new here, but I feel like I'm running out of options there. I definitely have been looking into student groups, though my University is not great about those- they have 0 graduate student groups and not a lot of undergraduate ones either. But I am still trying on that front- there's a couple more clubs that I plan on investigating next semester.

Wow! I have to say, I am pretty surprised to see that Lexington was in here. It doesn't seem like these posts are very new though... Are there any grad students who are currently in Lexington still? I'm having a hard time finding things to do there. I basically have no social life and am desperately trying to find a graduate student group or some kind of organization I can join to meet other graduate students and make friends. Does anyone have any suggestions?

It probably depends on what your post-graduation plans are. I am also in social psychology, currently in my first year of a MA/PhD program. It's great that you know what kind of topic you want to study already. For social psych, the advisor you go with is really important- more so even than the University you attend. This is especially true if you are planning on going into academia. My university had a job opening for a professor for next year, and the most important thing that the school was looking for was the number of publications. It's your advisor, and definitely not the university, that gives you that. As for going for a Master's first, a couple people in my program did that. Basically, they didn't get into the MA/PhD programs they wanted, and so they went to get their masters first and then came back to get a PhD. I wouldn't recommend this, though. It takes up a lot more time and you often don't get funded in just a Master's program. How many schools did you apply to, and do you know if the advisors you applied to work with are taking students next year? If you applied to a bunch (8+ is probably a good number, but I have heard of people who applied to fewer and still got in), I'd say your changes of getting into at least some of them are pretty good.

That is very wise advice. Thank you very much for your response! It was funny, because I woke up this morning thinking that I really was more serious about transferring programs, but I think that reading your post made me re-consider, or at least wait on it. I think that you're probably right- I should try to get more of a social life and talk to my advisor about the problems I've been having before I just up and leave. It's just been really hard for me to figure out the right way of dealing with all of these things because I can't really talk to the other students in my program and feel like I can't really talk to anyone at all. It's been really isolating. But I think at this point, it might just be that my general unhappiness from not having a social life and the general intensity of graduate school is seeping into the rest of my life. I really would like to talk to my advisor about expectations and everything, I'm just not really sure the right way of going about it. For example, he's showed up late to a bunch of meetings with me, keeps postponing editing papers I've written or papers we're co-authoring, never really gives me opportunities to be a second or third author on papers he's writing, and expects me to do everything perfectly but is rather harsh when I make a tiny mistake. I've heard from other graduate students that they've had similar experiences with him. He's also had one of his students change advisors and another drop out entirely. I guess I'm just really afraid to tell him all of this, because first of all I feel like maybe it's not my place to tell him how he should act, and secondly I'd be afraid I'd get really emotional and then he wouldn't take me seriously anymore. Do you have any advice for how I should approach this conversation?

So I am a first year graduate student in a social psychology MA/PhD, fresh out of undergrad. I've been having a variety of problems with graduate school that really just make me feel like I'm in the wrong place. First of all, I haven't really made friends in my program yet and it's already been an entire semester. It's been really difficult, because I was the only new social psych student, and all of the other social psych students are married and several years older than me. It's not that I have a problem with married people, it's just that I feel like I'm at a very different place in my life and while they have people to spend time with on nights and weekends I don't, and it makes me feel really lonely. The person who I stayed with when I interviewed here was really awesome, but he left the program before I got there. There are some other first year psych students, but I didn't have any classes with them last semester and I'm worried that by now they've all gotten a chance to know each other and it will be really hard for me to assimilate. And of course all of this is completely disregarding the fact that I really don't have time to socialize or have hobbies or anything else. I'm also not really sure how much how well I'm getting along with my advisor. Most of the reason I came to this program was because he published a lot and was really an up and coming researcher in some areas of research I was interested in. But so far I feel like it's been even more intense than other advisors and programs would have been. I feel like I'm just constantly doing research and I don't have time for anything else. I have maybe an hour of free time every other night, and that's only if I do less work then I feel I should, and maybe a few hours on the weekends. And he's not the friendliest guy in the world either. I've really had not a lot of help from him or the other grad students as to what I should be doing and how I should be doing it. And my advisor has been kind of mean when I make tiny mistakes, despite the fact that I haven't really had any guidance at all. To top it all off, I don't know if I'm even really interested in the research I'm doing anymore or research at all. I don't know if these doubts are just due to my general unhappiness or if I really should just be doing something else. At this point, I don't know whether or not this is just typical of graduate school or if I should change advisors, programs, or fields entirely. Can anyone give me some advice about this?

Hey grad students! I know it's halfway through the semester, but I only just found this forum. I was wondering if there's anyone here who attends the University of Kentucky? I've found there's not a lot of ways to meet other graduate students there and I've been hoping to find some more to meet! Let me know if anyone else is at UK!