mandarin.orange

days inn

Man, I keep coming back to this thread like a bad addiction. Came across this on the interwebs today, and felt it was appropriate:

Hey, they're closed-toe! Sounds like lab-approved wear to me.

amclayton, I noticed this same trend last year, posed the question, and got some great responses: Reply #3 links back to an even more extended thread where many peeps attest to loving grad school, and feel it's really the place for them right now. For my part (I'm in my first year), I am in the midst of finals this week at present; the number of MAJOR projects, papers, pres'ns etc. due is dizzying and relentless. However, I made the choice to overload on courses this term, so I know it's largely my own doing, and I still feel this was an excellent move on all levels.

Bumping from last year. I still love the baby, but the awesomeness of Bonkers' "I reject your rejection" letter far surpasses that and needs to be shared with the world. Perhaps some of this year's hopefuls could use it as a template, or at the very least, garner some solace and a giggle from it. I forwarded it a couple times to my friends among the unemployed from last year.

Good to know! I'll have to remember this next time I'm with the family. We had looked for it last summer, when Netflix pricing/shipping/stock/everything was kind of a brouhaha.

I used USPS to move about 20 boxes last spring, and 4-5 of those were media mail. I insured every single one. The total cost was about $450, going east to west coast (about 2500 mi) and they all arrived intact. At the time, I determined that their rate was best. However, if I were you, I'd shop around again, with recent changes to the USPS - rates are set to increase while their services (e.g. speed of delivery, number of POs and shipping locations) decline. POD did not deliver to my address at the time, and I didn't have enough stuff to fill one.

I respectfully disagree. Unless you find a plum of a job at a private school with excellent resources and room for electives in the course offerings. Otherwise, your curriculum has to conform to state standards. Often you need to plan and co-ordinate curriculum and common exams with other teachers (and thus, often-maddening groupthink and teamwork). And you can't leave the kids for a bathroom run. Scheduled pee-breaks don't really suggest "autonomy" to me... I agree with the poster that mentioned pharma sales.

That is my favorite and I even used it as my profile pic for awhile. Scrooge McDuck, the postdoc rolling in $$, and the baby reaching for the beer are pretty good too.

Yes, it happens, and I can empathize as there were some in my MS cohort my 2nd-3rd year with that sort of a toxicity, though it swung the other way with them being not very productive at all. I described it a little in last spring (see post #7). Often these dynamics pass as new students and cohorts come in, and people drop out/graduate. Negative nellies are in all walks of life; some of the worst offenders I've seen were my fellow teachers in the high school where I worked or met at summer workshops. At least you have the support of your friends and family "outside" your academic life, and it sounds like there are at least a few others in your program who are likeminded!

Yes. Decide on a target journal for you manuscript, then go to their webpage and read, carefully, the guidelines for authors about the submission process. If there's an abstract volume for the conference, you can list your presentation as a "publication" there on your CV. But, it doesn't carry the same "weight" as peer-reviewed, published articles.

I think that's exaggerated. $800-1000 is definitely doable with roommates. $1200 will net a studio on Venice Blvd, Sepulveda, etc....they are not bad. But, we still don't know the OP's campus in question. Again, until you can visit, do the legwork online to read up on neighborhoods and get a feel for prices. A student lifestyle on 23K/year is totally reasonable.

...really? LA: year-round sun and proximity to beaches Buffalo: lake effect snow No contest, IMO.

Funny! My favorite version of this, however, is one made at the time of the iPad release where he discovers its not really a full Mac OS platform and rants about its limitations. I sent it to a tech-savvy friend who replied, "I never thought in my life I'd say this...but I agree with Hitler." The director of the original has even commented that he finds its presence as an internet meme hilarious. I really want to see the original, esp. with my Dad, who likes historical war films. Alas, Netflix doesn't offer it as a stream.

I recommend you search the "City Guide" on these fora. You don't mention which school; there are separate threads for USC, UCLA, Pasadena, and (I think) Long Beach. Cooking will save you funds, but the big money-savers are 1) sharing a place with roommate(s), and 2) utilizing public transport and not having a car. Start checking out craigslist ads just to get a sense of geography and market price. Then frame a budget. This is generally a good idea, no matter what the city. You'll hear plenty of alarmist "the cost of EVERYTHING in California is SOO HIGH!" Don't believe it - if you take advantage of student discounts, amenities at your university, and shop around, you'll find plenty of goods/services at prices comparable to the rest of the US. But California rent and car expenses are non-negotiables. Congrats on your admit!

This is a good thing! You'll see firsthand the lifestyle of grads within the dept, and have many opportunities to speak very candidly about what the dept's really like. Unless you do something WAY out of line, they are not evaluating you in the least.

I wish you the best. Teaching in this country has such a dismal outlook now; it was a job I loved 3-4 years ago, but budget cuts, pay freezes, admin demands, and the constant pressure to do more with ever-decreasing resources...totally soured me on it. Hopefully, then, whoever is evaluating will have some sense of how sensitive it can be, and have a reasonable threshold. Hopefully they will look into why it's returning a certain value, which is an easy click or two of the mouse. (An example of what the reports look like.) You can also dial down it's sensitivity level and have it not pick up 3-4 word strings. In the LA Times article, it mentioned that adcoms for Stanford didn't worry about a certain threshold, just because of the high likelihood that people will use common expressions, quotes and platitudes in their essays for undergrad admissions.

The extended keyboard solo alone is worth it!

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Thanks for the link! It led me to the original LA Times article, which I thought was better. Turnitin is a fantastic piece of software; I used it last year while teaching high school, and required students to submit work via the website. It changed my LIFE. For students, just the knowledge that they were submitting to a site that scanned electronically for plagiarism curbed most of it. I'm amazed that UCLA Anderson STILL had 12 blatant cases - those applicants are numbskulls! In this article, though, they mention a result of 10% setting off alarm bells. It is really, really easy for the software to get false positives. Occasionally I'd have kids hitting as much as 40%, access the results to see why, and find nothing damning. I will add that annotated bibliographies and lab reports were my recurring assignments, the nature of which lends itself to an acceptable level of *some* duplication. For the bibs, students' citations were often duplicated somewhere on the web, and turnitin recognizes that as 3 lines of identical writing. And, in a "Methods" section for a lab report, there are only so many ways for a 9th grader to write up a simple, standard lab procedure.

Upon leaving my HS classroom, I was ecstatic that I would never again have to answer this age-old, timeless, never-ending question.

Brilliant! Although, I think the guy typing on his laptop while uttering hackneyed academic jargon missed a word.

I think a better sense of this will come from visiting the campus, and asking current grads about the courses they TA. Much more time-efficient, and a better reflection of reality, than old college guides. I echo more recent posts. Perhaps your questions are worthwhile just for curiosity's sake, but hopefully many, many other more significant factors will play into your decision than undergrad population.

The most challenging part of the process for me was the sudden implosion of my personal life, with things that were largely out of my control and strangely coincident with the very tight timeframe in which my apps were due. I am a goal setter and had been preparing for a return to grad school for 2 years, and lined up great and reliable LOR writers. But, no matter how carefully you plan for the app process - or anything in life - far more significant things can blindside you. My apps were due Dec 15-31. During that time same time, the following happened: 1) I had to move very suddenly out of a crazy situation with roommates and absentee landlord, 2) one of my best friends had a stroke, and 3) death of one of my students. During all this, finals week and the needs of my HS students, as well as reviews/revisions I'd gotten back for a manuscript, had to take a permanent backseat. The app process was challenging, notably taking the GRE on short notice and writing the "Personal History Statement" required by the UC system. But, it all paled in comparison to the literal shitstorm taking place around me at the time. I'm grateful everyday that, somehow, I managed to laser-beam focus on the app that mattered and got me to where I am now.