mandarin.orange

This is a great point I forgot. After a couple quarters, I got super selective re. classes and wouldn't really take any where I didn't already have a topic in mind that I wanted to research either as part of my dissertation, or one of my secondary research interests.

Get ready for a 10-week flat-out sprint. I was used to teaching on a semester system (high school) where there were natural "lulls," so we had time to take 3 and 4-day weekends on occasion, travel to conferences and out-of-town locales for fun. I could show "Planet Earth" eps to my Earth Science kids, or time to do an easy project or lab after testing. There is no such time in the quarter system. My first term, I planned a 4-day weekend to visit the long-distance BF. I was grading constantly on the plane, during the visit, felt it took me almost 2 weeks to feel some modicum of "caught-up." I also worked all day, every day during Thanksgiving break. Make friends and study groups in your more difficult classes so that you can jigsaw the material and help each other. Spend a good chunk of most weekends working, esp. if you throw conference presentations and travel in the mix. Otherwise I really enjoy having about 3-4 weeks off for the holidays, and starting the academic year end-of-Sept.

I realize this thread has sat for a week or more, but just came across the excellent blog "Tenure She Wrote." Today's post addresses specifically this, including a great section on "Avoiding Toxic Relationships" -- Toxic Academic Mentors

Sorry for the recycle, but I don't want to type all this again, and would encourage you to search and dig around old threads. This is a post I wrote last fall to someone that I think will address your questions, with resources that will certainly clarify things...it was under the thread "" Much of what I wrote then IS targeted to that person's specific SOP (which...is kind of a good example of what NOT to do ). I did make some comments about award-mentioning that may be relevant here. Katherine Sledge's resources (I linked to them) are invaluable to assembling a grad application, esp. in science and STEM. 1200 words is overly long, IMHO.

I just spent all day at my parents' house (oooo cable TV!!) watching episodes of "Scared Straight." But I assisted with a labmate's nastily dirty fieldwork all week. I needed the decompression and don't feel too guilty. Despite being waaaay behind on the summer writing goals I set for myself.

"Coastal aspect of things" is HUGELY broad; it could encompass anything from a field/lab sampling study, ecology/biology, human geography/coastal populations, sea level rise, physical oceanic processes, etc. Also area of study is wide open (e.g. east coast, west coast, rocky shore or wetland, abroad...single site or multiple sites?). I agree, you need in-house guidance on this, tailored to your interests, the expertise of your advisor and committee members, and with appropriate background/courses particularly if RS processing or labwork is required, in order to produce something truly novel.

Don't overthink it. Just do this during the next seminar you attend together:

Agreed. I just found out my teaching pay for next year will be about $2500 less than expected/led to believe/the fellowship I've been on, and am about to do everything I can to raise hell. As diplomatically as possible, of course.

Sounds like vanity publishing! I wonder if this works - if ever a junior prof has paid the fee and published this way, multiple times and perhaps knowingly, to slide an impressive-looking CV by a tenure committee...?

Unblocking the writer is pretty easy; all you need to do is follow this advice:

In case titles such as "Business Journalz" or "Wudpecker Research Journals" were not red flags... OK admittedly I saw those specific ones called out in the CHE thread. What makes them predatory? Is it authors having to pay fees? I kind of expected to see, say, Elsevier journals, based on their for-profit model (and a whole lot of bad press recently) but none of theirs in my specialty are listed. I published in an Elsevier journal and actually found them very professional, lots of support for authors, and top-notch copy editing, but I believe its more of a problem re. what they will charge univ libraries to purchase their journals (often cost-prohibitive for non-R1s). Do these journals actually send spammy/unsolicited emails to grads and researchers, in the same way as shady for-profit conferences? (I've gotten several of the latter.)

Interesting that you mention there is a "culture" among your cohort not to go-get or speak out and ask questions. What do your professors have to say about this in the context of professionalization? What advice is being given to grads on a school-wide level re. career development, the job market, and opportunities? Also, I would point out that your dept's next incoming cohort could introduce a totally different vibe. For my part, I ask questions at colloquium and peer seminars out of interest first and foremost, but I also feel it's good practice for the bravery to ask questions at professional conferences, where it could lead to interesting follow-up conversations. Regarding labs and research groups: it's a unique work environment. Not sure if you're in an actual lab setting, but I find that with largely solitary and rote tasks, my mind will overthink and speculate on what's at hand. More often than not, it wanders to my labmates, because they come and go, their stuff is around (sometimes in the way), and the lab setting is a trigger to think about work and my last interaction with them. I have little distraction besides my samples, some music, and occasional visitors to keep me from obsessing about it. My mind might go there even if the person is not physically present - long absences I start to interpret as a "bad" work ethic and lack of productivity, when this could very well be unfounded. Perhaps some similar "overthinking" is going on, on your end? The fact you're interpreting her compliments as some sort of underlying insecurity on her part seems the best example of this. When I catch myself overthinking, I try to remind myself...I can form an opinion about someone and their motivations, but keep it to myself and maintain an openness to being disproved at any time. If labmates complain to me about other labmates, I try to not feed it but say something positive about the person. Labmates are a bit like siblings - eager to help at times, driving you crazy at other times, you are all competing on some level for your advisor's attention and favor, as well as fellowships and grants. You can't necessarily get away from them, since you're forced to keep sharing the same space and advisor, at least in some capacity. Out-competing and scooping does happen, though more rare when the stakes are really, really high. I feel it's best to err on the side of (cautious) collegiality, and most of my academic advisors have modeled that.

Mine are more retroactive. I quit teaching high school two years ago, but will still have the dream about the "mutinous class" from time to time... I love the relief of waking up and realizing it's not real! But ya, the fact I still have them, and that my subconscious seems to be selectively remembering fears/problem kids more so than the good times, bothers me on some level.

"Scooping" happened to my MS advisor shortly after I left the program, and with a new project he was starting that had potential to disprove one of the perceived "experts" in the field on the same topic. Interestingly, conferences were not really where this played out...my advisor tried to collaborate in good faith, visited a few times to share data, and then this guy did some rapid fieldwork on the down-low and surprise! sudden publication where he did his own debunk of his entire career/research trajectory to that point. Only case where I've really heard of this happening...in my field, many projects require large groups and datasets that I imagine are hard for the lone rogue to steal/penetrate/replicate on their own.

FYI I just saw this thread on reddit today and thought it was informative for anyone who has to fly with pets too large for the cabin. The original thread is about a mishandled musical instrument, but it branched into a long discussion -- with experienced passengers and baggage handlers participating -- about why checking a pet as "cargo" is a better option than in "baggage."

...you sure you're a "graduate student?" I have generally found that the rental market here is pretty immediate. No shortage of apts, but people tend to post their calls for roommates or available places to rent less than a month in advance. This makes it maddening and impossible to arrange something from afar, before summer fieldwork (anticipating a fall move), or well in advance. Westside Rentals is a pay-for service that can help you, and helped us (me + 1 roommate) with our last move. I found their search function, way to contact landlords, quick assessment of walkability of a neighborhood (walk score), much easier to navigate than craigslist. Well worth the $60-70. I doubt you'll receive any advice on GradCafe about specific profs...try looking them up on BruinWalk or ratemyprofessors. Palms is acceptable. Culver City is alright, though you're increasing your bus time to get to campus. West Hollywood (WeHo) isn't the safest, also farther from campus. I'd avoid Westwood Village, too many undergrads. Santa Monica is actually better towards the beach/1st street, but astronomically expensive. If you go Santa Monica, I'd stay north of I-10. Also, the area just south of Wilshire Blvd, between Overland Ave and Beverlywood Blvd, is also affordable and relatively quiet. PM me if you want any more details.

I can do all of that on my iPad. GoodReader is a $5 app that's great for reading .pdfs, esp. for seminar classes, and you can highlight, use a draw function, and sync to DropBox easily. I haven't used my device for notetaking but no doubt there are apps and styluses (styli?) you can get for those. BTW, I initially I read your subject heading thought you wanted something for the field and mapping.

There are indeed some back-posts on this, at least ones I know I've participated in. I like to link to a prof's blog for this, b/c I think she breaks down the faculty perspective quite well, so you'll see that. went in the direction of disciplinary differences -- in some fields, identifying an advisor is an essential part of the process, for others, the convention is just to admit students based on overall academic record and these emails are seen as rather bothersome. Making contact pre-admission is beneficial and expected in my field, so the latter was news to me! It's summer, so you may not get much response. Try end-of-summer/fall for best timing.

So part of my "OMG don't take this personally" post up-thread is that I use "Best" all. the. time. I must've been using it consistently on my weekly email to the lab undergrads, 'cause I just got a reply back from a sophomore about scheduling... She signed it "Best." I like to think I've made an impact... MUAHAHAHA... Best, mandarin.orange

If "Best" bothers the OP, I can only imagine how s/he will react to those emails where profs don't even sign anything at all, just let their email signature (i.e. dump of contact info) do the work. Or the unsigned ones I get that simply say, "Sent from my iPhone/iPad/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA." Profs, and academics, are busy people with unwieldy Inboxes. My inbox is unwieldy. And many people don't even communicate well over email, or tend to spit back non-capitalized sentence fragments in the interest of being speedy, rather than eloquent. My primary collaborator is like this, and I find the occasional 30-min phone call is often better for us to hash out serious ideas. Unless a signature blatantly states "Up Yours," I recommend: read absolutely nothing into it and take nothing personally.

I used USPS for about 20 medium-large boxes, and it cost me about $450. I had an inventory for each box and insured every one. About 4-5 of those were media mail for my books. I had no problems whatsoever with their transit from NC to my family's home in CA; I like to think that the purchase of insurance, plus showing up at the counter super-organized, ensured that they took care of my packages.

You may not be able to gauge that 100% to your satisfaction until you visit the school. "Happiness" is a hard-to-measure factor, and totally subject to change, depending on whatever dynamics the incoming cohort possesses that you can't plan or anticipate. I'm very happy at my institution, as well as several of my peers. It's the most collegial environment I've ever worked in. But yesterday (based on an interaction I had for one of my service commitments) I realized that certain people here genuinely aren't, for whatever reason. I think it's more a case that whereever you go, there are bound to be those people that never seem happy, and assume the worst of everyone and everything. So I try to be respectful and kind, but limit my interactions with them.

The only frown-upon I can envision in this scenario is taking a course way outside your field for a letter grade. Greater potential to get bogged down with doing course assignments that really will take time away from your primary courseload and field of study, and may look like a bizarre aberration on your transcript, like you are unfocused. Art history and studio art don't strike me as hugely unrelated at all...in my MS I do remember one incoming student who was super-excited to enroll in a series of Russian courses, and it didn't have anything to do with her research, field area or even personal travel goals, ancestry, etc. that we could discern. Largely it just seemed a lark and an immature hanging-on to a "take ALL the things" liberal arts education mentality. Take pass/fail, or audit, or see if these are offered through the student union, recreation center, or extension classes. Art and pottery are offered as recreational courses on my campus...you pay a $30-75 fee for the materials/instruction, its non-transcript, and meets 2-4 hours a week. Rec courses here are mostly fitness activities, but also range to art classes and writing (creative and academic). I've taken ballet, lap swim, and yoga. Next year I want to do more spin class. Instructors can def. put you in touch with resources or a community of like-minded individuals.