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Everything posted by ZeChocMoose
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Where does your funding come from? Your PI or your department? If it is from your PI - my guess it would be challenging to dismiss a project outright and try to do something else especially if this project is grant funded and the grant is paying your stipend and tuition expenses. What you could do is to work on the current project and start a side project. This assumes that you could find time to do a side project and you might need your PI's approval if you are using lab resources. That being said - I think you are in your first semester, right? I guess I would let this play out some more and see how I am feeling about the project and my relationship with my PI after the first year. By then you will have a better understanding of the project and its strengths and weaknesses. You also will have a stronger relationship with your PI and know how best to advocate for starting your own project (if you decide that's the best way forward). Or you could spend time this year on grant writing to start your own project.
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1. The fact that she is the director may complicate things. My guess is you can't be the first person who has switched away from her since you mentioned emotional abuse. Can you find older PhD students or alumni who have done this successfully? They would be the best people to talk to because they are going to know/understand local dynamics far more than we can on this board and hopefully share with you what worked/didn't work in their situation. They also may know other people that you can talk to. 2. Does this professor have tenure? If they don't, be prepared that they may say no because they don't want to get into a bad situation with the program director who is going to vote on their tenure case and also could sway other members of the department to vote against them. I think it is a plus that they are on your thesis committee. Can you tweak your thesis enough that it makes sense for new professor rather than old professor to be the chair? Sometimes this is the more diplomatic solution when your current chair is not working out. Perhaps new professor knows more about x, y, z content area or does x, y, z methods - and you have realized this is the direction you want to head in so it makes more sense for new professor to chair your thesis now. I would personally see whether new professor would be willing to serve as a chair before I would discuss with old professor that I am switching since you said that you don't think that you can resolve your issues with your current chair. I agree with @Sigaba though that you want to ask new professor enough questions about their working style, expectations, timeline to see whether it meshes with yours so you don't wind up with a new set of issues in a couple of months.
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As Usmivka mentioned - the question is not about whether the person can get the PhD. I definitely think they can and there are always posters each year who talk about going back at older ages than the typical PhD student. This question is what does the academic job market look like when the person is in their mid 40's to early 50's as either a recently minted PhD or postdoc. This seems even more tricky in science fields where the norm is to go straight through from undergrad to PhD and then do multiple postdocs. There doesn't seem to be as much anecdotal evidence that these candidates are successful or at least those same posters don't come back to talk about how it was on the academic job market. I don't know if they decided not to go the academic route sometime during the PhD, don't finish, or just are not interested in participating in the Grad Cafe. I would definitely recommend for the OP to have some financial plan Bs and to explore jobs that can get with a master's in geology.
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I agree with Sigaba - do not do this through email! Instead, ask to meet with the professor who you want to be your new chair to talk about your dissertation. Also - have you tried to have a conversation with your current chair to resolve your issues? I can't tell based on your post whether you could reach a compromise or not. And how far along are you? Switching when you are one semester into your dissertation is very different from switching when you are almost finished with your dissertation.
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opportunity cost / should I even apply? / School's PhD prestige
ZeChocMoose replied to raio's topic in Decisions, Decisions
I did a three paper dissertation. I would not use your master's papers in your three paper dissertation. You grow a lot as a researcher during your PhD and you want your dissertation to reflect the work that you can currently do. There is no point in getting a PhD quickly if you are not going to be competitive for the jobs that you want when you graduate. And securing a postdoc in my experience are all about the connections your faculty have with other faculty in other places. Do your current faculty have connections at these prestigious places? If you really want an academic career - I would do your PhD at the place that has the best connections, resources, and productivity of the type of research that you want to do. -
My two cents would be that there is really no point in doing a postdoc if you are not interested in a TT position. The pay is lower than what you would get at a non-academic research position and how the experience is viewed by industry really varies wildly from my experience. Also as a postdoc, you would wind up doing a lot of the things you don't like: trying to quickly publish, apply for grants, and be embedded into the academic culture of the department, etc. You might not have much student contact though - I guess that would depend on how the postdoc is set up.
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Is an Ivy League degree a "golden ticket" career-wise?
ZeChocMoose replied to MettaSutta's topic in Jobs
Did you face disciplinary action by your state bar? If you go the MSW route - I assume you'll want to get licensed, and they require that applicants have good "moral character." In NY - at least - they ask whether you have had, "any criminal arrests or convictions or disciplinary action in another licensed profession." -
I am not in your field - but I would apply to any program where there were at least 2 faculty members that I was interested in working with, had full funding for at least 4+ years, had a good to great placement in the type of jobs that I wanted after graduation, and was located in an area that I wanted to live or at least was neutral about living. I also talked to faculty and students before I applied to get a better sense of the program because I found that program websites can be really outdated and those conversations also helped me to narrow down my list of programs. I think I started with 8-9 programs that I was initially interested in and ended up applying to 3 programs. I received two great offers and I chose between them. Noone is really going to be able to answer this because it depends on the overall pool of applicants and which professors are taking advisees. None of those things that we know. And having sat on two admissions committees - sometimes admission decisions are more random than we would like to think especially when you have more qualified people than slots. I will say that in Education PhD admissions, professional/research experience, SOP, program fit, and letters of recommendations tended to be way more important than the GRE or GPA though - at least at the two schools where I was part of the admissions committee.
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Is an Ivy League degree a "golden ticket" career-wise?
ZeChocMoose replied to MettaSutta's topic in Jobs
In my field, the Ivy League master's program are only 1 year so typically those students hadn't learned enough statistics, research, data analysis to get an entry level job in education research. It seems like they would do okay in the less technical entry level jobs. I would be more concerned that you are getting the right experience and training through internships/assistantships than the prestige of your degree though... -
In my experience - tenure track faculty get relocation budgets (and usually start up funding). The relocation budget can be a flat fee or some percentage of your salary. If you end up with a non-tenure track faculty position - I think whether you get a relocation budget varies widely. If your monthly budget can afford it - I would put away some money into savings. It is also expensive to be on the job market because typically you'll need at least a new interview suit and may need to pay for a portion of your travel to interviews (or at least front the costs until you get reimbursed.)
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I know people who have done this in education PhD programs. It usually takes them a lot longer, but they don't have plans to go into academia after they finish. Rather they stay in administration and earning the PhD gives them a promotion/pay raise. I should also say that some of them don't finish because work obligations get in the way and/or they lose interest/motivation especially at the ABD phase. I won't actively plan on doing this. Some people are forced into this because their funding runs out. If I was going to do this - I would chose a full-time job where there is more flexibility to spend mornings working on the dissertation and then afternoons at the job or vice versa. Usually the people that I know who are ABD and are working full-time have negotiated with their boss so that they can work on their dissertation during work hours. I don't see how this would be possible as a high school teacher though so I think burn out could be a real possibility.
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One of the perks of working in higher ed admin and doing the PhD part-time is getting the degree paid for! So this is really unfortunate that your university doesn't cover tuition remission for doctoral studies. I would try to negotiate with your boss about having your department/unit cover at least some of the costs. I also would ask around to your colleagues what other people have done in your place. I would be surprised if people took out loans to cover everything - that seems like a bad financial decision especially if you are not going to get a significant boost in pay. I also think doing a part-time doctoral degree in 4 years is not realistic unless it is an EdD... the median time to degree of the part-time higher ed PhD students that I know is around 8-10 years. People tend to really slow down once courses and comps are done as work responsibilities become more pressing and dissertation deadlines seem easier to push back. Where are you getting the $60-100K cost estimate? Is that at private universities? I would look at public universities - CUNY Graduate Center (https://www.gc.cuny.edu/home) seems to have reasonably priced tuition ($545 per credit for 2018-19 rates for part-time PhD students so around $6500 per year assuming 6 credits per semester. The fees look like they around $100-200 per semester.). They don't have a higher ed PhD but they have an urban education PhD that perhaps could work.
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While I agree somewhat, selecting the CSU and UC schools as what is typical of faculty salaries is not a good representative case given that California tends to have a higher cost of living in most places than the rest of the US. I suggest for the OP to look at faculty salaries at public universities in several different states to get a better sense of what the range will be for ass't professors. Usmivka has nailed it with the timeline issues which I think is the real problem. And is it only reasonable to do one postdoc in geology? Most of the science postdocs that I know are on their second or third postdoc before they even consider going on the academic job market. I would also look into what the industry options are for master's degree recipients in geology - that might be a better compromise.
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Anyone dealing with a move AFTER starting classes?
ZeChocMoose replied to writingmachine's topic in Officially Grads
I had this happen to me when I was a master's student. I found a roommate via Craigslist, moved in at the beginning of August, and moved out at the end of the month because I just could not see living with this person for a year for all sorts of reasons. I ended up on a friend's couch at the start of my first semester - a good 1.5-2 hr commute away from my university. I finally found a new apartment and roommate after searching for a bit and moved to my new place at the end of September (about 3-4 weeks into the semester). The two moves and searching for housing was a huge time suck on top of starting grad school and getting to know a new city. It definitely was not fun, but I made it work because I had to. The good news is if you have to move during the semester - moving at the beginning is better because there tends to be less assignments due in class. For the reading - I suggest skimming them - or- reading enough of the articles so you can talk intelligently about it in class for the week of the move/week after the move. Also once you move, you can take as much time as you need to get yourself unpacked and situated. -
The Chronicle of Higher Ed (http://www.chronicle.com) tracks faculty salary data. If you go here: https://data.chronicle.com/ you can explore the data by specific colleges, sector, Carnegie classification, etc. Although, the salary discipline data is not as robust - but it tells you how many people have submitted their info.
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Second thoughts and cold feet
ZeChocMoose replied to bzzzzzzz's topic in Speech-Language Pathology Forum
If you are having this many doubts, can you see if you can defer for the year and work full-time? Given your debt loads, I would hesitate to take on more loans for a career that you are not sold on yet. And honestly, grad school is always going to be there. If you decide in your year off that you really do want to go then you can reapply if they don't let you to defer. I have seen a good number of people enter graduate programs that they either never finish or finish - but don't want the attached career - and it's a very difficult road for them mostly because of their student loan debt that tends to curtail their choices. My advice is to be at least 80-85% sure that you want this career before going back for the degree. -
I would suggest doing a literature review search which is going to give you a more comprehensive answer of research and scholars in this area. Some places to initially look: ERIC (https://eric.ed.gov/), Education Abstracts (https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/education-abstracts), and Google Scholar. If you are currently a student or affiliated with a university, ask your librarian for help with search terms and additional databases to search in.
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Since you are only a year in, I probably would apply to other PhD programs to see what my options are so I can make a more informed decision on whether to stay (and transfer to another advisor) or whether to master out and go elsewhere. The good news is you have your own funding so hopefully that will make you more attractive to new programs. You do need to get a recommendation from someone in your current department for applications and I am not sure if I would recommend your current PI given what you wrote. Is there someone else you could ask? (I have seen a handful of PhD students not get the degree due to a really dysfunctional dynamic between the student and advisor. When it is not working and the student is fairly early in the program, I usually always advise to switch to someone else within the same school or to start over and enroll in another school. Do be aware if you go somewhere else, you may have to start all over again at year 1.)
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I am not sure what "this" is - but I just going to say that in order to teach X at a college or university, you usually need to have a terminal degree in X even as an adjunct. Sure there are some exceptions to this rule as community colleges can allow people to teach with only 18 graduate level credits or so in X -or- if there is an emergency situation or if you are well known to the department, the university may allowed someone with only a master's degree in X to teach, etc. I restate though that you should look at actual job postings to see what qualifications and experience that you need.
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It is unusual for grad student TAs to be the instructor of record for a class. I know of a couple cases where it has happened - but I wouldn't say it was common. Usually, grad student TAs teach a discussion section or a lab and are supervised by the instructor of record. What is happening and has been happening for decades is that undergraduate students and some graduate students are increasingly been taught by adjuncts, which are non-tenured track members of the faculty who hold terminal degrees (usually PhDs). These positions vary widely in expectations, benefits, and pay, but usually they are teaching only positions with higher teaching loads than the tenured/tenure track faculty in the same department. Some adjuncts are part-time, have no benefits, are paid a couple thousands dollars per class, and are on either semester-to-semester contracts or year-to-year contracts. Other adjuncts may have it a little bit better with multiple year contracts and have full-time pay for a more reasonable teaching load, but often they have lower salaries and limited benefits compared to T/TT members. Part of the reason why it is becoming difficult for new PhDs to secure TT positions is because as tenured members retire from/leave the department, they are being replaced by adjuncts not tenured lines. If you are interested in learning more about this, I would look into the adjunctification of higher education. This is not my research area, but a bunch of people in my field are looking into the causes and consequences of this.
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How Often Do Grad Students Get Paid?
ZeChocMoose replied to Carly Rae Jepsen's topic in Officially Grads
When I was on a fellowship - I got a lump sum every semester which the school didn't withhold taxes. Since it was only two semesters, split over two tax years - thankfully I didn't get assessed a tax penalty when I filed for not estimating my taxes and paying them quarterly. If I had two semesters under the same tax year, I definitely would have had to pay a tax penalty. When I was a RA which was for the majority of the time, I was paid monthly during the fall and spring semesters and I was paid every two weeks over the summer. (I also could get paid for more than 20 hrs in the summer if I chose to work that much.) -
It stands for one of the Carnegie classifications for colleges and universities. R1 = Research I University. It has the highest research activity of all the universities. Usually the expectation is for tenure track/tenured faculty to spend more of their time on research than teaching and they have lower teaching loads because of it.
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B.A. in English for Student Affairs Grad Programs?
ZeChocMoose replied to GoneWilde's topic in Education Forums
Yes, you will be just fine. Even at the doctoral level in Higher Ed/Student Affairs, it is not assumed that students would have already taken stats, data analysis, or research design. Usually, there is an intro class (or classes) that starts off very basic and gets you up to speed either by the end of the course or the end of the sequence of courses. If it helps, I teach the intro stats course for graduate students in higher ed for my dept and I assume that students have either little or no prior knowledge. All the other faculty that I have talked to who also teach a course like this for their higher ed/student affairs program have said that they assume no prior knowledge as well. -
@ExponentialDecay After I posted, I poked around a bit for positions listed on higheredjobs and I saw that the JSD came up a couple times especially for TT positions at R1s. I had never heard of it so I am glad that you mentioned it. It is super fascinating to me because I wondered how law professors were trained to do research given that the JD is so practice based and that some of the TT job descriptions sounded very social sciencey in terms of research expectations so it all makes sense to me now.