Lisa44201

The "no stipend" part seems almost illegal. How are you being compensated for your time?

Here's mine: During the course of my time as a student of psychology, I have developed a profound interest in the ontological struggle that lies in defining a construct, and the resulting challenges in measuring that construct. Operational definitions are one of the elementary cornerstones of psychological research; and yet, there is still a great amount of uncertainty in the psychology field regarding the very nature of certain constructs. Personally I think catchy hooks are over-rated; perhaps re-frame it in terms of a strong introduction, rather than an attempt to be catchy.

I disagree. This is how I found my POIs; I found myself citing the same group of people repeatedly, and made a list.

I would go with Rochester. Having psych research experience will be a decided plus on grad school apps. The only way I could see Cornell being a better choice is if you were able to take some psych courses over at SUNY Binghamton (@1hr away). I think the double major plus applied research experience will do more for you than the name of Cornell.

You could ask for someone to ride with you if you're transporting someone with a history of violent behavior. But yes, welcome to Social Work! This is one of the realities of the job.

Understand that the workload in grad school is a heck of a lot more than undergrad. You have to prove you can handle the work. At my Master's program, two C's were grounds for dismissal - not probation, dismissal. If you can fix your transcript over the next two years, you might have a shot, but you'd need 4.0's and outstanding GREs, as well as research experience.

Try criticizing NHST, then publishing using a different statistical methodology (and I don't mean Bayes). Or point out that journals with high impact factors sometimes publish crappy studies, so maybe we should be critical of research even if it's published in JSPP. Or arguing that, since we haven't proven that personality constructs are linear, we shouldn't be using linear methods to analyze them. For fun, next time someone shows you the results of a linear regression, ask them to calculate how many people actually fit the predicted model (lots of fun when they have n=600 or so and 0 actually fit the regression), then point out that means the model is inaccurate.

I don't miss much on the 19". It is kinda heavy, though.

That's a great idea in theory, but in practice, many places will still stigmatize the student.

This. I may paraphrase (and cite ) this when I teach next semester.

My husband has a high school diploma. He will finally (finally) graduate from college next month. My education/career path has never been an item of contention between us. With the way my career is unfolding, we're both perfectly happy with me going to school and working a salaried job and him staying home with the kids. The only real issue we've had with me going to grad school is the flak we got from his family when we originally moved for my Master's degree (as in, "But why can't you stay in New York? Doesn't Syracuse have a grad program?" Answer: because I wanted to get the h%*# out of New York, and found POIs that were conveniently a thousand or so miles away). Other than that, there really haven't been any problems.

Do not disclose unless you absolutely have to (i.e., need to take time off).

There are some psychologists who aren't keen on Cartesian modeling, but they are few and far between. Look up some things written by Dr. James Lamiell at Georgetown; Google "statisticism", and read what comes up. I believe you'll enjoy it.

We spend $100 or so per week (family of four people and two large dogs). My husband cooks everything from scratch; we only go out to eat if we're out of town for a conference. He also makes our laundry and dishwasher detergents - saves quite a bit of money.

There are computer forum threads devoted to how difficult it is to find a backpack that will carry the laptop I have. I have to use a backpack; the uneven weight distribution of a messenger bag affects my posture. I have an Everki Beacon backpack. It's got plenty of space, a dedicated laptop compartment, and a water resistant cover. They also have a limited lifetime warranty.

I lived with a few male roommates (I am female) for a few years after graduating high school. There were no wardrobe malfunctions as Gnome Chomsky described, nor was there anything remotely uncomfortable about the situation.

The following is fairly exact. 6AM: Wake up. Shower. 6:20AM: Get husband out of bed. 6:30AM: Get two kids out of bed. 6:35AM: Feed dogs; make coffee; make and pack lunch. 6:45AM: Get younger kid out of bed, again. 6:50AM: Walk dogs. 7:05AM: Leave house (with husband and both kids). 7:15AM: On campus. 5PM: Leave campus. 5:30PM: Eat dinner; family time. 7:30PM: Tuck kids in bed. 8PM: Exercise. 9PM: Relax (knit, crochet, statistics, etc.) 10PM: Bed.

Is ranking that important in your field? Can you get research experience in the meantime? What are your options if you do not get accepted anywhere next year? At the end of the day, it's still a crapshoot; you can improve your odds all you want, but there are no guarantees, whereas you have a spot now. Unless ranking is so crucial in your field that you could not possibly get a job after graduating from that program, I'd take the spot in Stillwater.

Talk to your Ombudsperson. That person will talk to you about how to proceed.

Does your adviser know how sick you were? I'd suggest making an appointment with him/her and being completely honest about your situation. You're going to need your adviser's support to get through the evaluations. I do wish you the best of luck.

My husband and I got married while I was working on my undergrad degree. Five and a half years, two kids, and 1500 miles later, things seem to be working out for us so far! One thing you may notice in grad school is more stable, long-term relationships than in undergrad, including people who start families during this time. One person in my cohort is getting married this summer, and two others had kids during winter break; I think it's about a 50-50 split in this department between single people and people in serious, committed relationships. It takes some extra communication on your part (call if you're going to be in the lab at 11:30PM on a Friday night), and some extra understanding on his part (if you call and say you're in the lab at 11:30PM on a Friday night, he needs to know that's not grad student secret code for barhopping). It's definitely doable, if you both put in the effort. Congrats!

I've got a section on my CV for service activities, because those are important in my field. I don't think I would list non-academic publications - that seems like padding the CV to me.

One of the problems with online training is that at some point you'll need face-to-face supervision hours for things like practica and internships. It's not just the degree, it's the quality of the education you get in the process; online schools are notorious for charging a ton of money for a degree that gets you nowhere, in large part because either the school isn't APA accredited, or the internship isn't APA accredited, or both. Undergrad programs don't need to go through APA accreditation; you could. in theory, get a bachelor's from U of Phoenix, and a MAsters/PhD from Fielding. Whether you are able to pass the EPPP, qualify for licensure, and find a job after that is another matter entirely. I do hate to sound like a jerk, but I would hate for you to spend $100k+ for a degree that's worth about as much as a glorified paperweight.

Personally I think the age gap is a non-issue both ethically and otherwise. Kudos to them if they're happy. However, I do see a conflict of interest as far as grading is concerned; while there may be no University rule that they cannot date, it doesn't look good from an ethics standpoint. I'm guessing the rule about reporting it exists to prevent people from accusing TAs and instructors of grading unfairly. I think it needs to be reported whether you perceive he's unfairly grading her or not; it's very hard to undo the damage to an instructor's reputation once it has been done.

^^^^ THIS. Make sure your research interests line up. Having said that, whether you end up in a city of several million residents, or a small town of 3,000 residents, self-defense classes are a good idea.