Nurse Wretched

It's supposed to be in the 40s-50s next week, but anything is possible. It's wet, because the snow is melting, so wear good shoes.

If you got AppleCare, they will figure it out. I've had incredible customer service from Apple, and am surprised that you have a crashy Mac. Did you install all the various updates? Also, if you're running Parallels, don't blame Apple for the crashes.

Boundaries are good things to have. While feeling close to people you spend a lot of time with is normal, choosing a grad school is making a life and career decision. It's not personal. It's business.

Washtenaw is slow only from a Midwest perspective.

Okay, so let's look at the situation: There is a governor who is clearly the world's biggest schmuck. He has stripped union organizing rights from public employees in an end run that probably violates several laws, including the Open Meetings law, and is unlikely to survive court scrutiny. GSIs at Wisconsin are public employees. However, there are many, many schools that do not have unionized GSIs, including most private and public universities. The union organizing rights are what have been stripped. Don't get me wrong: Scott Walker is an appalling waste of space who is waging war on the working class in an attempt to make Obama's re-election campaign more difficult. But in terms of what effect it will have on the average grad student -- unlikely to be enormous. Talk to public school teachers and nurses at public hospitals if you want to know who it's really going to hit.

Frita Batidos, on Liberty. Amazing food, nice people, large portions (we usually split a beef frita and plantains) and it'll run you $10-15, less if you share with a friend. Madras Masala on Maynard has an incredible lunch buffet for around $10 NYPD on the corner of William and Maynard has good pizza. If you're in central campus, there are a million restaurants on State, or on the side streets running off it. Overrated: Gratzi Real Seafood Palio Prickly Pear Sava's (on State next to Lane Hall)

One thing to consider about Ypsi is that it's very important where you buy -- a lot of the houses are very hard to sell, even nice ones, because the two school districts are not very good. That said, you can get some very sweet deals. I paid less than $140K for a house that would easily have cost me over $250K in Ann Arbor, and our neighborhood is wonderful.

The percentage can be much lower. I own a house and have two children, and file as head of household. Between these deductions, my effective tax rate was 0% last year. That said, I did still pay Social Security and Medicare tax, but it was still around 3% of my gross salary.

Meh. Windows 7 seems like a second-rate copycat of Leopard, to be honest. I use it at work.

Macs are worth every damn penny and more. They're stable, they're fast and my time is worth more than crappy Microsoft software. I use a PC at work and hate it. There is a new Mac Pro model coming out, so our campus computer store has heavily discounted the old MacBook Pros. I think I'll get one, since the price is essentially the same as the new MacBook. The MacBook is enough for almost any humanities/social sciences needs; I have no idea about hard sciences or engineering. It's worth it (and very easy) to max out your RAM yourself (buy it online and pop it in;it takes two minutes in a MacBook) and you can also install a larger hard drive easily. I found it much less expensive to do that myself than to customize a MacBook from the start. I've had Mac laptops since 2004 (iBook and then MacBook). I'm fairly computer-literate, I grew up using MS products, and I will never go back. The extra cost initially is so, so worth it.

In response to the OP, this varies from school to school. Many will take out taxes (and student employment is exempt from FICA), others don't. In almost every case though, your stipend is given as a gross, not net, amount. Michigan does not automatically take out taxes, for example, so most people I know make quarterly estimated tax payments.

No. For a normal job, you choose the amount of withholding from your check based on the number of exemptions you anticipate. At the end of the year, you either withheld too much (yay! Tax refund!), too little (boo! Pay tax!) or just right (mystical state I have never achieved in 19 years of filing taxes). The tax code is horrifically complicated, and while there is a small tax credit for postsecondary education, it's really minimal. If you have more than one job or if you have kids or a house, it gets complicated fast. Most students, though, will probably qualify to take the standard deduction instead of itemizing.

The state regulations don't matter as much as the school. U-M is subject to the same restrictions as MSU, and I have never felt anything but welcomed, recognized and protected. No, there are no state protections, and coming from Washington that was a hard thing to get used to. (Though Michigan has been far more LGBT-friendly than the University of Washington was.) Michigan's laws suck for LGBT people (really suck, as in don't allow second-parent adoption, don't recognize sexual orientation as a protected class), but U-M covers DP and children of DP, by calling them "Other Qualified Adults". I know a lot of queer women in Lansing/East Lansing, and for the most part they're happy there and don't want to leave. That said, I live in A2/Ypsi, so that is secondhand.

Asian groceries are available in vast quantity and variety at a store on Washtenaw, just west of Ypsi. I've not been impressed by the Asian restaurants in A2, but I grew up in Seattle, with a huge International District (primarily Vietnamese and Korean) and readily-available, high-quality Japanese and Korean hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I haven't found good Thai here, though people seem to like Marnee and Siam Square. Hiller's is a good grocery store, Michigan-owned. Their produce is excellent and I'd go to them over Whole Foods any day. There's a Hiller's on Washtenaw, at Arborland, maybe a 15 minute bus ride to central campus.

<shrug> They specialize in cats, just as human doctors can specialize in OB or internal medicine or pediatrics. I suppose they could take care of dogs, but they don't, just as a cardiologist could catch a baby, but doesn't. One of our cats died in January and they made a donation in his name to MSU's vet school. We love them.

The bus system is okay -- it doesn't run late at night and can be crowded at rush hour -- but housing will absolutely be cheaper outside of central campus and even cheaper outside of A2. You trade convenience for cost, like anywhere. We live in Ypsi, have commuted to A2 for years, and it's fine.

That rule is to protect you. It can be done anytime before you sign the lease. So you can do the inspection the day you move in, if you want. The idea is that you won't be charged for damage that existed before you moved in. A lot of people run year round here. Layers are the key, and good, non-slippery shoes.

Cats or dogs? The Ann Arbor Cat Clinic on Packard is awesome and takes really good care of our cats. Dogs, I got nothin' for you.

Realistically, academia is a small world. I found that out when I walked into my interview and my interviewer was good friends with the chair of my masters committee, 2500 miles away. I know I'm not staying in Small College Town. But I'm fine with that, because your advisor has friends. Your committee has friends. People move around in academia, they go to conferences, and often only a superficial connection is enough for people to move some amazingly large mountains for you. Many universities are reluctant to hire their grads as faculty. Also, I had lived my entire life in Large West Coast City. It was so helpful personally and professionally to leave my comfort zone and force myself to realize, yet again, that there is more than one way to do everything.

Agreed on all of the above. Also, wash your car frequently in the winter. I have a front wheel drive station wagon and only get stuck when I'm lazy after I get plowed in at the foot of the driveway.

Connections to business make the comment even more suspect, because continuing to comment on what one "likes" in women will eventually end up in harassment investigations for a hostile work environment. Backpedaling doesn't change the original objectification and gender-based norm enforcement, concealed as "professionalism".

Makeup on women in this culture, for example, is designed to increase the appearance of youth and sexual availability or arousal. So why is that presenting them the way they want to be perceived? Maybe the purpose is not to be decorative but to, you know, learn.

Because women attend grad school for your visual entertainment?

I'm officially old. In the pictures of my birth, my sister is wearing those. I stick to the rule that if you were old enough to wear them the first time, you can't wear them when they come back in style.

So, you know how west coast kids do earthquake drills? Well, kids here do tornado drills. It's really not a big deal, though I about s*** my pants when my kid came home and said LOOK WHAT WE LEARNED TODAY! I also used to worry about frostbite and losing digits. But it's such a good school, and Ann Arbor is beautiful, and there's so much going on for a town its size, that I got through the reflexive west coast fear of OMG I'M MOVING TO A PLACE WHERE THE SNOW IS HIGHER THAN MY HEAD. Because you're really not. Buy a coat and some gloves, and a pair of good waterproof shoes, and you're all good. I promise. We still have 80 digits among the four of us.