psycholinguist

My two cents on leggings:

If they're worn under a skirt or a dress, they look fashionable and nice. If they're worn simply as pants, they look tacky.

Examples of fashionably-worn leggings:



Example of tackily-worn leggings:

if you get into Rice's PhD program with funding (that is better than the NC State Master's funding), the choice should be very easy... if you get into a PhD program but without funding, or poor funding, it could be better to get a Master's, and then re-apply to PhD programs so that you get into one that is better and covers your expenses.

Hi everyone,

I've been having a bit of trouble tracking down where to post questions about the UW-Madison Applied Linguistics MA. It's in the English department (or at least, the one I applied to is in the English department) but no one on the Lit, Rhet, Comp boards seems to have applied to it. I've seen it mentioned a few times in various threads here in Linguistics, but I thought I might try to centralize some thoughts on the program here.

Has anyone heard back about the MA yet? I've seen lots of English PhDs on the results survey, but not much from linguistics.

Is anyone here in the program already? What's your impression of being in a Linguistics program in the English department?

Any other thoughts?

...Bueller?

So, in a futile attempt to get my mind off of the fact that I have not heard from ANY OTHER SCHOOL, I decided to start this topic. Feel free to chime in!

What has been the NERDIEST linguistic moment you've caught yourself in?

I would have to say that a top one for me is when I was teaching my 9th/10th graders grammar (English lit teacher), and one student asked whether the word "apple" in "apple pie" would be considered an adjective... to which I went off on a syntactic rant and drew trees all over the classroom! LOL

That, or when I began transcribing different words and explaining phonetics to prove to my honors students that "the thought" is NOT alliteration.

That, and having discussions with every friend that has a baby (wow, your baby is HOW OLD and is already producing interdentals?), or correcting my friends that complain about Spanglish being "bad Spanish"... yeah.

I'm curious to hear yours!

Me and my friends found some and made lots of new ones, so here you go:

This:

Honestly? I can understand the arguments on both sides, but I have to agree with cocorosie here.

Two years ago I applied to a bunch of programs; I got a few interviews and acceptances, but funding problems and department politics and all sorts of things intervened in every single case except for one...my last choice. I was not especially encouraged by this, but I figured some grad-school was better than none, right?

Not necessarily right, actually. I went, and while I wasn't miserable, right away I wasn't at all happy either. They gave me nearly nothing to do, and what I did have to do was not of interest to me; there were several personality-clashes with department-members; I didn't like the town much; and the only place to live I'd been able to find had been an expensive apartment in the middle of nowhere, forcing me to rely on a terrible transit-system. I got restless and bored and - for the first time in my adult life - homesick. It was not worth it. Come December, I cut it short and quit the program, returned to my hometown and moved back in with my parents, and took up a menial office-job. I actually liked the menial office-job a heck of a lot more than the graduate-department that simply was not a good place for me personally. Reapplied to grad-schools (including my dream program) with a much better SOP and some more up-to-date statistics.

Third choice accepted me, second choice rejected me, and at the first choice, I was...

...waitlisted...

...accepted!

Now, of course I was hugely thrilled by this second chance at my favourite program; and it turned out that I'd had exactly the right idea. I absolutely love it here. Research is immensely exciting, classes are neat, classmates are awesome, supervisor is truly special, and the city is great. Anyway, if it's tough to get in one year, it may well be just as tough - or more so - to get in the next year. However, if a) you have an extremely good sense of Schools 1 and 2 being very, very good matches; and there's a chance that you'll be able to strengthen your application and/or refine your research-interests, I'd say (barring good results from the potential waitlisting at School 1) decline everyone else and give it another shot, especially given that you have not just one but two dream-programs in mind.

Hello! I grew up there and still visit often. Congrats on the acceptance!

• The city itself is absolutely stunningly pretty. Gorgeous views, tree-lined boulevards, tidy little houses, parks everywhere, mountains and water and trees. Very moderate climate: no extreme temperatures at all. UVic itself is a very pleasant campus for the most part. Nice gardens around it, and sunny fields. Lots and lots and lots of rabbits.

• Organic food is easy to find. Most of the supermarkets have local/organic sections. Specifically organic grocery-stores: Planet Organic and LifeStyle Market. Another good bet is the Market on Yates.

• The vegetarian/vegan-ish restaurants I can think of are downtown: ReBar, Lotus Pond, and Green Cuisine. There's lots of great Japanese food, too, if you're into that.

• Sketchy-ish areas: not many! I'd stay away from Fernwood (roughly the rectangle formed by Blanshard, Bay, Fernwood, and Pandora) and some parts of Esquimalt. Downtown can be a little gritty (avoid Pandora between Cook and Douglas), but only a little. Nothing questionable even close to the University; it's surrounded by desirable neighbourhoods (with a beach down the hill on one side).

• Art galleries: the main one is the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Most of the rest are little local ones such as the Winchester Galleries.

• Theatres: the Royal Theatre and the McPherson Playhouse are the two main ones. Smaller: Belfry Theatre.

• The city orchestra is the Victoria Symphony. and there's also an opera company, Pacific Opera Victoria. Otherwise at the Royal and McPherson (and the local arena, the Save-on-Foods Centre) you find all sorts of plays, musical groups, musical theatre productions, comedy, and more. Lots of visiting performers.

• Other things to do: I'd just Google around looking for these! Gardens, bookstores, quirky gift-shops, parks/hiking/lakes, ocean beaches, shopping downtown, shopping at malls, golf courses, historic sites, the Royal British Columbia Museum and IMAX theatre, sailing, paddling, etc. Never a shortage of things to do!

• Anyway, yeah. As you might be able to tell, I'm pretty darn fond of my hometown. * laughs * The only problem I have with Victoria is that (along with most of the Pacific Northwest) its winters are miserable. They're not cold, but they're incessantly dreary and it can really drive you crazy. Sometime in October it clouds over for the winter, and then it pretty much just stays that way until April or May. And it's most likely raining at any given time before then. Seeing the sun in the winter is unusual, and seasonal affective disorder is a big problem. If you don't like rain, invest in some good lighting for indoor light-therapy. On the flip-side, the summers are just gorgeous: almost always sunny, never humid, never too hot, and always with a nice little sea-breeze.

So...yeah! Good luck with any decisions! I can't help much when it comes to housing, but if you have any other questions, let me know!

I entered my Master's in Clinical Psychology at the age of 21 (fresh from undergrad), and now I'm applying to PhD programs in Quantitative Psychology at the age of 23. It's surprising how much maturity and life experience I've gained in just two years. My research focus, my perspective on psychology... Nearly everything seems to have changed, and for the better, I think. I don't think age matters so much as what you're doing with your time; four years of undergrad did not provide nearly as much maturity as two years of graduate work! I imagine the same can be said for other life experiences, too!

Oh, I am a super nerd....

Chuck Norris decided to major in mathematics, He required that N be replaced by Norris in all proofs. As a result:
(a) Cauchy sequences no longer require an n > N, but are now examined as n > Norris. Because nothing is greater than Chuck Norris, Cauchy sequences cease to exist.
( b ) "n in N" is now "n in Norris", where Norris is the set of all numbers which support Chuck Norris's proofs.

The "Friedman Rule" of n% inflation was taken over by Chuck Norris over a decade ago. He'll lower inflation again when he feels like it.

In the long run, everyone is dead. Not because they were still waiting for prices to adjust, but because Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked them.

Chuck Norris is a risk-loving rational actor. Unfortunately, the outcome of all of Chuck Norris's behavior is certain: he wins.

Chuck Norris knows the population parameters.

Chuck Norris doesn't send thank you notes. He only receives them.

Chuck Norris' grade point average is a 4.0...out of 0.

Chuck Norris doesn't have to submit applications to schools because they all know Chuck Norris doesn't submit to anything.

Colleges don't impose deadlines on Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris imposes dead lines on colleges.

And thank you Psycholinguist!

I decided to email one prof. who I really want to work (of course, I want to work with all of the profs. that I've applied to work with, but I'm more familiar with this prof's work than some of the others, so it made my email easier). Within a day, I received a very nice email about the department and an invitation to talk on the phone. I'm very excited, and it has been a nice boost to my self esteem. Even if this has no bearing on my admissions to the program, it's still good "interview" practice for me.

I would very much recommend it. One of my undergrad professors said that when he hears from prospective grad-students, the names stick in his mind because he knows that those applicants really want to work with him. Letters can be short - something along the lines of:

Dear Professor Z: I am a (student/alumnus) (at/of) (School X) looking into applying to graduate school in linguistics for next September. I am very interested in (subfield) and (topics) and have taken an interest in your work. Are you currently accepting new graduate students for then?

In the proof-of-existence department, I didn't contact any POIs before or after submitting my apps and still did pretty well in my application cycle.

More generally, it's crucial to contact POIs in fields where the student joins a lab or working group mentored by a certain PI, who in turn directly funds the student. In all the linguistics programs I know, students are funded collectively by the department and not from particular advisors' grants. As such, you don't need to have someone in particular to sponsor you before you even apply. Nonetheless students still have a particular set of POIs in mind who they would like to work with at each school. If you find that one or more are not accepting new students or are leaving, you might reconsider applying there in the first place. That's one main goal of contacting POIs, in my mind, though normally faculty won't tell you that they are leaving before it's already become public knowledge - so there may be other more efficient ways of learning about possible leaves or transfers. Another goal is to try and make a memorable (positive) impression on faculty who are hopefully on the adcom and can influence decisions. That would of course be a positive outcome, but I don't think it's necessary. In linguistics, to the best of my knowledge, the field is still small enough that every application that is submitted receives some level of attention. None are tossed without being given some considerations like in larger fields that get hundreds of apps per year and therefore have strict cutoffs. If you have a strong application, you can do very well without having contacted anyone.

My advice regarding contacting POIs after being admitted to a program changes considerably -- then I encourage as much communication as possible. But I believe that that is not what the question is about, so I won't elaborate.

Great idea. I hope more people will be interested to join.... I learn so much better from interaction with fellow Linguistics students than from hundreds of pages of textbook...

Calling all linguists applying for 2012 to chat, celebrate and commiserate!

(I'm already in a grad program, but I learned a lot from the fun and insightful threads from previous years.)

Chuck Norris had three halls named after him during his prospective students visit.

No one passes a Chuck Norris-led course. Pre-Meds don't complain.

Chuck Norris shits Nature papers.

GRE scores are back, I'm solidly average. Also, finally got my CV finished and wrote what feels like draft 32 of my personal statement. Slowly but surely working my way to finishing out all this stuff. I think I'll be happy when I've got everything turned in and I'm just waiting for results. With the end of the semester and these apps, I'm up to my neck in work, and trying to stay afloat. Anyone else with me?

The best I could do for a similar issue was have a local friend print the PDF I got from the university on official letterhead, get official envelopes and beg one of the secretaries at the program I was registered at to sign the seals after she confirmed that the "transcripts" corresponded to the "original" they emailed me. Then my friend sent me all the transcripts in a big envelope and I mailed them to the universities myself together with the rest of my hard-cope materials. Convoluted, but it worked.

I think you have a good shot. I think schools will be sympathetic to the fact that there is no established linguistics program, and at least for formal linguistics, a background in math is a pretty good substitute because it shows you have aptitude for quantitative approaches. If you have taken the initiative to mold your own coursework, make contacts, etc. then this will be a good indication that you have the passion to make it though.

Probably the very top programs will *generally* look for candidates who have worked with prominent linguists, have taken a lot of coursework, and/or already presented or published original research - it's just a safe bet that way. But it is still possible to show that you have promise even without these things, especially if your thesis is very good, you have strong LORs, and your research interests are a good fit.

To be honest, knowing this early that you want to go to grad school is already a HUGE advantage, because you can plan/mold the next few years around it.

If you were out looking for dates, your preferences about the feminine countenance would matter, but the non-makeup-wearing female members of your cohort will just have to do without your tender attentions I suppose. What a shame for them. I am curious, since you don't mention it - what are your requirements for the dress of men? I trust they are just as exacting, or that men do a better job of following them since you don't include them as members of the school who don't care about appearances.

Because women attend grad school for your visual entertainment?

I dress decently when I go to school so I honestly don't see what's the big deal and why some people make it a chore. I seem to get more respect from my peers, professors and definitely get more attention from the ladies.

"Hmm, yes, such intriguing conversation on Progressive-era reforms - why, excuse me class, but I seem to have dropped my monocle!"