psycholinguist

Back in the days of yore, people used this program called AOL INSTANT MESSENGER. When I was in high school, I didn't have internet access until I was in 10th or 11th grade. So, I get some high speed online, and I suddenly need a screen name. I was convinced that the name was extremely important. So I sat and read the local phone book (not all of it...) and found strange names. But my favorite was some old man named "August Quail." August is my favorite month, and I think that quail is a nice bird. Also, I liked the flexibility of the words, august also meaning inspiring reverence or admiration, and quail meaning to cower in fear. The name creates a weird, poetic incongruence that I like. Yup.

Both my username and avatar are movie-related: the avatar is, as some probably know, Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke in one of the weirdest (I mean that as a compliment) movies ever--Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (after the book of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson).

The username is a reference to a character of a Serbian (Yugoslav) movie, a made up funky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPQZNnLG_4k... sort of: "a fighter against boredom, of a sharp wit with the superpower of highly refined sense of humor which makes his enemies go amuck" (btw. his arch-nemesis is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz0yFVtn4hk. His name is "Zeleni Zub", meaning "green tooth" and I first used it when I had to think of a username for something while having a toothache. Over the years it morphed into Welsh ("dant gwyrrd" meaning the same thing... as far as I know), because Welsh is so darn cool.

This is awesome. There are some pretty incredible people on this forum.

The avatar is a picture I drew a few years ago. I was feeling a little bit like that tree: overwhelmed and ill-equipped to hold up everything I needed to. Kind of like how I feel in this application process...

I have no idea where my name came from. It just popped out!

Average accepted GPA to Harvard - 3.74.

Average rejected GPA in Harvard - 3.78.

Oh dear oh dear...

I'm going to ignore the linguistic/semantics debate just to say this one thing. Isn't it problematic that facebook only offers two choices? My understanding is that less than 99.99% of the population identifies with one sex or the other... Don't worry, I find it problematic that we only have two options under gender but I'm not sure if bgk is actually able to change that or if it comes with the software.

You can now return to your regularly scheduled linguistic debate. Thanks!

I tend to think it's more like a wavering than a lopping off the bloom. I was in love with my area and grad school at first; then I fell out of love; then I fell back in love. You'll go back in and out; it will truly be a "love/hate" relationship with academia, research, your project, your advisor, etc.

I also agree. Sometimes I avoid socializing with my grad student friends because they are always complaining about school, even when we see each other outside of school. Sometimes it is nice to kvetch about school, but other times...

Dress codes are so freaking lame. I mean, not that I think we should all go around wearing pajamas all the time (though now that I think about it...), but what is the big deal? Jeans are functional, practical, and comfortable, so who gives a flaming fart if someone wants to wear them all the time? Hygeine and taking care of your appearance is undoubtably very important, but the concept of "professional attire" makes me want to pull my hair out. Does the style of pants we wear really affect our ability to do a job well? Or learn or communicate effectively? I think one of my primary goals in life is to have the type of job where I can wear whatever I want. The worst part about having a "real job" is having to worry constantly about whether this outfit is "appropriate" or "professional enough"--as if I would somehow become incompetent the minute I put on some Levis.

Anyway, </rant> now. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Yeah, well, you know, that's, just, like, your opinion, man

I agree entirely. Was alarmed to see last night that people are downvoting Just me for no particular reason, or for reasons having more to do with her history on the board than anything else. That actually does border on picking on her; and bullying is something that a) should be intolerable in the first place, and we ought to have grown out of years ago, particularly as a bunch of (mostly) very intelligent, thoughtful, well-adjusted adults. Just me does have a habit that gets on the nerves of some people here (posting a long thread about her problems, getting lots of good advice, rejecting all of it one post at a time, and then passive-aggressively abandoning the thread because she feels as if she's been totally misunderstood), and it's true that whether we're contending with a target-of-abuse or a case of victim-playing-personality-disorder is decidedly nebulous; but that's not a good excuse to get stand-offish and/or take a few gratuitous, anonymous shots at her. In fact, either way, a few less-than-warranted downvotes are counterproductive; think about it. Whether or not her backstory is true, Just me needs (at the very least) some psychological assistance, and we've done everything we can do about that. In the meantime, I recommend that innocuous posts of hers be treated at face-value, and anything talking about being a victim be given minimal attention since we probably have nothing more to say on that subject, especially if her situation isn't going to change. Can we all agree on that?

(Apologies for talking around you, Just me. Addressing [select] others here.)

I've lived right across the street from campus and twelve miles away. The biggest advantages of the former are that one can get to class (or the library) almost before one leaves and one can really get the most out of time between classes. (On especially hot days, a classmate would notice during the afternoon that I'd changed clothes since that morning.)

The biggest advantages of the latter are that the distance requires one to be more focused during campus visits (unless one does not mind sitting in traffic) and that one will have distance from the student body when a flu virus runs through the campus.

Ouch. Could be worse, though. (While working on M*A*S*H, Alan Alda commuted from New Jersey to Los Angeles every weekend for eleven years. He didn't want to have to move his family, and he figured that sooner or later the show would be cancelled.)

Well, that depends. If you live in America, it's very common to see Asians with totally American names. One of the profs in my department is Asian (by birth, not Asian-American), but both her first and last names sound American. (Yes, she married an American.) My mom is Asian-American (both of her parents came over from China). She's one of the many many Asian Americans with an English first name and Chinese middle name, and for the last 48 years she's had my dad's very English last name as well. Most people don't see her middle name ever, but I haven't seen people surprised by her appearance for at least 20 years...


Here in America, there are so so so many people from different cultures, and so much intermarriage as well, that it's common to see someone who looks mostly American but has an Asian last name or vice versa. My mom's family is from Hawaii, where diversity started happening about 100 years earlier than the rest of the nation, so I have cousins who are 1/4 Hawaiian, 1/2 Chinese, 1/4 Japanese...1/2 Chinese, 1/2 Indian (not native American)...and much more! We are an interesting crew!

Don't know if this has been answered definitely yet, but here's what I found. I just talked with USPS and if you ship via "click and ship" you can specify that a package should be held. They will hold it for 14 days max. I think this is what I'm going to do. Good luck!

From an economist...

1. The chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
2. Chuck Norris holds both Absolute and Comparative Advantage...in everything.
3. Game Theory falls apart vis-a-vis Chuck Norris because the dominate strategy is to never challenge Chuck Norris to begin with. Realizing this Chuck Norris developed his own theory dubbed Norris Theory where Norris Equilibrium is achieved once he has taken all of your property and consumed your soul. Following this discovery the Riksbank renamed the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics to the Norris Award for Unparalleld Awesomeness and awrded it to Chuck Norris for the next 1,000 years.
4. Markets are well-behaved because they are afraid of being punished by Chuck Norris.
5. Asset prices do not follow a random walk, they follow Chuck Norris.
6. When Chuck Norris walks down the street demanding compensation it's not because he's an asshole but because he is internalizing the postive externality you recieve from being in his presense.
7. The unobserved stochastic error term is not randomness, it's Chuck Norris fucking with you.
8. The market-clearing price is whatever Chuck Norris says it is.
9. The term "bubble" has come to describe the business cylce because it is literally the result of Chuck Norris blowing and popping bubbles while bathing. Similary, the Great Depression was a period of tremendous sadness after Chuck Norris accidentally roundhouse kicked his belloved horse, Buttercup, sending him into another dimension never to be seen again.
10. After reading Chuck Norris' dissertation (which was only a picture of Chuck Norris standing in a gi) both Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes converted the Neo-Norris School of Economics.

My favorite Chuck Norris fact from Anonymous:

11. It is said that Chuck Norris sold his soul to the Devil for his unparalled marital arts ability. Following the transaction Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the Devil in the face and took his soul back. The Devil, realizing the irony, could not be mad and recognized defeat. They now play poker every first Wednesday of the month.

This is very interesting; personally I understand both sides here about equally. When I was in high school I dressed exactly the same way every single day and never once changed my hairstyle; I saw this as being admirably unwavering and dependable and mature amidst a set of unreliable, erratic, fickle peers. (Turns out I was just going to school with a bunch of ordinary teenagers.) I also insisted on sitting in the same desks in the same classrooms, eating lunch in a single place, just generally letting people know what they could expect of me, etc. It was nice to have a routine; this freed me from having to spend time worrying about what to wear or looking for people to eat lunch with or so on.

In retrospect, though, I was way too obsessed with consistency for the sake of itself. Nonconformity doesn't mean refusing to change one's behaviour, period; it means being free-spirited and independent-minded, and making changes only if you yourself really want to. Although I don't care what my high-school classmates thought of me (I wasn't close to them and was happy to leave them behind), I probably alienated myself by giving off the impression that I didn't want anyone messing with my precious little rituals. Furthermore, being that scripted (uptight, even) is often a great way of convincing people at a distance - especially teachers and professors - that you're the ostentatious sort. I'm not saying that some degree of extra conformity is necessary - hardly - but I'd advise caution if you're feeling the urge to go around being a little in-your-face about feeling yourself so much the self-confident outsider. When I got to college I couldn't keep sitting in my favourite high-school spots, obviously, and I had to learn to adapt. I got used to having a more-varied schedule and actually started buying a whole range of clothes for myself; the change was a bit of a shock, but getting out of what had really begun to seem like a huge number of pointless habits was an immense relief. I haven't compromised myself or my values in the slightest; my personality is best expressed through my interactions with people and my schoolwork, not whether I happen to be wearing a pair of blue dress pants and a white blouse for the 387th school-day in a row. And these days I deal with everyday background changes a lot more readily than I did in high-school; back then I'd nearly throw a fit if someone had moved 'my' desk out of the room.

This is very interesting; personally I understand both sides here about equally. When I was in high school I dressed exactly the same way every single day and never once changed my hairstyle; I saw this as being admirably unwavering and dependable and mature amidst a set of unreliable, erratic, fickle peers. (Turns out I was just going to school with a bunch of ordinary teenagers.) I also insisted on sitting in the same desks in the same classrooms, eating lunch in a single place, just generally letting people know what they could expect of me, etc. It was nice to have a routine; this freed me from having to spend time worrying about what to wear or looking for people to eat lunch with or so on.

In retrospect, though, I was way too obsessed with consistency for the sake of itself. Nonconformity doesn't mean refusing to change one's behaviour, period; it means being free-spirited and independent-minded, and making changes only if you yourself really want to. Although I don't care what my high-school classmates thought of me (I wasn't close to them and was happy to leave them behind), I probably alienated myself by giving off the impression that I didn't want anyone messing with my precious little rituals. Furthermore, being that scripted (uptight, even) is often a great way of convincing people at a distance - especially teachers and professors - that you're the ostentatious sort. I'm not saying that some degree of extra conformity is necessary - hardly - but I'd advise caution if you're feeling the urge to go around being a little in-your-face about feeling yourself so much the self-confident outsider. When I got to college I couldn't keep sitting in my favourite high-school spots, obviously, and I had to learn to adapt. I got used to having a more-varied schedule and actually started buying a whole range of clothes for myself; the change was a bit of a shock, but getting out of what had really begun to seem like a huge number of pointless habits was an immense relief. I haven't compromised myself or my values in the slightest; my personality is best expressed through my interactions with people and my schoolwork, not whether I happen to be wearing a pair of blue dress pants and a white blouse for the 387th school-day in a row. And these days I deal with everyday background changes a lot more readily than I did in high-school; back then I'd nearly throw a fit if someone had moved 'my' desk out of the room.

I would mock the desire of med students/government interns to show off how important they are, but if I become a professor I am totally getting a vest and a watch fob. And I'm wearing spats.

Good one!


Other things you might be telling the world if you wear sweat pants:

(1) I feel sick, today.
(2) I am pregnant. (Or feel pregnant. Whatever.)
(3) I am an exercise science/leisure management major.
(4) I moonlight as a P.E. teacher at the local elementary school.
(5) It's been so long since I've done laundry that even Febreeze won't help my jeans.
(6) My pants don't fit anymore. (Too true.)
(7) [if there is a big logo across the back] - Look at my ass!
(8) I just came from the gym. (And probably smell bad.)


Jesting aside, I received a wonderful tip from a visiting professor, who had recently completed his Ph.D.: "Grad school isn't about fashion statements; it's about learning. Pick a uniform, learn how to launder/de-wrinkle it, and don't think about clothes again until you are tenured." IMO, his advice is a little extreme, but I think the advice was well-meant. You can find comfortable clothes that aren't sweatpants and wear them in rotation. To some extent, the clothes you wear reflect the respect you have for the people around you. I am sure your professors will appreciate that, *at a bare minimum*, you put forth the effort of wearing pants that fasten.

I absolutely agree. Maybe its my field though, but I was at a conference in December and some PhD candidates who had won student awards made their presentation in front of the ~1500 people that were there in jeans and t-shirts or hoodies. I was like, Mark Zuckerberg much?

Think of the situation and whether that is appropriate or not. Sitting in an office or the library, studying, it shouldn't matter. Presenting a paper at a conference, you will want to dress nice.

But then aren't you, in your contrarian way, just doing the same thing of which you're accusing everyone, i.e., allowing the behavior of others to dictate your own behavior?


Do you really challenge "everything," or just the things you don't like? Also, I wonder what are the benefits or "the good" that comes from challenging "everything."


I would think there are much more practical ways of keeping your critical thinking skills sharp than devising ways to alienate and condescend to all those "complacent" people by whom you find yourself surrounded.

Many people don't have the luxury of turning down jobs or opportunities (or risking alienating those who can assist in securing them) over such trifles.

One of the professors I had in undergrad wore an "I pwn n00bs" t-shirt to every exam. It was pretty entertaining.

I think that's true of every profession and career.

This could have been me straight out of my B.A. - I was burned out, the last thing I wanted to do was pick up another book, and I didn't have the maturity to go onto graduate school.

Sometimes (and I believe this is certainly the case in the OP's case), you need to do a little growing up, and become your own person, before you can continue past your B.A. - you're going to be devoting 3-6 years of your life to this new pursuit. If you are not sure who you are, or have the maturity to stand up to another adult and say, "I'm going to do what *I* want to do because *I* want to make *myself* happy, instead of making *you* happy," then grad school is always a bad idea. You have to be mature and grown up before you go. Otherwise, you'll be miserable, you will end up finding yourself doing something you are not cut out for (or you plain hate), and you'll have wasted everyone's time and sometimes, money.

This is kind of like complaining about a newly elected president when you didn't vote, if you don't do your part to change something you have no right to complain about it...ya know that sort of thing. Just try to remember that the school and the professors are not forcing you to be there, you're allowing your mother to dictate your actions, it's not their responsibility to tell you to leave the program, that choice is actually YOURS to make. Even if they did, would you actually do it? Not likely, so what's the difference what they say, how much money they make, and how many people end up at Blockbuster or McDonald's after graduating?

What would happen if you just sucked it up and taught for a little while? I completely get that you hate it, in the Peace Corps I taught English to grades 2-11 for 2 years and I absolutely hated it, but I did it because of the bigger picture. I wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer for many other reasons and that was the only thing I was "qualified" to do. I put qualified in quotes because I most definitely do not have an education degree, teaching secondary school is kind of the catch all assignment for those who don't have any specific experience in any other area the Peace Corps considers useful like business or agriculture. So if you think about it, if you will be qualified to teach, why not put up with it long enough to earn a few bucks to get yourself out of there and onto something bigger and better? Once you look at something that you hate in a totally different light, as in it can actually help you in some way, you might be able to take comfort in it, feel good about it, and use it to your advantage. Getting a teaching gig with a real and steady income doesn't seem as hopeless as landing that dream job of yours and becoming famous...so seriously, consider teaching for a little while, it might be a way to start your life.