Gravity

Ahh ok - I see what the prof's concern is. I think you can avoid that problem by being up front about what you want to do, and what kind of data you would like to work with. Avoid agreeing to work on something that you don't want to. Basically, don't tell the state employee that you will work on something, then fail to work on it. I understand why that would be irritating.

The only "bad" part of my program is my advisor - the rest is great. I love my fellow graduate students. We're all there for each other. If one of us is having a bad time, we kidnap the person to go get drinks and bowl or watch a movie The other professors are all very helpful with any kind of question that we have. Every Saturday night, we (the grad students) get together to drink (alcoholic or non - depends on what you want) and vent and/or work and/or just talk about something other than graduate school. We usually end up going out to eat, too. I like being able to go out over the summer and running my own field work, too. We all get to do that.

I work for the fed, and definitely have a ton of data laying around. If someone contacted me with something along the line of: Hi X, I am a graduate student studying ____ at the University of _____. My advisor, Dr. Professor, suggested that I contact you. I would like to study for my thesis, and was wondering if you have any data related to x, y, and z that I could analyze. (Optional: I am hoping to [insert something about what type of analysis you'd like to do].) Thanks, Student Name Department University Phone/Email/address/whatever I'd be happy to help her/him. I imagine that whoever you end up contacting will be ecstatic that someone wants to do something with some of the untouched data. EDIT: Forgot to reply to part of your question. Regarding your concern about getting someone's hopes up, the people you contact will be able to tell you if they have any data that you can use to study what you are interested in. They'll be able to work with you to come up with a new idea, too, if you would like. I doubt any of the people you contact will have time to be too disappointed if it doesn't work out, if at all - their reaction will probably be more along the line of "oh well, maybe next time" (at least that's how I feel - ha).

If none of these schools accepts you, you could try applying for M.A. programs. If you go for the "M.A. with Thesis" option, you will be able to prove that you have what it takes to succeed in a graduate program - the PhD admissions people will be more concerned about the results of your M.A. work than your B.A. work at that point. Archaeology PhD program admissions are crazy competitive, especially for places with an overabundance of archaeologists (the Southwest being among them). There are alternatives! You'll be able to do a field school as part of your program, too, or probably even help run one.

I'm in a similar situation - I made it through the M.A., and am not so convinced that a PhD would be a great idea. It is easier to get a job as an archy with a M.A., so if you can, go ahead and finish (a lot to ask, I know - if you don't believe me, check out my one and only topic post!). It is normal for people to do a PhD later, anyway, in archaeology. My adviser liked to insult my undergrad program and my colleagues... ugh. Not a good environment to try to be functional in. I was lucky with my cohort, though - they're all wonderful. Anyway, it is possible to get through, even with a horrible adviser. I would finish the M.A. then take some time to be a professional archy before even thinking about going for the PhD (more or less what I'm doing now). I found that reading PhD Comics helped me get through - before I went to grad school, I never thought that the stuff in that strip actually happens!

For archaeology, they interview 5 - 7 people and admit 3 - 4, depending on how many people they have funding for. They'll be sending out notifications soon, if they haven't already.

Yes. That is how my CV is set up - it shouldn't be confusing for anyone reading it. They'll see that the thesis and the presentation are on the same topic, so likely related.

I've noticed a difference in my evals between large classes and small classes. I TA'd a lecture once and I got a lot of comments along the line of "I guess she did her job. She sat there and took notes, but I guess she wasn't supposed to be teaching," or "The test questions were unfair!" and then they'd rate me at a 1 out of 5 regardless - ha. The positive comments were from the two students who bothered to show up to my office hours (both of whom were doing quite well, anyway - why is it always the ones who are doing well who come in beforehand, and the ones who are failing who come in after there's nothing we can do?!). I also TA'd a lab section with about 10 students. I felt horrible because I was trying to do my coursework and thesis-writing and all of that at the same time as helping them out, so I felt neglectful. I often showed up running on no food and 1-2 hours of sleep, but they were all very generous. I got the best suggestions for improvement from them, too. Anyway, I agree with everyone above who said that we're learning, and we shouldn't be expected to get perfect reviews from the students. I think it is especially true when we're TAing a huge lab section or lecture because we have little chance to work one-on-one with any of the students.

Before I went on the LOA, we did not really have that sort of program. The ombudsmen were ineffective at best. I just checked again, though, and it looks like as of the middle of January, we have a new ombudsmen office with some new hires, and they've signed on to the ethical guidelines of their professional organization. This might be a good sign? I'll call tomorrow to see what they have to say. According to the website, they're primarily there to help faculty deal with job-related issues, but I can't imagine they wouldn't talk to me, seeing as my situation involves a faculty member. Maybe they would be able to help me figure out how to deal with LOR's while transferring (if I decide that is a good idea)? They specifically state that their job is to mediate and provide information, not provide actual legal counsel or directly do anything. I am really fed up with academia! Thankfully, I have a job in my area of study that I enjoy. I feel like the academy has such a grip on me - the further I get in it, the more dismissive people are of people who didn't go to graduate school, or got jobs in industry, stopped at the M.A., or dropped out before finishing their PhDs, yet these people are almost always happier (at least the ones I know, which, through my job, is quite a few).

Graduate school admissions work a lot differently than undergrad admissions. Basically, in undergrad, with a few exceptions, you are applying to a general program (whatever the undergrad program is) to major in one or more disciplines while taking a bunch of gen eds. In grad school, you are more focused, and you are basically applying to work with particular faculty in a particular department. Your application is only part of the reason you get accepted or rejected. Other factors include whether any of the faculty who specialize in what you want to study are taking students the year in which you apply, whether there is enough funding to bring you on (if it is relevant to your program), whether the program wants to bring in any more students who are interested in your subfield, and so on. I was accepted to 4 of the 6 places I applied to. The 2 places I rejected from were way low on my own list. They were ranked middle-low for my area of study. The places I got accepted to? The top four programs in my area of study in the world. It all came down to whether the departments I applied to thought I was both highly qualified AND a good fit for their program. I've seen students interview at my program who were ranked up at the top of the short list when they arrived, and were knocked out of consideration after the interviews when the faculty realized that we just do not have the resources and specialists to advise them. In short, don't sweat it I was lucky enough to get the acceptance letter from my top choice before I got any of the rejection letters. Still, I was puzzled at first!

I changed the titles of both my Honors Thesis and M.A. Thesis for different things (ie conference poster vs. public lecture vs. the thesis itself). No one thought it was a problem. In fact, the only comment I got about the title change (of my M.A. thesis) for a conference presentation was that it looked and sounded a lot better.

I did talk to the department chair, but he could not do anything (though he was sympathetic). The graduate dean is from my department, and thought I needed to talk more or something (I'm not convinced that would work - I tried!) I sense that there is some major political situation that I'm not aware of. Which brings me to the reason we cannot switch advisers. Part of the problem is that we apply to the program to work with a specific person, because each of the faculty has a specialty within the discipline. The other problem (at least as the older students explained it to me) is that so many students who are in my situation end up wanting to switch to a different adviser. At some point, the department stopped allowing that, we guess to keep my adviser from treating his students in such a way that they up and leave, but if that is the case, I do not think it is having the intended effect. It is ridiculous. I know one student who took her complaints further than I have, and she kept being told that she was in a PhD program, she shouldn't expect it to be "easy," maybe psychotherapy would help, etc. I did not. In fact, I asked around during my interview, and no one said anything that set off any alarms. One of the people who wrote a reference letter for me even told me that his students love working with him (I called that person and uh... corrected him - ha). I think he stuck me with cleaning the lab because he saw me sweeping once. Before I matriculated, he was on the only male who works in the lab for the mess (because men are messy, apparently). He does treat all of his students more or less the same way. I'm sure someone else has unwanted lab duty right now (he has an undergraduate "RA" for that). We complain to each other, mostly. Yes! I need to remember that. I keep going back to "Well, if I drop out, I'll be a failure," even though I earned a M.A.

In my program, it depends on personal style. Some of us are better at drawing that line than others. The people who put in 40-50 hours per week aren't behind at all. To the contrary, they seem more refreshed when they show up in the morning and more productive during the time they actually are working. I'd say stick to your schedule if you feel like you are making good progress (by your definition, not your colleagues).

I went through this while writing my thesis, too! I found myself doing dishes and vacuuming (things I hate) rather than working on my thesis. Then I'd sit there and stare at it for hours. Now that I'm out of the M.A. program, I'm amazed at how much more quickly I can get things done because I just do them. I think my problem was I knew that my advisor wasn't going to like what I was about to turn in, so I lost motivation. I was also taking 2 classes, running a lab, and doing a whole bunch of other stuff I didn't have time to do. Set small goals, like "Write a paragraph before making dinner," or "Read 2 articles before noon" - it worked for me, at least.

I am in my 3rd year of a PhD program in the social sciences (I’m going to keep this somewhat vague so I’m less identifiable – this probably says more about my mental state than my advisor’s ability to use Google!). I have full funding through a combination of fellowships and TA jobs, and my fellow graduate students are great. The faculty are great, too, except for my advisor. And, my department’s policy is to not allow students to switch advisors (long story, I can explain in another post if anyone is interested). My advisor is one of those who returns drafts with 100s of edits, usually involving moving commas around, almost always correcting his own edits by the 3rd draft or so. This was irritating enough without the rants about how I would never publish (I assume because my commas are in the wrong place?), ad hominem attacks directed at my entire generation (we’re all lazy and expect something for nothing, apparently, and our parents tell us how amazing we are, but they are liars), photocopying papers I had handed in to other professors to use their comments against me (he really could have just asked me), and complaints that I was not spending enough time in the lab (I took 12 hours per semester my first year, all of which were actual classes, so 15 or so hours was about all I could handle). My program includes a non-terminal M.A., for which we must write a research paper or thesis. This is where the real problems began. He kept requiring that I write chapters that had no business being in the paper (imagine having to insert an entire chapter on the the life history of golf club grass into a thesis on hunting and gathering 3000 years ago). Then, after spending a few weeks writing the stupid thing, he would claim that he never said I should have that in the paper, and that I must have no idea what kind of work goes into a “real, solid thesis.” Great. Then, I had to insert biographies about everyone I cited at the first point I cited them in the paper. Imagine being interrupted by something along the line of “Smith et al. (2004) argues... Dr. John Smith studied archaeology at the University of British Columbia, graduating with his PhD in 1989. He then went to work for ABC Consultants in California, where he gained experience counting birds. He is currently the John Do III Distinguished Professor of Something at the University of Florida.” Yeah – seriously. I had to insert that kind of stuff into the body of my thesis. Then, he started demanding that I incorporate data that does not exist for my region into one of my discussion/lit review sections, kept cancelling meetings with me (so I had only sporadic advising, anyway, until toward the end). He changed his mind midsentence on draft sections (“This is woefully inadequate: you should add another chapter on the entire history of tree life in your region, and this chapter looks great. It needs a lot of work.”) My data only covered a short time period (lets say A.D. 200 – A.D. 300), but with a few weeks before my draft was due, I suddenly needed to expand the paper to cover B.C. 200 – A.D. 1300, in spite of having no data to address a the majority of that period. He started using meeting times to attack me. At one point, he actually told me that I should never have been admitted to any graduate program, and he had looked back over my application and could not see how I could have ever matriculated. He would also badmouth previous students of his that had dropped out already, detailing bits of their private lives that he was sure led them to leave. I somehow ended up being responsible for cleaning up the lab, which none of his other grad students ever did. If it was dirty, clearly it was my fault, even if I had not been in there since the morning. He also offed one of his undergraduate advisees on me because, he claimed, he did not have time to advise the student. At that point, I was taking 9 hours, doing my own lab work, being a T.A., cleaning the lab, AND having to advise an undergraduate in an honors thesis. My advisor’s students tend to take well over 10 years to graduate, if they are lucky enough to get past the proposal defense. Most of his students do not graduate. Right now, I’m being blocked at every turn for increasingly bizarre reasons. I’m already fed up with academia, I have no thesis topic, I have no funding to find a thesis topic because he decided that I don’t need it (he had only loans in grad school – he thinks all of us are greedy for wanting the funding we’ve been promised for getting our dissertation research together), and the thought of going back makes me sick. The most promising topic I had he actually liked, even told me he thought it would be a good idea, but when I presented the idea at a meeting with the rest of the faculty on my progress, he claimed he never said that, and that the topic would be insufficient. I am on a leave of absence right now. I thought for sure that being away for a while would clear my head so I could decide whether I should go back. I’ve been gone for 9 months now, and I am still thinking going back would be a terrible idea. Is this sort of situation normal? I feel like one of those people in an abusive relationship who just won’t leave because things might get “better.” Things have consistently gone downhill. I managed to pass my M.A. defense after requesting 2 extensions, so at least I have a M.A. out of this mess... I guess I’m concerned that I really am just one of those silly Gen Y kids who can’t take criticism. I feel like a complete idiot, and that people are going to figure that I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’ll never get a job outside of (or even inside of) academia regardless of whether I earn a PhD. Anyone else in a situation like this? Thanks...