IRdreams

Cuban sandwich

urban outfitters

life insurance

I'm not in the sciences so my opinion might not count, but I would never move with an adviser who was moving down the rankings. In my field if you are at a school in the top 25 or so, you have as reasonable a chance at Academic placement as can be hoped. However, the placement rankings for the 26th and below schools drop below 4%. First and foremost you owe yourself the best chance at securing a reasonable job in the future which moving would seem to preclude if your field follows a similar pattern. Furthermore, on the adviser's guilt trip tactics: I actually find his argument rather ridiculous and underhanded. Again, you owe him nothing. Graduate students are notoriously underpaid. He received your services for several years at a low rate and it sounds like he got a lot out of the interaction. Even if he paid you out of his grant, the work you did for that pay is ALL he is due. One of the downsides of academia is that graduate students are often taken advantage of, especially due to our relative lack of information about academia. First and foremost, programs need RAs and TAs and they need more of these than they need young Professors so already grad school is set up somewhat like a ponzi scheme. While some programs are honorable in how they address these realities of the profession, others are not due to a fear that they would lose much wanted labor. My suspicion is that your advisers tactics fall within this deplorable tradition.

family feud

I was able to negotiate my way out of the situation, but there was a pretty terrible week there. The surprising thing is that my department is not of the toxic variant in general.

colonial governorship

Aristotelian ethics

The APSA website also has many sample syllabuses which should be good for constructing your own. As to setting rules, what rules will be needed an appropriate will depend greatly upon the culture of your school. For example, if there are rampent grade appeals, you might want to add that grade appeals will only be considered if the student writes a two page memo justifying why they think there has been a mistake (this will save you a lot of time by weeding out all but the most ardent appealers). Related to this is that research is your main job so you want to do everything possible to protect your time. I have rules about far in advance I will answer emails so that I do not get 12am emails the morning an assignment is due. The other thing to remember is to be confident. Yeah, your not much older than them, but so what? You got into grad school so you have a right to be an authority figure in your classroom. If they sense a lack of confidence they will take advantage of you which will mean TAing will take substantially more time than is ideal. PM if you'd like to talk so more about PoliSci specific stuff. I've tought for IR and American Politics.

international relations

oil drilling

baby face

So I brought up department politics originally partially because I have been recently embroiled in a bit of quagmire. My general advice on this topic reflects what has been said earlier: listen more than you speak. The hard part of this advice though is that professors are also keenly trying to scope out their peers. Thus they may ask you point blank questions about so-and-so and some experience they know you are having. I'm a heart on my sleeve person and have a problem lying/being diplomatic if asked a point blank question about say the professor I am TAing for who is all sorts of awful because he should have retired 10years ago. I still do not have a good solution for how to get out of these situations where someone is specifically pumping you for gossip. In my case, it is also hard because it is primarily my research adviser who does this and politely shutting down the conversation can create other issues. I think the best tactic is to give evasive answers from day 1 so that you will not be viewed as a go to source of information by professors on their colleagues. My horror story: Said elderly gentlemen had the bad habit of saying incredibly sexists and racist remarks during his undergrad lecture. One of the other TAs mentioned this to a younger faculty member who then called me into his/her office and asked me to be involved in a complaint about this colleague to the department chair. While I think the comments created a hostile environment, I definitely did not want to be involved in potentially forcibly retiring a very prominent academic within my field. As you can imagine, it created a sticky situation that I would not have even had to think about if I had just suffered the TA experience in silence.

shape magazine

wooden mannerisms

One last thing... Research Seminars and Meeting Visitors: My first year none of my cohort regularly attended our department's research seminar in which we invited high profile visitors to present their work. Big mistake. Yes first year is busy (I called it "First Year Grad Hell"), but this is an invaluable forum to network with the academic community you will be joining. If possible, read the paper thoroughly and have trenchant comment. If the department offers an option for informal grad meetings with the visitor, take it up even if the person is only within your broad subfield. You never know who will have an interesting insight on your project. The other advantages of these meetings is that different programs focus on different things in critiquing research and this is a good place to suss out what students at different schools are being told. This can be invaluable knowledge about the field come job talk time. Do be aware that these meetings can be incredibly awkward: it's not your fault. Academics are weird people and sometimes the conversation doesn't go well. I was really stressed about this and worried I had made a terrible impression on a very prominent member of my field. One of my advisers emailed me a few weeks later to tell me that he had actually brought up my research and was rather impressed. So awkward town does not mean that the meeting is a bust.

I really have to agree with the competition advice concerning your cohort. As a direct from undergrad, my first year was fairly difficult because I placed a bunch of added stress on my self when I thought about students who had masters or life experience. The former I even took to calling "false first years." A lot of grad school in the first year is learning how to play the game which experienced grad students will simply be better at. This does not reflect poorly on your aptitude if you are playing catch up in this arena...3 years on there is rarely substantial differences between undergrad admits and others. Taking criticism also resonated with me. It is hard. For many people, grades have been a source of self validation. In grad school, they suddenly become fairly meaningless in a lot of programs. At the same time, the actual critical reflection of your work goes substantially up. I still have to remind my self not be defensive during q/a during a presentation. My advice here is probably of a narrow focus, but I think if you are an externally motivated individual (ie gauge your self worth by the views of others) grad school will be an important place do develop more of an internal focus and it will also be a place of a lot of hard knocks...but they might be good for the soul. Department politics: I'm still bad at this. My first year I didn't think there was a lot of distention in the department. My second year: I see it everywhere. Be very mindful when Professors ask you about their peers as it is hard to be certain of their motives especially if you do not fully grasp your department's politics.

I really like the idea of expanding the Officially Grad forum into a multi-issue forum. I think it would encourage greater participation by cuing current admits that this is the place to talk about serious grad school developments. Many decisions in grad school are kind of blind leading the blind...but the more advice the better I think. I could easily see forums on the following: Committees and Committee Selection Quals and Comps Dissertation Commiseration Grad Life Summer Plans (This is probably less improtant for science where you keep plugging in the lab, but what to do with one's summer comes up ALOT in humanities and the social sciences since we are on a more traditiona 9mo work schedule for the most part) Conferences and Publishing I might also move the jobs section under here since I think the job season is big grad life development for many of us. Anyways, just my 2 cents

1) I know as early as possible is not very satisfying, but I think it applies. If this post had been made 2mo ago, my advice would have been decide before April 15th as that deadline is important in the gradschool making their decisions. However, since it is past, I would try to make a decision as soon as possible and no later than the end of April so that the department can fill your slot this with a waitlist if they so desire (deferment means there would have an extra slot this year and one less slot next year usually). 3) If you can convincingly argue that you are a primary care taker for your father this should be fairly easy to obtain considering your university's policy. This argument should be easy to make in light of your international status as the cultural norms are caretaking are known to fall on children in many countries. This would be especially true if you were the eldest. Also, caretaking is considered justifiable medical leave by the federal government in the US so it shouldn't be too hard to explain anyways. 4)Deferment is designed to take care of life's unexpected ups and downs (mostly downs). Your case is precisely why this institution was formed so I would not view asking for deferral as inappropriate. People in my program have asked for deferral simply because they got an awesome job and this is far more justified reason than that. Also, I would not view yourself as prevailing upon them when you explain the situation. It is not begging to ask for a reasonable accommodation in light of bad news. Also, at some level, deferral may be the responsible decision if you feel this may effect the quality of your work this year. A friend of mine had to deal with her father getting and passing from cancer and it has really derailed her in the program. Grad school is not a particularly sensitive environment once you've begun and thus in her case it probably would have been better to not be dealing with those issues while also trying to manages the demands of a program. So Skype is great but if you feel like there will be substantial emotional stress, I probably would ask for the family time. 5)This is really a self reflection question. At some level, it sounds like you this might have been an issue even if an illness had not arisen which makes it a separate concern. I would not take a deferral if your main reason is a desire in general not to leave your kin.

battleship down

Single Man

I don't know for sure...but it seems kinda scamy... I usually avoid anything that seems even a little weird when it comes to spending large sums when apt hunting.

Which is definitely not something grad students are want to do...

method man

I definitely agree with the sentiment that it matters if you win but if you do not win it matters not at all. Rejection is the modal response and many qualified applicants will unfortunately receive it. And while it helps attract more money, it may also have perverse effects. I was told after winning an award in the social sciences that I was now only competitive in the R1 market even though I have a sustained interested in SLACs since the reward is "an indication of being or a desire to be *serious* researcher." This is I found a little ridiculous as a reward is an indication of being able to write an essay about research rather than doing the research and an indication of luck...little else. There are also studies that suggest that when students receive too much free money that their time to completion go up and by logical extension their productivity goes down. TAing and RAing are important experiences which fellowship winners are less able to partake. These experiences also tie a student to the department and academic culture and thus help make grad school a less atomized experience for the nonwinner. That being said, a fellowship has many boons not least of which is that it attracts more money and potentially higher prestige jobs. Principally it give you freedom and can free you from tedious duties. While TAing may be good for the soul, that doesn't mean it is without its negative externalities.