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runonsentence

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  1. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from Julien in Before you ask "WHAT ARE MY CHANCES???"...   
    +1, Strangefox.

    Any chance mods can pin this post?
  2. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from likearollinstone in Stupid Question   
    Not sure whether this will be comforting (hope it is!), but the expectations for the "level" of your writing will partly depend on what degree you're applying for. That is, adcoms will have different expectations in mind for applicants for MA programs than they will for applicants for PhD programs.

    Either way, given that you haven't done graduate-level work yet, it is possible they'll focus on "promise." (This would be all the more true if it's a program that regularly accepts B.A. students.)
  3. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from erpayne in Dressing the Part . . . for Girls!   
    I'm a born-and-raised Mid-Atlantic girl, and I have to say that I'd find the winters freezing if I only had a pea coat, depending on the amount of walking I were to do outside. Growing up in the suburbs a pea coat worked out fine, but once I started working in center city Philly after undergrad I found I was cold all the time once December hit and needed a second coat. A nice coat with some proportion of down filling is a nice thing to have; I bought mine on a pre-Thanksgiving sale at Macy's for at least half off (Liz Claiborne!!) and I'm so glad I did. LL Bean and Eddie Bauer also make nice, warm coats that can still look somewhat dressy.

    A pair of galoshes is a surprisingly awesome thing to have on hand. Zappos has some cheap and durable pairs. I bought my last pair at Target for $20 and regret it; they're only about a year old but falling apart (I walk a mile each way to school).
  4. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from ProTrans in Grad. School Supplies?   
    AND french press is TEN TIMES yummier than filter coffee.

    ::Homer Simpson voice:: Mmmm....french press....
  5. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from bakalamba in Have you seen this? Essay service scams.   
    Plagiarism means wrongfully appropriating someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as one's own (or at least, this is what I tell my freshmen). It can be done intentionally (copy/paste) or unintentionally (not citing sources properly).

    By the definition above, the act of putting your name atop a paper you haven't written can be considered plagiarism at worst and academic dishonesty at best. Schools have formal codes prohibiting both.

    No one has said it's illegal. It's unethical, pathetic and contemptible, but no has said it breaks any laws.
  6. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from Z4Zebra in Your "Best" Student Answers   
    Not to ruin the party, but I have to say that I have huge issues with sites like "Shit my Students Write." Laughing at at something snarky a student wrote is one thing, but sites like that really encourage teachers to rag on students for their lack of understanding, and for missteps they take as they try (their best, as novices) to begin navigating the waters of academic discourse.

    I wrote really embarrassing, really silly things as an undergrad. It would have really hurt me to know that my professors were laughing at everything I turned into them and sharing it with all of their colleagues.

    Students trust us to help them learn, and we're often repeating adages to them like, "there is no stupid question except the one you haven't asked." I still vent to my colleagues, and I still trade stories about unbelievable things my students have done and said. But my new goal is to keep my badmouthing about students to a minimum, especially online.

    </steps off soapbox>
  7. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from Marycontrary in Cincinnati, OH   
    Echoed. I live in Clifton Gaslight now, and love the vibe. There are coffee shops, restaurants, and a fantastic hometown dive (called Arlin's) that my department frequents. It's walkable to campus as well, which was a major factor in my choosing to live there. Unfortunately, you have to walk up a hill to get to campus, but this is Cincinnati: you will have to walk uphill (often both ways!) to walk anywhere.

    Coming from the Philadelphia area, CIncinnati was a bit of a culture shock, but I enjoy living here. People are friendly (the culture is very midwest) and the city is small but well served. Tons of great restaurants and bars (I can take you on an amazing virtual burger tour), great parks, museums, and a great baseball stadium with plentiful $15 seats.

    The other thread on Cincinnati is weird and, I think, misrepresents the city. Yes, there are sections of the city that are more dangerous than others, but I think it's a mistake to characterize the entire city as some crime-ridden hole. In the two years I've lived here so far, I've noticed there's a strange view of the downtown and university areas by those who live in the suburbs, and it looks like those are the sorts of people who contributed to the last thread.

    Cincinnati is very much a neighborhood-y city, and in some cases changes block-by-block. I'd definitely recommend visiting if you can to check out potential living situations in person. You'll want to be able to get a feel for the area; every neighborhood has a very different character.

    The area to avoid living is south of campus (and that's where all the undergrads live, anyway, so double the reason!) and some areas to the west, which are both in Clifton Heights.

    Other neighborhoods my friends have found success living in, apart from Clifton Gaslight: Northside, College HIll, Norwood, O'Bryonville, Newport (Kentucky), Corryville, and even OTR.
    - Northside has the advantage of being on a direct bus line to campus.
    - College Hill is on the same bus line, but a bit of a hike (15 minutes, maybe more by car). But it has a really low crime rate. My advisor and one of my classmates lives there.
    - Norwood has a low crime rate as well (I think the lowest in the city?), but you'd definitely have to drive from here.
    - O'Bryonville (and parts of East Walnut Hills) would be accessible on a direct bus line, and O'Bryonville is cute.
    - Newport is closer than you'd think; definitely a 10-minute drive or more, but it's lots cheaper to live down there, and there's a lot of bars, coffee shops, and stuff to do within walking distance.
    - Corryville is next to campus, on the East side. Parts of it are ghetto, but parts of it are livable. My boyfriend lives there, as do a lot of students.
    - OTR admittedly has the highest crime rate in the city. You'd have to know what you're getting into there. But that said, I have a number of friends who live down there and enjoy it. Space is cheap, and the area (for better or worse) is gentrifying and "revitalizing," so there are a lot of really awesome bars, restaurants, and coffee shops moving in. My friends who live down there have lived on Main Street.

    Hyde Park and Oakley are definitely nice, but also a little far out (10-15 minute drive, more with traffic) and probably only easily accessible by car, in most cases. It's probably also one of the most expensive areas you could live in, apart from Mount Adams (which is a "young professional" party scene, anyway).

    Parking around campus is either really expensive in the garages or a headache trying to find on the street (which I did last year). I'd recommend trying to find a place within walking distance or on a direct bus line (by that I mean you don't have to transfer buses).
  8. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from Tony Montana in Have you seen this? Essay service scams.   
    Plagiarism means wrongfully appropriating someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as one's own (or at least, this is what I tell my freshmen). It can be done intentionally (copy/paste) or unintentionally (not citing sources properly).

    By the definition above, the act of putting your name atop a paper you haven't written can be considered plagiarism at worst and academic dishonesty at best. Schools have formal codes prohibiting both.

    No one has said it's illegal. It's unethical, pathetic and contemptible, but no has said it breaks any laws.
  9. Upvote
    runonsentence reacted to fuzzylogician in Appropriate vs. abusive advisor behavior   
    Advising has a professional side and a personal side to it. Sounds like your former advisor was not an easy person to get along with, and therefore even though I don't think I read complaints about the professional side of your relationship, it still didn't feel good at all. The good news, as others have pointed out, is that this person shouldn't have too much of an influence on you in the future; your PhD training should lead to new strong relationships with professors who could write you strong LORs and support you later on when you're on the job market. As mentioned above, you should be very careful about badmouthing him in public because the only way he might be dangerous is if word gets back to him that you're talking about him behind his back -- in that case he may very well use his influence to your detriment. 
     
    When you start your PhD program, I propose that you think about separating the "advising" role of a professor from that of a "mentor." Those could (and sometimes should) be carried out by different people. An advisor needs to give you good professional advice on your work and help you become your own  independent scholar. It's awesome if you also have a strong personal relationship with this person, but sometimes that doesn't happen and that's ok. It may also happen that your advisor is closer with some other student than you, and that too is ok. You may, in addition to your advisor, try to seek out someone who is more of a mentor - an older more established professor who you trust to confide in. I imagine that that's the kind of relationship that you wanted to have with your former advisor, but it's important to keep in mind that not every person wants to be close to his/her students and that doesn't necessarily make them a bad advisor. My best advice is to meet with several people in your first semester/year in your program to get a feel for who you get along with. Usually these things are easily apparent, so a few meetings should be enough. It'd be good to seek out more than one person who you get along with to help with different aspects of your work. Once you have established relationships, it's still a good idea to talk to everyone who might be helpful to your work once in a while, though perhaps not on a regular basis. This should ensure that by the time you are ready to graduate, you have strong supporters on your side and your old Masters advisor will have been all but forgotten.  
  10. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from 1Q84 in The GRE Literature Subject Test   
    +1 for the vade mecum.
    Remember that you only need the "fun facts at a cocktail party" level of knowledge of anything you've read in order to take the exam. You may actually be better off shacking up with some Bloom Masterplots than the Norton anthology.*



    *You will never hear me say this in any other context.
  11. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from lexluthr in Recording Lectures   
    Since the thread's been bumped....

    My main issue with recording instead of taking notes is that recording is a passive method of listening. Knowing that one has the tape of the session (even though one will never actually have the time to back and listen through it) doesn't encourage one to pay attention and listen as actively as someone who is taking notes. (There are lots of journalists out there who don't record interviews for this very reason.)

    It's the act of listening, appropriating the knowledge into one's own words, and writing it down that helps reinforce information. You lose that if you rely on recording.
  12. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from Erpnope in Scholarships with Summer Deadlines?   
    I don't know about any scholarships off the top of my head—but one suggestion I have for you is to inquire with the department to see if they'd consider deferring your acceptance one year. I have a friend in art who did this so that she could spend the year applying to scholarships with fall/winter deadlines in an effort to fund her M.S. in textiles.
  13. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from crate in Stony Brook, NY   
    I visited Stony Brook during my previous round of applications (for Fall 2009), and this is what I gleaned about the living situation from current grads:

    LI in general (and SB in particular) have been zoned in such a way that preserves the look and feel of the historic fishing villages, Port Jefferson being a prime example. This means that it's not really possible for anyone to build huge apartment complexes. (This is probably also where the idea of "illegal" apartments come from?) I liked the feel of the little villages, but as a tourist destination, not exactly as a place to live.

    The grad students I talked to in the English department said that a handful of people lived in basements/spare bedroom apartments in town their first year, but most ended up in the outer boroughs of NYC (Brooklyn, Bronx) and commuted in on the train line. The impression I got was that everything was sort of disparate, in terms of areas people lived in; there's no real area that draws most of the grad students.

    The cost of living on Long Island is pretty high. Lower than NYC certainly, but not by much (remember that this is an area ONLY accessible through NYC or ferries from further north).

    The campus itself was okay. The student offices and inside of the building itself for the English department is nicer than other places I've been, but I remember the library being a real depressing building and a lot of the buildings looking rather ho-hum, at least on the outside.
  14. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from Bearcat1 in I HATE grad school already   
    I don't understand why you wanted to s graduate school at all, actually...aren't you the poster who has been posting doomsday posts for months now about how messed up the system is? (Along the lines of your second paragraph?)
  15. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from damequixote in Saw my LOR after it was sent, it wasn't that great...   
    To the OP: I'd let the letter stand as is, and if anything, solicit another letter to augment your application. I had something somewhat similar happen, and it didn't seem to really hurt my admissions chances. My mentors told me that committees often expect to see a dud or two mixed into packets and know that sometimes things fall through with letters and that it doesn't reflect poorly on the candidate. If your other letters look good, you'll probably be fine.

    To the forum: Most of my letter writers asked me to look at my letters after they'd written them, and give them feedback/corrections. This seems to be normal with other friends of mine who've gone through the application process, as well. I don't see anything wrong with this, unless I'm missing something here that makes this case unique?

    My understanding of the LoR waiver is that applicants waive their right to review the letter—that is, I've never equated "right to review" with "I promise not to look at my letters, even if they're offered." My understanding is that applicants simply relinquish the right to read all LoRs, with or without permission (and instead can only view letters the writer decides to make available).
  16. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from esoryma in LOR for forgettable student   
    FWIW, it's possible that the OP is referring to a different kind of situation—I taught mostly freshman during my MA, and several asked me for letters for local scholarships and the like, not grad school.


    OP, my advice mirrors others' here: simply let the student know that it will be difficult for you to write a strong one at this point because of X, Y, and Z. (For example, "Well, I'm willing to, but at this point I can't say that I knew you very well because my attendance roster shows you were absent for half of our class meetings so far, and if you'll remember the feedback I gave you on your last essay draft, I feel like I haven't been seeing your best work so far.")

    If you want to be kinder about it, you can tell the student what kind of performance it would take for you to consider the student having turned a new leaf ("I'll feel better able to write a strong letter if your next essay draft were really strong and your attendance improved"). Maybe that will have the dual benefit of allowing you to write the letter and also turn around the student's class performance.
  17. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from socscholar in How much money from your stipend do you save each month? How and why?   
    I like http://www.mint.com as a financial tracker/planner sort of website. It tracks and categorizes your purchases and also has budget planning features.
  18. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from ejbrooks in Does anyone feel like they made the WRONG choice?   
    I'm of the mind that sometimes there is no "wrong" choice, just two different choices. And that we have the ability to make each of them good choices for us and to make ourselves happy wherever we end up.
  19. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from cosmokramer in Bouncing back from a not-great evaluation   
    I think the advice we can offer will depend on the character of the "looseness" of your discussions. Is the trouble that you're letting students run off on tangents? That you can't get a high enough participation rate? That there's not enough structure to the session?

    If the trouble is tangents, I'd say that the thing to do is jump in more often and be a bit more directive. If the trouble is participation, start cold calling. (I tell students they're allowed to "pass" if they don't know the answer, and reiterate that it's okay to give the wrong answer.) I find that cold calling not only ups participation because I'm calling on students to supply the answers, but it also encourages my quiet students to start speaking up more in class, of their own volition.

    If the trouble is structure: I'm in a bit of different situation in that I carry full instruction responsibility for a small class (23 students), but I tend to structure class discussion in various ways. Some days we work together as a class in a very traditional format, but other days we break into groups first before reporting back to class (sometimes all groups work on same activity, other days each group works on a different discussion question to present to class), jigsaw, begin class with a freewrite that feeds into discussion or other write-to-learn activity, discuss with pairs before reporting in.... In short, I work to find ways to structure the class that still rely on student work and effort (and don't have me handing them information).

    I wonder, too, if perhaps some body language would help the character of your discussions (as you mentioned that your prof asked you to "talk louder"). It is possible to develop a teaching style that is more assertive and directive while at the same time remaining approachable and encouraging student input, so it needn't sacrifice the ethos you're working to cultivate.
  20. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from tetrandra in How much money from your stipend do you save each month? How and why?   
    I like http://www.mint.com as a financial tracker/planner sort of website. It tracks and categorizes your purchases and also has budget planning features.
  21. Downvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from quantitative in Your "Best" Student Answers   
    Not to ruin the party, but I have to say that I have huge issues with sites like "Shit my Students Write." Laughing at at something snarky a student wrote is one thing, but sites like that really encourage teachers to rag on students for their lack of understanding, and for missteps they take as they try (their best, as novices) to begin navigating the waters of academic discourse.

    I wrote really embarrassing, really silly things as an undergrad. It would have really hurt me to know that my professors were laughing at everything I turned into them and sharing it with all of their colleagues.

    Students trust us to help them learn, and we're often repeating adages to them like, "there is no stupid question except the one you haven't asked." I still vent to my colleagues, and I still trade stories about unbelievable things my students have done and said. But my new goal is to keep my badmouthing about students to a minimum, especially online.

    </steps off soapbox>
  22. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from mandarin.orange in Your "Best" Student Answers   
    mandarin.orange, I wasn't trying to single you out in any way, and apologize if you took it that way. There are a number of different types of humor represented here, and I agree that a lot of it is benign (julietmercredi's example being a good one). Your PowerPoint I don't see as comparable to what I have issue with at all: your purpose with your PP isn't to make fun of students, but to teach students by showing them what doesn't work well. It sounds like plain old effective pedagogy. I don't see that as at all rhetorically similar to the act of lifting student work out of context and posting it to a site as “evidence of the true cost of educational funding cuts.”

    I just have a bit of a sore spot when it comes to instructors making comments about student writing (as do others in my field, http://scrivel.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/on-shit-my-students-write/ and http://betajames.net/what-i-submitted-to-shit-my-students-write being two examples). And again, I'm not talking about having a good giggle at snarky answers, I'm talking about airing out the muttering we hear in our heads when a student mixes up a homophone or shows undeveloped lines of reasoning.

    I realize that my position is idealistic. I'm not perfect myself, and I get frustrated too. And believe me, having taught freshman composition for two years and counting (a required course that most students don't want to take), I know what it's like to plod through grading really disheartening work. I know what it's like to—having finished a quarter full of thoughtfully commenting on ~300 pages of student drafts—see students turn in portfolios full of the same weaknesses I asked them to fix.

    I think the whole point of my last post was to put out another perspective for others to think about. I spent a lot of time in my first year or so of teaching in the grad office, trashing student work, or complaining about things on Facebook. And I found that this bred even more disillusionment and ill-humor on my part when I sat down to grade more papers. And I noticed that the writing faculty I most respected didn't do this. So my new golden rule has been to treat my venting about student writing like gossip: I try to keep my badmouthing to a very select few (or just within my own head, when at all possible) and to a minimum.
  23. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from natsteel in How much money from your stipend do you save each month? How and why?   
    I like http://www.mint.com as a financial tracker/planner sort of website. It tracks and categorizes your purchases and also has budget planning features.
  24. Downvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from awwdeerp in What's your opinion of the "Occupy Wall St." movement?   
    I fully support the occupy movement. I see the repeated accusations that the protestors don't know what they want as manufactured by corporate-sponsored media as an attempt to discredit and dismiss the occupation.

    I mean, it seems pretty simple to me. OWS is looking for a system where accumulated capital isn't just for the few and isn't built on the backs of the bottom rungs of society. It's looking for, in the words of N. Katherine Hayles, "fair capitalism."

    http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1
  25. Upvote
    runonsentence got a reaction from noodles.galaznik in Resources for Stressed Grads and Applicants   
    Hopeline, the national suicide prevention, awareness, and education organization, has a grad-student specific crisis hotline that I thought would be worth passing on for those feeling the pressure of deadlines, end-of-term craziness, and holiday hecticness:

    http://www.hopeline.com/gradhelp.html

    A number of other helpful resources are available at Grad Resources:

    http://www.gradresources.org/
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