jasper.milvain

Amen, Lyoness. This sounds a lot like my husband. I'm forever grateful that he's not an academic, because he can pull me out of my obsessive thought patterns and remind me that there is life outside of academia. I've been much calmer since we started living together. Which is to say that I'm still a bit of a hyper-competitive stress case, but I don't spend weekends in my pjs eating frozen cookie dough any more. We met during my undergrad, and then did a year of long distance before he moved to where I was for my MA. Like other people have said, the distance was really good for us. It made us that much more certain that the other person was the one for us, and taught us to appreciate each other more. I will say, though, that long distance is probably easier on people who have low-maitenance relationships. We visited every two months or so, and talked on the phone maybe once every three or four days. It was amazing when we saw each other, but we didn't stress out about day to day stuff. We trusted the other person and had a plan to end the distance. I have friends who have been in LDRs where they talk to each other constantly, to the point where they refuse social invitations because they conflict with a daily phone date. I can see that being a real problem when working on a PhD, since you can get so much out of following through on random social/professional activities, and wouldn't want to be constantly distracted from work. I applied to four schools--one in our current city, one in our shared hometown where all our family lives, and two in a province on the other side of the country. I luckily got in everywhere, and chose our hometown. To be honest, taking my husband into consideration made me not take the far flung schools as seriously as I may have otherwise done, but I'm very lucky to have a good program in a city where he has friends and support. My biggest relationship-related annoyance during this whole thing has been people asking in hushed, scared tones "And what will your husband do if you move?!?" As if I was asking something crazy of him to support me in my life's work. "He'll move where we have to." "Really?" It was like he deserved a medal for being willing to move for his wife's career. My PhD is damned important to BOTH of us, people! By the billionth time I got asked, I started fantasizing about saying "Well, y'know, I've only been working towards this every day for six years now, so it hasn't really come up in conversation...." or "My husband doesn't believe that women should be in grad school. We're going to divorce." :roll:

Well funded future destroys present motivation. That MA paper is getting neglected now that I've pulled the plug on a PhD acceptance.

My TA experience has been very hands-on (running seminars, holding office hours, helping students, grading), but I have friends in science programs whose TAships consist of only marking, no direct contact with students. Your discipline may help you out here. It's probably best to ask, though.

As long as you find a place on the Skytrain, you'll be fine. It runs in a loop through the suburbs, but has a branch that goes downtown. I live in East Vancouver, and I can get to SFU in 45 minutes and downtown in about 20 using transit. Is the graduate family housing on campus? I currently attend SFU, and would strongly strongly STRONGLY recommend against living on campus. It's beautiful up on the mountain, but it's pretty isolated. It's really a commuter campus. Everything shuts down around six or seven in the evening. There's not even a real grocery store up there, and sometimes in the winter you're literally stuck inside a rain cloud for months at a time. Then there's the issue of snow--it doesn't take much to close the campus down, since there's very little in place to clear it away and nobody (including the busses) has snow tires. I got stuck on campus for 48 hours once because of four or five inches of snow. Not fun. I have friends who live on campus and regret it. I'll second the last commenter's praise of the public transit here. As an SFU student, you'll have a bus pass included in your tuition. Unlimited transit across all three zones for $98 a TERM. It's amazing. Take advantage of it. Burnaby's generally a safe bet. I also really recommend East Vancouver. As long as you avoid East Hastings Street west of Commercial, you're in fine shape. Hastings around Nanaimo has a very cool neighbourhood feel, and Commercial Drive is a great place for cheap groceries, good food, and good bars. If you want an area that will be cheap and quiet without being boring, check out places between Commercial and Boundary, near either the Renfrew or Rupert skytrain stations. That way you're at the very eastern edge of Vancouver and able to get to SFU quickly, but you're also close to everything going on around Commercial. Just try to stay somewhat north, maybe as far north as Hastings and only as far south as 25th Ave or so. Hope this helps. I love SFU and will miss it very much when I leave. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

The SSHRC money that's getting earmarked for business-related projects is cut money that the government is restoring specifically for this purpose. It's NOT going to result in fewer non-business-related SSHRCs this year. Not saying that it's not worth getting mad over, but it's not something to freak out over in the context of this year's results, either. ec86, it's my understanding that the ranking committees in Ottawa use a points system to rank students. I assume that they allocate CGS money based on high point totals, regardless of regional/academic affiliation. And if the OP is still hanging around, the commenter who said that forwarded MA SSHRCS are shoo-ins was absolutely right. Unless you've got something strange on your app, like a nightmare semester, you'll be getting good news. They just go down the list and check applications against the ground rules. Now that my PhD acceptance is all set, I'm starting to worry about SSHRC again... I had an MA SSHRC this year, and I'm hoping that helps me in the PhD competition. Good luck, everyone!

I've been living in Vancouver for the past six years, and I've lived on that amount. For the first year of my MA, I had TA work worth about $5000 a term, and made it work. I never ever want to do that ever again, of course, but it's doable for a few years while you're scraping together something better. I got two $580 paychecks a month. One would go entirely to rent/utilities, and I'd live off the second. Out of that second check, about $200 or $250 would go towards paying down my tuition, leaving me with a little over $300 for food, clothes, beer, etc. Since SFU and UBC both have mandatory, insanely cheap buss passes included in tuition, I never had to worry about affording transportation. Every so often I would find some extra money from things like stipended committee positions, small internal awards, or a few dozen hours of marking work, and I'd use that to pay down my credit card. Granted, I live with a partner and that brought my rent down. But I know people who have single bedroom apartments for $700-$800 in East Vancouver. If you really want to go to UBC, you can absolutely make it work.

I worked for a year in an admissions office, and filed literally hundreds of GRE scores. I can tell you that it was VERY common for the scores to be lopsided in a way that matched the students' interests (physicists rocked the quantitative, sociologists, not so much). Not sure how much it factored in to final decisions, but if they rejected everyone with an uneven GRE score, they'd have nobody left.

Canadian deadlines can vary widely from school to school. I've had a range of deadlines given to me, from February 23rd to the end of March. It seems like they're flexible, though, unlike the American date. Have you contacted McMaster and asked for a timeline? You can't possibly be the only person in your situation. I'm sure they have some way to accomodate American deadlines.

At this point, it may be the five years out of school that's making you an unattractive candidate (I assume that you haven't been in school for the five years you've been applying to programs). Have you considered seeing if a local school will let you take a few honors or graduate seminars to show that you're up to date and prove your commitment to the field?