jasper.milvain

Can we all start school now, please?

Why not come up with a plan for a project of your own and set a meeting to talk about it? It would provide you with a chance to find out if you're on the right track, and get you the face time you want in a positive way. Seems like you need to stop thinking about the other student's relationship with the advisor and focus solely on your own. Maybe they they spent three hours discussing research, maybe they spent it talking about their favorite tv show, maybe it was a disciplinary meeting. You can't know, and it really has little to do with you. Relationships with advisors are built slowly and with effort. Make a point of showing your own engagement and progress to him/her, and work on building that relationship.

There also might be a difference between its role in getting basic funding (probably minimal) and its role in getting competitive university-level awards (likely much larger).

I'm not sure how well it would work for business, but the book 'Graduate Study for the 21st Century' by Gregory Colon Semeza is great. Geared towards the humanities, but it has a lot of good advice about negotiating requirements, prioritizing important work, writing papers, etc. It's also written in a very spirited tone that always energizes me. If you haven't already done so, read every scrap of information on your department's website, and on the grad studies website for your school. Make sure you know the requirements, the support systems, the various sources of funding, and the time limits. Otherwise, just take good care of yourself and keep your eyes open when you get there. Most things that are important will likely be 'unknown unknowns', things you can't predict yet. Every school, every program, every cohort is different. Laptops are the norm in many places, but using one was a huge faux pas in my MA program. Just come in aware and ready to adapt, and you'll be fine.

I vote go. By starting four months later than the rest of your cohort, you'll miss out on all sorts of group bonding moments, and will have a harder time integrating socially. If you're not the type to befriend classmates, this might not matter too much. But you'll also likely miss out on all sorts of orientation exercises, at the department and university level. Long distance is really hard. But you'd be going into it with all sorts of advantages: a strong relationship already in place, an exciting new program to distract you from the pain, and a clear end date to the distance. I did eight months of long distance with my husband before we were married and while I NEVER want to do that EVER again, there were some great things that came out of it. We had incredible visits. We clarified how committed we were. And I was more productive at school than I had ever been before. It might actually help you get off to a solid start in your program--you'll have lots of time for reading, and total freedom to accept invitations to drink with your classmates without worrying about your partner.

I agree with Stories. I didn't contact anyone and went 4/4. My department's superstar grad student didn't contact anyone and went 3/4. I know a handful of other people with similar results. On the other hand, I know people who have made excellent connections and greatly improved their chances by contacting supervisors. Going into my first term, I wish I knew my potential supervisor a bit better. So 'good idea, but not critical' matches my (admittedly limited) experience quite well. I also know people who absolutely tanked their chances of admission by being rude during intial contacts. One asked how many hours of a potential supervisor's time he would get each week WHEN she was his supervisor. Very presumptuous, very demanding. Being rude to the department's admin workers can also be a kiss of death. Make sure to be faultlessly polite. I think it probably is too early to contact people. Most professors will be enjoying their research terms right now, and may be avoiding thinking about fall 2009, let alone fall 2010. You want to be fresh in their minds when application evaluation time comes.

My husband and I recently went on our first condo hunting trip in my PhD city. Surprisingly, when we went to get pre-qualified, the bank accepted my funding offer as stable income no problem, but wanted more assurances about my husband's job (he has worked for a big, stable, national company for four years). Didn't see that one coming. We're looking at 2 bedroom condos that are $200,000 - $250,000. I've been playing with mortage schedules, and it looks like we'll be able to recoup closing costs and build up a significant chunk of principle even if we move in five or six years. We currently pay $1100 in rent, and will likely end up paying between $1200 and $1500 on a mortgage for a significantly larger place. It all seems much more doable than it looked at first-- we just need a few more things to fall into place. *fingers crossed* **As always, I'm Canadian, so American mileage may vary.

I'm in the book or two a week camp, as well. I have about 30 books to go through that are actually in my dresser because I ran out of bookshelf space. I'm reading a mix of Victorian canon and late 19th-early 20th C adventure/romance fiction. Sounds like I'm out of step with the rest of you. Good luck, all.

Canadian, actually. But I'm going to a school in a city I'm very familiar with and used to live, so I can definitely see how my experience is very different from an international student with more unknowns in play. That sounds like a very reasonable reaction to the stress and excitement of starting a new program in a new place. Just keep in mind that if others seem less eager, it may be because they don't share your experience or anxiety, not that they are uniterested in being your colleague. Hope it works out. Good luck with your transition and your grad school career!

Sorry about the rejection. It could be something as simple as decreasing cohort size. For anyone considering writing a letter to ask about reasons for rejection, here's the thing from a DGS standpoint via the Chronicle of Higher Education forums: http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/t ... 689.0.html If you ignore the flame war, it's interesting.

I don't think it's immoral, but if I got cold e-mails from future cohort-mates that I didn't know, I would likely be more annoyed than intrigued. Don't get me wrong- I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone in the fall- but it's still only June, and mass conversations get unwieldly and inbox-clogging on e-mail. Why not set up a facebook group, and then ask the graduate secretary if she'd be willing to e-mail out the link to everyone? That way, people can opt in or out of the discussion, and you're keeping it in a cleaner spot for group discussion.

This is what my life looked like during a term of coursework in my MA. I assume the beginning of my PhD will be pretty much the same (except at the new institution I'll be taking one more class per term and not teaching for the first year, and have more research side projects). 8:30 Wake up, drink coffee, check internet. 9:30 Read on the bus (either my reading, or stuff I'm teaching). 10:30 Attend lecture for the course I'm TAing, make a rough plan for the seminar I have to run during lecture (this was actively encouraged, not slacking). 11:30 Run seminar (17 students). 12:30 Grab some friends, go for lunch. 1:30 Office hours. Nobody comes, so do more reading. 2:30 Some mix of reading, library trips, paperwork/planning, gossipping in the hallway with other students, going to profs' office hours, and writing up small assignments. 3:30 Ditto 4:30 If one of my two seminars runs tonight, attend seminar from 4:30 to 8:30. If not, go home, cook dinner, and get a bunch more reading done until my husband comes home. Then stop and watch cheesy horror movies and chat about our days. 11:30 Go to sleep. I always got at least 8, if not 9 hours of sleep, never pulled an all nighter, and almost always had time to spend with my husband and friends. On any given day I would have between 0 and 9 hours of strictly scheduled work (lectures, seminars, office hours, grad classes) and between 0 and infinity hours of unscheduled work (marking, reading for class, reading for research, getting to know my field, writing papers, writing grant apps, attending talks, applying for conferences, prepping conference papers, working on various committees). It was a very rare day that I put in more than 12 hours, though. As you can see, the arduous parts of my day were broken up with lots of less formal, 'fun' work that doesn't really feel like work.

*Edited to be less of a douchebag.

I'm in Vancouver and also received my letter today. I got a 15.9/30. Ouch! Even though my score is so low, though, I got the boilerplate about being placed on a waiting list and hearing within the next six months. This is somewhat unsettling for me. :shock: I have internal funding at my school that is the equivalent of a CGS for two years, and I'll lose it if I get SSHRC. Not knowing for sure and for good that my internal money is safe until the end of November? Not good. I hope that I'm waaaaay faaaaaar down the wait list, and that all of you other lovely waitlisted posters get the money. Congrats to all the recent winners, and hugs for all those bound for next year's competition. I agree with snasser that the hopeful tone of this thread is excellent. We're all doing good work, winners and potential-future-winners.

Thanks, ogopogo. I like my odds for next year. I got positive feedback on my project from some very SSHRC savvy profs, so I'm hoping that in the coming round I'll have more sympathetic readers at the Ottawa level. After recovering from the ego blow, I've realized that all of the work I put into my SSHRC application has benefited me immensely. I clarified my project and built up a bibliography. I also used my SSHRC proposal as a research statement for my PhD apps, and it served me very well. I was given one week by my department to put an early proposal together to make the Vanier deadline, and even though that didn't make it out of the department, I impressed the hell out of my supervisor and key letter writer by throwing myself into multiple drafts while suffering through a horrible round of flu. If I work my ass off at every opportunity, something's bound to stick! (Can you tell that one of my goals is to keep positive to avoid burnout? It works most of the time. And for the rest of the time, there's chocolate and beer.)

Congrats ogopogo!

I don't know anything about statistics, but I do know several people who have pursued a second undergraduate degree. It can be done, and it can often be done in less time than the first. If you decide to go for it, I would suggest waiting for a few years first. Work a handful of jobs, see if being away from the pressures of school helps your test anxiety, figure out exactly what kind of life you want, and what kind you don't. You only get one shot at a PhD, unlike your undergrad, and you want to make sure that you're in the right place personally and emotionally as well as crystal clear about your goals and abilities when you start work. That way, when you do coursework to raise your statistics GPA, you can also be very deliberate about choosing courses and professors that/who will help you get into a good program. Best of luck.

Whoa! Or they have a grad chair who is out of the country and can't authorize releasing the results... or a crazy grad secretary who has some weird sense of privacy that keeps her from telling... or any of a number of stupid red tape f*ck ups. I don't see why a department would only tell the people who succeeded. They're going to have to help find funding for the people who didn't. It makes no sense to only release successful results. Don't scare people who may actually be SSHRC recipients with tight-lipped administrators!

You're very welcome, Cillian! Thinking of the process as Alice in Wonderland would certainly help with some of the absurdity of it. Next time I hit some red tape, I'm picturing Tweedledee and Tweedledum

It sounds like the kind of information that a department graduate chair would know, as would a graduate secretary (or whatever you call the admin worker who processes files at the dept. level). I agree with glasses and the others that the information wouldn't be that helpful.

That site won't be updated for months, chenzitian. They only post it after all the awards are finalized (the people in the states have turned down their CGS awards, those have been passed along to other people, etc). It's definitely not the first place you'll see results! The Dean of Grad Studies office has them... maybe a sob story about how long you've been waiting and how desperately you need an answer would help?

Pretty much all programs in Canada.

Have you checked the handbook from whoever administers the grant? Oftentimes the Dean of Graduate Studies office (or equivalent) administers larger awards, and they have their own rules about which forms of funding can be held at the same time. My suspicion would be that you can't hold both... that the department will want to offload the expense of funding you onto the university so that they can fund someone else and share the wealth. Definitely worth asking, though. Maybe an e-mail to your department's DGS along the lines of "Dear Professor GradChair, I'm writing to share the good news that I've been selected as a finalist for Awesome Fellowship. Do you know who I should contact with questions about whether it would be possible to hold Awesome Fellowship and Department Stipend concurrently, should I be successful? Thank you for your time, and I look forward to joining your department in the fall."

I have an extremely embarrassing C in an upper-level philosophy course in the fourth year of my undergrad. The kicker? It was a 'Philosophy of Literature' course, and I'm a lit student. Doesn't seem to have hurt me. I'm sure you'll be fine.

That's crappy, Kuba. I'm right there with you. I'm sorry about fall funding--the TA cuts are brutal. Many of the grad students over in English pick up marking for Douglas or Langara ($20/h and $15/h). You can't live off of it, but it can help cover some gaps.