comp12

I'm in the Arts where most subfields tend to have small cohorts within each specialty. I am one out of three incoming, which seems to be an average year.

Some schools, such as the Univ. of California, do have loans for this exact purpose. I know at my school, first paychecks don't come until Nov. 1st so there is a fee-less "TA Loan Fund" that grads can apply for in increments of $100 to borrow, which they can pay back in subsequent months. It may he worthwhile to check if your school offers similar programs.

When is the deadline for your decision? It is July.

People, if you check out anon1's other posts, you can gather that she is probably just trolling y'all. This can't be a serious grad applicant, and I wonder if she even has these offers from UCLA and UCSD in-hand. They've been open for months, and I wonder how they are still open as of July, unless anon1 is a Spring applicant.

Two of my colleagues are married to each other and have two children under 5. They make things work. None of them work regular jobs on the side though; they support the family through pooling their research and TA salaries together. They live in on-campus family housing, and take advantage of university resources, such as subsidized daycare services.

Haha, can you tell the OP has one big case of East Coast bias when it comes to perceptions of cities? The point of precipitation certainly has a big affect on how walkable or bikeable a town is. Also, even if Portland is a good "smaller" town, UO is in Eugene, so you'd have to investigate shuttle and public transport options. sometimes, these options seem good at first, but upon closer look, many don't run late at night, on holidays, etc. Also, you've expressed concerns of being too "crowded"? Seattle is fairly urban in that sense. It is a lot like Boston in terms of vibe and culture, but not as hot during the summers. On the SD point...SD has the best weather on the continent hands down, 75 degrees and sunny year round. Depending on whether you're looking at UCSD or SDSU though, the actual environment of the town will differ. La Jolla is an affluent enclave by the beach, while State is more in the city, in a noisy partying part of town. But as far as the city goes, yes it is one of the top 10 cities in America, bigger than DC, Boston, and Seattle; but like any other SoCal city, is rather sprawling. That means it is not very crowded, however, most people do have cars to get around.

New Orleans this year ought to be a conference for the ages: AMS, SEM, and SMT. Anybody planning on going, even if you are not presenting/funded by your department?

Just for fun - what do you guys put in your email signature? Name, email, degree/current program?, office location, office hours, name of current course that you are TAing?, previous degrees that you hold?

Thanks guys. I do wonder, if there are any posters here who have experienced an adviser, with whom they've really enjoyed working, leaving the university as a result of tenure review. I'd be curious how they found the transition of switching to another professor in the middle of their degree.

What thoughts do people have about picking an Assistant Professor as your PhD adviser. What advantages/disadvantages do you see in selecting a professor who is going up for tenure review? Perhaps s/he would be more inclined to advise you since s/he is being reviewed for service. Or the opposite, because the stress and time commitments of tenure review would distract from advising responsibilities that are in the best interest of the student? Also, there of course is always the chance the professor does not get promoted to Associate, leaving the student in the dark to find another adviser midway through the PhD. Thoughts?

As for historical musicology, 98% of the time I have heard that term, it has been applied to mean music of the Western classical cannon. There are quite a number of popular music scholars today (probably way more than I think you might be assuming, and the amount of punk-specific scholarship out there is also somewhat substantial, especially in relation to cultural and gender studies), but most of the time they are more associated with the ethnomusicology strand, or just simply musicology. There is a society for popular musicology: IASPM. They also keep a list of some grad programs of the field by country and by state: http://www.iaspm.net...ngpopularmusic/ That might be interesting to poke through as a start.

I use pdf-notes on iPad, and am pretty happy with it. It lets you annotate with customizable highlights and free-hand drawing, and also let's you type text and export your annotated PDFs.

I'm in a field that is relatively small (and in turn, means departments that are also very small) that the very thought of in-dating induces a discomfort. However, I'm also part of a field that has stereotypically had high LGBTQ community, so attitudes regarding dating are fairly liberal, just it is rare within the same departments.

This is an article to show the next person that says this to you: http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/

What is the best way to handle clearly irrelevant / wrong comments on student teaching evaluations when those are being used for a job application dossier? For example, the students comments may contain personal identifying information, incorrect information, inappropriate tone, etc. Obviously, this is not to remove negative evaluations in order to create a misleading teaching portfolio, but would it be considered an acceptable practice to redact such comments?

If one is using Chicago style, I think usually it is preferred to have superscripts placed after the punctuation: Q. When using a superscript footnote number at the end of a sentence, should the period precede or follow the footnote number? What about footnote numbers in midsentence that fall next to some other form of punctuation (comma, semicolon, etc.)? A. Please see CMOS 14.21: “A note number should generally be placed at the end of a sentence or at the end of a clause. The number normally follows a quotation (whether it is run into the text or set as an extract). Relative to other punctuation, the number follows any punctuation mark except for the dash, which it precedes.” See 14.21 for examples.

I suppose one can always ask their department if there are any TAships/instructors needed for a summer session, but if there are none, what tips do you have for a grad to keep up their academic activity and build their CV during the summer months? Look for adjunct work? Of course, one can always find any random day job to fill up the months, but when it is time to apply for tenure track teaching positions after graduation, but there must be ways to have summers spent more productively? What do some of Gradcafe folks like to do?

Who is the point of contact that you should try to find? Let's say you are in/near a major city with several universities and community colleges. Do you go for the chair? the grad director? an administrative person? Also - for students currently enrolled in a PhD program, would it be frowned upon to apply for external adjunct spots while still on funding/TAship at home?

What tips do you have for interviewing for a TA position (in the humanities)? What is the protocol for bringing a teaching dossier? Do you bring faculty evaluations and/or student evaluations, and syllabuses of the previous classes you've TA'ed? Anybody with experience doing this?

I updated mine after I sent in my acceptance, and got my new .edu email address activated

Definitely ask for an extension (if you haven't done so already)! The worst feeling in the world would hit you, when/if you officially accept a second choice and then go on to receive an accept from your dream choice. Accepting and then withdrawing is an option, but you run the risk of alienating some people in the field that you will likely encounter later.

EB456, I was in almost an identical situation. School A for me was the one much higher NRC-"ranked" (although my field is a creative emphasis rather than pure research, rankings matter less per se, but School A had the bigger reputation with more well-known alumni in any case), whereas School B was the one close to home/family with a higher funding package, and still a good reputation albeit without the plethora of internationally renowned alumni like School A. I ended up choosing school A for the reputation of the department and faculty and alumni. It was painful to down down school B since it had a more prestigious funding fellowship, and for like a whole 2 weeks after making the decision I was in agony over possibly making the wrong choice. However, I knew beforehand that it is in my nature to always play the "grass is greener" game, and I would've second guessed myself no matter what, much like splitend says. In the recent few days, I've begun getting myself excited over the program I did pick, and I'm starting to feel much better. Like snes says, I'm focusing on why in fact I did pick this program in the first place, and deep down I know I made the smarter, more rational choice. Anyways, congrats on having successfully navigated the application process, and good luck with your studies!

April 15th is here! Congrats to everyone on a crazy but successful admissions season! See you future doctors at conferences and festivals. Happy studies!

I'm curious too about the Rita Atkinson apartments. They look gorgeous in all the literature. Anybody with first hand experience? The bad thing is they don't come with parking, so I guess you'd have to spend 60+ per month on a pass at one of the neighboring campus lots, which is lame since a big draw of Rita is its central location.

I'm really starting to get upset by the schools that still haven't released notifications yet I want to move on with my life already!