wheatGrass

That would be ideal. But I am so undisciplined about keeping track of time. I need to get better at it, definitely. But at this point, I don't really know how much was unecessary wandering. I have a general idea... I'm also interested in knowing if the time I estimate it has taken me is reasonable.

Sorry. I'm not writing the paper or actually presenting it. I'm just taking the paper and finding lots of great images and choosing the best snippets of text, and putting it all together with notes on when to press 'next'. My previous (masters) advisor (who is giving the presentation) has hired me to do it. I get paid by the hour, but I have been very undisciplined with getting images, going a way off track in my search... I don't want to over-charge because I could have probably done it in considerably less time than it's taking me. I'm just wondering what would be appropriate. Like you, I've never been in this situation before, either. I don't think charging by the slide is the key, since the best presentations have fewer, better slides. (IMO).

How much would you charge to create a powerpoint for a keynote address at a small conference? The paper is about 25 minutes, and it is image/media heavy. I'm very familiar with the material, but I had to find all the images/think of appropriate images for some concepts. Thanks!

Well, you don't really need this now, but I took some extra courses here and there to bring up my GPA and applied at a small school that offers no funding for Masters students. Most grad students are professional track, if that makes any sense. I also had experience in my field, and a decent letter I think. I think things work a bit differently in Canada with respect to master's degrees.

Wow! Can't believe you heard so soon. Congrats. I've heard that we have to wait until the end of March (for SESE and CTL, at least). Mitchsasha, you don't really need this info anymore, but I'll post in case anyone else has similar questions. I had a few email exchanges with various profs at CTL and the current SESE, soon to be something else. One looked over my statement of intent and offered some valuable suggestions, and then we met for coffee a couple of weeks later. From these conversations, I gleaned that for CTL and SESE you pretty much need to have a faculty member advocating for your application, and that each faculty member was 'allowed' only one (or in special cases, two) new students. Not that you are stuck with that faculty member for your whole degree, but that's how the admissions process works. And if you have your own funding, i.e. the big SSHRC, I think they can let you in as a flex-time student, which they have additional spots for. Not 100% sure about this, though. She suggested I write more than I had about why I wanted to work with certain profs, but she said it was a very strong letter. Anyway, it was a good conversation, too, so I hope it was enough to get me in! Now, I'm curious to know if anyone knows when we can expect to hear from York?

Oh, finally some Canadians (or at least applicants to Canadian schools) on this board. OISE says on their RO website not until the end of march, but I have heard it can be later. Anyone know what York's ETA is? I get so jealous when I see all the notifications for US schools rolling in, knowing I have to wait for another month before hearing.

Thanks for this thread. My initial undergrad GPA is sub 3.0, but I took additional upper-level undergrad courses to bring it up, I have a near perfect MA GPA, and a strong application otherwse. I hope I'm as lucky as all of you. I notice that most sub-3.0ers have a Masters... I think this may be key. At least one of the schools I applied to only requires at 3.0+ in the highest or most recent degree.

Hi! Now I have a foot pedal. Can anyone give me tips on the best way to use it with express scribe? It has 3 pedals, left, right, and centre. What are the best settings for each pedal?

During a meeting with a POI at school B, about 2 weeks after the app for School A was due, I found out that one of my main POIs at School A has completely changed her research focus... I mean completely, so that nothing I wrote in the SOP about our common interests was relevant at all. I had had a very positive email exchange with POI from school A, but she never bothered to tell me this? Aarg.

This is all very helpful. I downloaded ExpressScribe and it helps immensely. Does anyone know if you can change the settings for the "play with pause" option? For clarification, it was the prof who is doing the study who suggested the unreasonable rate. I guess I was kind of surprised that he didn't have a good sense of how long transcribing takes at this late-ish point in his career in social science research. Maybe he's always done quantitative research in the past. Good idea about clarifying the expectations about ums and ahs. I have assumed that when he defined transcribing for me (uh, thanks) as "a very detailed written record of the sound file," he meant to include the ums and ahs, but assumptions are dangerous. Again, thanks for the tips.

Unless you work for yourself, though, (which the OP specifically said was out of the question), you are always going to be working on accomplishing someone else's goals. A pharma sales person has to use specific promotional materials etc... to sell the products he or she has been hired to sell. So that's conformity, too, isn't it? They can't just decide they want to promote St. John's Wort instead of Zantax, or write a play about allergy medications to put on for the doctors. In my experience, there is a fair amount of wiggle room in the proscribed curriculum... not in terms of the outcomes/objectives/expectations, but in terms of how you go about it. And sure, you might be stuck with an old or not great text book, but it is up to you how much you actually rely on it. And if you really need to pee you can ask someone to cover your class for 3 minutes. I have not taught at the high school level, so I can't comment on collaborating with other teachers on exam preparation.

Ok, I'm finished my MA and waiting on PhD notifications, which likely won't come until April. So to fill the void, make some money, etc... I've taken a couple of research assistant positions, one of which is outside of my field. I agreed to do some transcribing because I really need the cash. The first problem is the supervisor said: "I have about 20 hours of interviews for you... so that should take you about 30 or 35 hours...." Ummm.... no. I thought that 4 hours to 1 hour was a pretty standard rate, but now I feel bad because it's probably totally screwed up his budget, both cash and time-wise. The problem is, I actually kind of suck at transcribing. I haven't done much of it except for a research methods assignment. I am slower than 4 to 1, that's for sure. Does anyone have any tips on improving transcription skills? I asked for a foot pedal, and he said ok, but he has to buy one, so again, I feel bad about incurring another unforeseen expense. So far I've been using VLC with hot keys. In your experience, will the foot pedal make all the difference? It doesn't help that he constantly talks over the people he's interviewing, and mutters a lot. Also he did a bunch of the interviews in what sound like mall food courts. Come on! On a positive note, it is hilarious to hear him sound completely wasted when I slow down the tape.

School teacher.

I would really like to know the schools you're talking about here... I had kind of resigned myself to not hearing until the end of March, at the earliest. Any chance you'd share?

I anticipate (hope to) have the same dilemma, curious to hear what other people have to say. In addition to the situation described above, I felt an excellent connection with two POIs at my school B and just a very good connection with a more well known but maybe too busy POI at my school A. My school A has a very big department so I would meet lots of like-minded people, and it is in a nice, accessible location. School B has several real experts in my anticipated field but it is a much smaller department, so beyond that little group, I don't know how many other people with the same general interests I'd meet. It is also in a crappy location which would require a long commute. For that reason, I'm guessing there might be less of a community--people might opt to work from home more often.

Ansowego, when you presented in Concordia, had you already begun your PhD program or did you go as a masters student? Both this and AERA are at a kind of awkward time of year for people in between their MA and the start of the PhD, since you have to submit and agree to go before you find out if/where you're going for your PhD. I actually might not have gotten all/any of my notifications by the time AERA rolls around. But there must be a lot of students in this position, so I'm sure my uncertainty isn't unique.

No, AERA it is, although I would actually be able to afford Waterloo, since as of yet I haven't scraped together enough funding to cover my costs for AERA.

Sometimes you can find funding other places. Have you asked your supervisor if she or he knows of any other external travel funding sources? For example, the conference I'm presenting at in the spring has pre-conference seminars for grad students that come with scholarships. They were not easy to find out about... you might have to do some digging, but you could always contact the association that is holding the conference. Also, can you find a way to share accommodations with other grad students? Some conferences have bulletin boards or forums for this kind of thing.

I agree -- I think they will overlook the undergrad, not to mention it was more than 10 years ago. But it is still embarrassing!

Who's going to the AERA annual conference in Vancouver? This will be my first time. I just looked at the program and it is HUGE. How do you decide what to go to?I also applied for a divisional pre-conference seminar. I wonder how competitive these are? Almost all of the POIs I applied to work with will be there... I'm really worried that if they all reject me it will be really awkward. I won't find out about my admission status until a couple of weeks before the conference starts. All the POIs I contacted responded really positively to my emails and they all offered to look over my SOP and thought it was very strong. I'm only worried about my horrendous, embarrassing undergraduate GPA. I just finished my MA with an excellent GPA so I'm hoping they'll overlook it, and my teacher training grades were great, too. Still, the terrible, horrible undergrad grades might still be fresh in their minds when I see them at the conference. I'll be so embarrassed!

I'm going to gripe about my MA program here, since I haven't been accepted to any PhD programs yet. Those programs will be flawless, I'm sure of it. Unless I get rejected everywhere. Then they suck. So, grad student lounges. My school's got one. It's locked. If you want to go in, you have to go to an office at the other end of the building and sign out a key. That's a huge pain, and a locked door isn't exactly inviting, so I've never seen anyone in there. I have inquired about holding discussion groups in there in the evening: Denied. It's only available when the office is open. I was curious about why it was locked--it must be good for them to keep it under lock and key. Wrong. 4 institutional 'lounge' chairs, a coffee table, an institutional 'love seat' (now there's an oxymoron) and a cheap-ass microwave. And 400 copies of campus newspaper back-issues. Next, disorganization. My department doesn't even have a graduate program handbook or some similar thing. There isn't even a university-wide graduate handbook. It's crazy! Finally, funding. There is virtually none. So when I was applying to PhD programs, I didn't apply to this school, where I completed my MA. I interact with the DGS and some of the program coordinators for various reasons, and they all chided me for not applying... hello!? Why would I? They seem totally disconnected with the reality of how serious of a downfall this will be for their newly-minted PhD program. (Keep in mind that tuition is only about $5000 here in Canada, though. But still!) So why did I do my MA here? I had to live in this city for personal reasons, and it was the only option. And as it turned out, my supervisor was amazing and supportive and changed the direction of my academic/professional life. I'll take that! Edited to add: It seems that in Canada, at least in the social sciences and humanities, everyone does an MA before applying for PhD programs. I get the impression that in the US many more people go directly from their undergrad to their PhD.

I'm going to put the issue of whether you should actively try to engage these students aside--you clearly want them to pay attention to what you're showing them on the projector and feel like it is worth some effort to encourage this. Could you just ask them to turn off their monitors while you're speaking/demonstrating? It should be pretty easy for you to see who isn't complying, especially in a darkened room. I did this when I taught younger people in computer labs and it worked really well.

I check my admission status way too much, and I know it won't change from "under review" or "no decision yet" for many, many weeks. I also check gradcafe way too much. I suspect that this is a common problem (or just common and not a problem depending on how you look at it/your propensity to acholism/the frequency of your boss' visits to your workspace). Anyway, I'm coming up with a list of useful things to do instead of checking admit status that take about as long as checking gradcafe and are equally painless/harmless. So far I've only come up with two: write an email or similar message to an old friend from high school or undergrad delete undesirable posts from facebook before Timeline strikes Now I will have to keep returning to gradcafe to see if anyone has any other ideas. Brilliant.

For sure. I was just joshing. I'm also aware of Dildo, Come by Chance, and Conception Bay, all in Newfoundland.

Maps often include "trap streets" or "trap towns"--non-existent streets, towns, or other geographical features--as copyright traps. Blue Ball, PA, huh? Sounds fishy.