TakeruK

Indeed, I think that if you find something helpful and it's not actually harming you, then you should certainly continue to do so! I do this with "Emergen-C" and also eating chicken soup or other comfort foods

Trying to find equivalent medicines in the US is so frustrating! I didn't know the generic name for Gravol and the first time I tried to find it in a store, no one had any idea what I was looking for. Eventually, I learned that the equivalent is Draminine and was able to get it. For colds though, I believe that Health Canada has shown that Cold FX does not have any scientific evidence to back up its claims. I have not really had much success with it myself in Canada (and I'm willing to try a lot of things!). To fight off colds, my standard regimen is to take the maximum dosage of DayQuil Severe Cold & Flu or its generic equivalent during the day and Nyquil during the night. The medical ingredients I look for are acetaminophen (same as tylenol) for headaches/sore throat pain, dextromethorphan (for cough suppression), guaifenesin (expectorant/mucus clearing) and phenylephrine (decongestant). If you look at the active ingredients for most over-the-counter cold remedies, you'll find some combination of these four. NOTE: Be careful when taking Tylenol with other drugs also containing acetaminophen! I find that this combination does wonders for helping me deal with the symptoms of the cold so that I can get on with my day. However, there isn't really a "cure" for the cold, there only exists drugs that help you manage symptoms so you can recover. So, don't forget to take care of your body too: get lots of rest (might just work a few hours from home doing readings or emails etc.), lots of fluids. With proper rest, I get over a cold in 2 or 3 days, and usually only miss 1 or 2 days of work. In addition to the above, supplemental things I do to make myself feel better are Halls for sore throat and mucus clearing and trying extra to eat food that are good for me. I sometimes take Vitamin C supplements (Emergen-C) but I also do not think there are any evidence to show these types of products actually help either (but, like Cold FX, if it makes you/me feel better, then it doesn't hurt!)

I have a friend who has a similar health issue with a long list of things they can and cannot eat. My friend often brings their own food to events that include meals so that they can participate in the event and just eat something they know that is okay for them to eat. My friend also designed a helpful little card (business card sized) that lists things that are okay / not okay that they use when they eat at a restaurant. It's mostly things like certain oils or contamination from other dishes that they are worried about (e.g. ingredients that aren't on the menu!). So, that could also be an option if the meals are at a restaurant instead of catered at the department. Usually, when the visitation weekends are planned, the admins will ask visitors for any food allergies to ensure they order something that everyone can eat. If they are ordering individual meals, then I think you can either just mention you have a lot of food allergies and you will just bring your own food. Often, they might offer to get the caterer to make a special meal for you and then you will be put in contact directly with the person making the food so that they design something you can eat. This happens when the on-campus caterer is catering food for our events. However, usually for large groups, they are not going to order individual meals, but will probably give options like "eat meat and vegetables", "vegetarian", "vegan" etc. For this, you can again say food allergies or just pick an option that closely matches what you can eat and bring your own food in case, or just let them know you will bring your own meal. Definitely want to say that even if you can't eat the food at the meal, you should still attend and use the time to socialize!

The following is under the assumption that your school/department/advisors operates on a vacation policy that is typically seen in my field (i.e. you get something like X days per year but it is subject to advisor approval in case they need you there for an experiment or something). I would normally do it in person too. I usually ask my advisor during one of my regular weekly meetings. I agree with all of the others that you should simply propose dates for approval instead of asking when is okay. For my advisor and I, it's never about asking permission, only about giving them a heads up so I don't usually phrase it as a permission, but more like "Hey, I'm planning to add a week of vacation along with that conference in Hawaii, would that be a problem?" For things that are less than a week long (e.g. I'm just taking an extra Friday or Monday off to get a long weekend), I don't usually mention it unless I am supposed to meet with my advisor that day. But again, much will vary on the norms in your field/department and on your relationship with your advisor and on the nature of your work and their expectations. I used to always mention even taking a half day (or a few hours) off for a dentist appointment, but my advisor made it clear that I should not need to feel like I have to ask permission to do that. My advisor considers the flexibility of setting your own schedule a perk of graduate student life, to make up for the other not so fun parts! Finally, if you know your advisor is strict about vacation time, and/or they might be forgetful, then perhaps an email might be a good idea, so that there is a "paper trail". Ideally, I would say you should ask in person, and then when you get back to your desk immediately send an email to confirm. Something like "Just writing to confirm that I will be away from Dec X to Jan Y for a personal trip home" etc. If you aren't able to meet your advisor in person before you can book, then an email is okay.

I understand that you are feeling like this is now destined but it is not! Yes, what you are saying is true---everything is related to each other a little bit, but it is akin to saying that because you missed one payment on your phone bill, your credit rating is now ruined forever and you will never be able to get a mortgage and thus you'll be homeless in the future. You're really stretching it when you say this next homework assignment will have this much influence! To me, what it sounds like is that you are experiencing a lot of self-doubt in your ability to keep up with the program. I think you really need to talk to someone, as soon as possible. Resources as suggested by Psycherd12 would be a really really good idea. A lot of students in universities seek this kind of help. Did you know that 1 in 5 students in the United States have used counseling services to help them through tough times? Graduate schools invest money into these resources for their students for a reason! Please do speak to someone soon. If you cannot speak to a counselor, is there someone you trust at the current school or elsewhere? I agree that professors are not a good resource right at this moment (but you should talk to them later on in order to figure out what you can do in the future). I made close friends in undergrad and we went to different places for grad schools (or non grad school paths). Skyping or emailing them helped keep me grounded in my first semester of grad school too. I think it's especially nice to talk to someone who isn't a graduate student to help keep everything in perspective. At this point, I see how 2 more years of struggling through coursework with this crisis sounds terrible. But there are lots of people and resources on campus that will help you so that you can remove yourself from the crisis and then you will be able to be your full graduate student potential! Let them help you.

Don't drop out yet! Especially not because of homework assignment grades! Adjusting to graduate school is hard. Everyone in your program used to be near the top of their undergraduate program. This is a tough change and I just want you to know that a lot of students feel something similar as you. You're right that it's not quite "imposter syndrome" in the sense that we normally hear about it. This is a little different, but also common in academia, I believe. You mention that you are afraid you are no longer improving or even losing your skills. And you come to this conclusion because you have had successes in the past but they are not happening now, in graduate school. This is a feeling that is common to many students. One of the things about academia is that we often equate success/productivity with some sort of product or shiny thing, like a paper, an award, or a high mark in a class. I think it's important to move beyond this mindset, especially when you move away form coursework completely and it's all 100% research. You will get to that shiny thing eventually but it will take some time. For some students, they had always been near the best so the shiny thing wasn't as hard to get to. Now, the shiny thing will take longer to get to but that doesn't mean your skills have diminished. Instead, it just means you are now being challenged at a higher level and the shiny thing is harder to achieve! These are long term things though. For the short term, rising_star made some very good suggestions to keep yourself healthy and how to take action to improve on future assignments. It's a cliche but graduate school really is a marathon and it's important to find and build a good support network to help you through the tougher times. Finally, just to share a story with some advice for our field: I came into my PhD program with a Masters degree and one of the first courses I took was the exact topic of my Masters thesis work. I was working with other students on the first problem set and there was a question that I thought I knew how to do because I had an idea on how to approach it based on my Masters work. But it was all wrong! I missed some very fundamental issues that you would learn in a beginning undergraduate physics class! And one of the other students pointed out a very simple solution that clearly shows they truly understood the concepts where I didn't. That was a really sucky experience and I felt terrible about myself and my ability. But I tried to learn from it and eventually it turns out there were things I knew that the others didn't and by the end of the school year, we all learned that most of us felt the same way as me in the first few months. My advice would be to be patient and give it time. Also, in physics type programs, it's almost essential to work with your classmates on the assignments. In the classes I took, there was usually no spread in the grades because we all worked together to come up with the same solutions (following class and university policies of course---we discussed approaches together but wrote up our own work so the differences in grades was only due to how well we wrote up each approach).

I am too far removed from your field to be able to give a helpful answer to question 1! For question 2, I put volunteer work in the appropriate category in my CV. My experience sections in the CV were research experience, teaching experience and service/leadership. So, if the volunteer work was a volunteer tutor or science camp instructor, then I just put it under teaching experience. In my field, I don't think it's really necessary to distinguish between paid work and volunteer work in most cases. In the few cases where it was important, I just put a note like "(volunteer work)" for the relevant entries. However, for the schools that asked for this distinction, it was often something I had to enter directly into the application form itself rather than include on the CV.

You should follow the instructions on the application as they are stated. Some ask for all post-secondary transcripts and you should submit them in this case. I would not be worried about the low GPA there though because it does not sound like your vocational school work is relevant to your PhD application? Also, your more recent academic performance would be considered much more highly than these old grades.

I think it should be okay to just directly email (or use your/the professor's favourite form of communication) and straight up ask if they have any openings for a research assistant. It's not really begging! This is how I got almost all of my research assistantships in undergrad (in my field, our graduate research assistantships are always paid for by our thesis advisor). I just wrote to a few professors whose interests matched mine. I introduced myself, included my year of study (in my field, this is a quick way to summarize your coursework since they are from the same department), summarized my past research projects and stated my interests. I then asked if they had any openings for research assistants for next semester. As for paid vs not-paid work, I think you would have to consult those in your field as I am guessing the norms might be really different here. In my field, most professors will not supervise unpaid research assistants. I support this because I do not think it is fair to not pay an undergraduate researcher. An unpaid research position is a position that is not equal-opportunity---only students who are financially able to work for free would get the chance and I think that is not fair.

For the schools that do not ask, I can't say for certain what the best path for you would be. I can only say what I would personally be comfortable with doing. At a minimum, you must be certain that you answer all of the applications truthfully and completely, as you generally have to sign to affirm this when you submit your application. Personally, I think you should also answer the "spirit" of the questions, not just answering them to the letter. If the schools do not ask for anything of this nature, I personally would be comfortable with not including it. Again, this is how I think I would behave, if I was in your position; it's not necessarily neither the "right" thing to do, nor the only right thing to do. I think including the reflection paper would be a good idea for schools where you tell them about what happened.

First of all, based on the limited details provided here, I just want to say that it is not "unfortunately [you] were held responsible too". Maybe I am wrong because you are omitting a lot of other details, and if so I apologize. But unless your friend did something like steal your homework from you or from the homework dropbox, then I would say you are (at least partly) responsible for the cheating. I am not pointing this out to make you feel bad or to bring up the accusations again. I am saying this because I hope to help you. I want you to know that framing this whole thing as "not your responsibility" will not help you when you apply to graduate schools. When you explain this, you should be honest in what happened, accept responsibility, and show that you have learned from this event. I don't think that schools will automatically disqualify you for instances like this. In my opinion, extremely harsh zero tolerance policies do not result in 100% honest behaviour. If the "punishment does not fit the crime" (so to speak), then professors, TAs, etc. will be more reluctant to properly report cases and investigate them. No one wants to expel or fail a student because they made one mistake or forgot a citation, for example. Finally, it will be worth your time to carefully research if the schools you are applying to will even know about this event happening. I can only think of three ways for the school to find out: 1) this is recorded on your transcript, 2) someone who writes your LOR knows about this and writes about it, or 3) you are asked about this in the application form. For (1), you can order a transcript to yourself and see if it's there. For (2), you pick who writes the LOR. For (3), you must be absolutely honest, and this is where my second paragraph above comes in: Explain what happened, take responsibility, show that you learned and it won't happened again. People make mistakes. It's okay. But before you do this, find out what the school will know---remember that your current school isn't going to send your entire student record to the schools you apply to.

I do think there is a balance in deciding on what kind of things to correct as an instructor (whether it's a TA, lecturer, faculty member etc.). However, I also do strongly believe that as an instructor for a certain course, we are responsible for more than just instruction in the course material! I do think that email etiquette falls within the "jurisdiction" of an instructor for an introductory college class. I also think there are multiple levels here too. As fuzzy said, there is certainly a minimum set of conditions for how you want to be addressed and this is absolutely a legitimate thing for an instructor to address, no matter the level of the student. For large classes, I think it is a good idea to spell this out in a syllabus or some kind of handout/email/mass message to the whole class. I agree with fuzzy and the links in their first post to do a brief and concise of overall communication expectations/standards and then address individual issues with individuals as they come up. Another way to teach this is to roll it in with general communication expectations. Each person might find their own best way to do this, but in the classes I TA for, I run tutorials/recitations/discussion (whatever you'd like to call them) where we are in small groups and we discuss the course material together. On the first day of each course, I always go over some "ground rules" for discussion---basic things to encourage collaborative and friendly communication so that we can all learn. I think this is a natural place to include email along with in-person communication. To give another example of where I think it is certainly within "our place" to teach beyond the syllabus: when I teach more senior students (i.e. those that are going to be entering my field, not just taking the class because they need to fulfill breadth requirements), I do take the extra time to correct things that are not quite wrong but not the "norm" of our field. Just small convention things. An example would be that for some types of diagrams, astronomers like to plot the horizontal axis so that temperature increases to the left, instead of to the right. If a student plots it the intuitive way (left to right), I will make a note that standard convention is the opposite. But unless it is a criteria of the assignment, they won't lose points, it will just be a "friendly correction" to help them learn the community's norms. I said that there is a balance based on the students and I would agree that this type of extra correction would not be appropriate for an introductory class, because in that class, the emphasis is on much more basic things and I wouldn't want my students distracted by small conventions like this and miss out the real reason for making the plot in the first place.

By design, TheGradCafe is a place for people (mostly prospective or current graduate students, but also some postdocs, graduates, and faculty) to form a community to discuss whatever topics interests the community. By nature, the topics are going to be graduate school and academia related. There is no promise or guarantee of useful answers. I am not trying to say TheGradCafe is objectively useful resource and I'm not trying to convince you of this either. As I stated above, TheGradCafe is what it is and some people find it useful and helpful and they stay. Others do not find it helpful beyond what they already asked so they leave. I am not arguing against your opinion that you do not think TheGradCafe is a good place for career questions. No one is forcing you to come here and ask the community any sort of questions at all.

When I moved into my current place, there was a pink USPS slip that said tenant has moved out and it had a form for me to fill out with the names of the new people (i.e. me) so that USPS knows that I live here now. It was easy---fill it out and leave it in the box for USPS to pick up. So, that ensures I get all of my mail! I also had the phone number problem too. Luckily, most companies stop calling me when I ask them to not call me again. For the few that do not, I just screen their calls (set my phone to automatically reject certain numbers) and if I do pick up by mistake, and I have already told them not to call me, I just hang up as soon as they identify themselves. I know the people on the other end are just doing their job, but it's not really my problem that their company has the wrong number.

I don't think applying a second time automatically decreases your chances. It's not like you will be penalized for trying again! However, if your application has not changed very much since the last time, I would say the chances are good that you will get the same result as before.

Definitely and the grants I've been part of applying for tend to always ask for a list of previous grants awarded and how many papers/presentations etc. came as a result of those grants. And sometimes multi-year grants have annual reviews so if you don't meet stated production goals, you won't get renewed. But I have not yet experienced a grant that require a researcher to give back money already awarded/paid out because they didn't meet publication goals.

Fuzzy and Eigen answered almost everything. I just want to touch on one question you asked---about the deadline to complete research. Although this could vary from field to field and grant to grant, ultimately, a grant is not directly paying for a set of results or outcomes. For example, a professor might write a grant to compute the orbits of 500 asteroids and ask for funding to pay a graduate student for 1 year to complete this work. If it is funded, the professor will have the money to pay for this. If the graduate student spends an entire year working on this project but in the end, only is able to determine the orbits of 400 asteroids after one year, then that would be bad for the professor. However, it's not like the funding agency will ask for 20% of the money back or that your professor will take 20% of the graduate student's stipend back. Instead, when the professor writes the annual/end of grant report, they will have to explain why only 400 asteroid orbits were computed. Maybe there is a legitimate reason and maybe there isn't (i.e. just an underperforming student or research group). Either way, this could reflect poorly on the professor if they apply for future grants with this agency.

At all the places I've lived, I've received mail for not just the previous tenant, but the ones before that too. Sometimes I think I receive enough mail that I can trace back multiple generations of previous tenants and even try to guess the order they lived in my apartment! If it's junk mail or ad-mail (i.e. addressed to "X or current resident"), it just goes into the recycling. If it looks like mail meant for that particular person, I write "no longer lives here" and leave it on my mailbox. I'm not sure what happens but it is gone by the next day. I only received a package for someone else one time. In that case, I gave it to my building manager to deal with.

Yes, for some positions, being overqualified will decrease your chances of being hired. However, I still think you open more opportunities with a PhD than without (of course, whether a PhD is a good idea depends on which opportunities you want!) Oil and gas companies recruit in my department for PhDs (geosciences) every year. I can't speak for PetEng/ChemEng, but in the geosciences, a PhD certainly does not hurt your chances at a job there.

Thank you for sharing the story. I hope your friend will be at a better place. I hate that our current academic community still allows for systematic racism to happen. I don't have any advice but I want to share a link to a blog by a black professor in my field. I have found what he wrote very interesting and I have learned a lot too. I invite anyone interested to read here: http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/ NOTE: If you have not heard, this weekend, news broke about sexual harassment and sexism by a very prominent professor in my field (original story: http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/famous-astronomer-allegedly-sexually-harassed-students --- this professor was the PhD advisor of the professor from the blog above). So, the most recent posts in the blog above addresses this issue.

Sorry for the slow reply--I've been away this weekend! I would second fuzzy's advice to contact the departments and talk to them. It's hard for us to guess what schools will think! For field-specific forums, Environmental Engineering might fit into our Engineering subforum, or Earth Sciences. At my school, your program would be administered by my department (an earth science department), but this would really depend on what kind of environmental engineering you mean. (And of course, each school will divide its departments differently too).

By design, TheGradCafe is a place where a person can come here and write a few words about themselves and see what kind of response they will get from anonymous people that don't know them. I completely agree with you that there are many things I do not know when I give my advice and that the OP should definitely be talking to people that know them well to get personalized advice. When I write a post here, I do not even try to pretend that I know exactly what is best. Instead, I assume the OP knows that this is the opinion of a stranger on the internet based on the very little information that they have provided. I expect the OP to read what we have said and critically think about our input in the context of what it is---advice from strangers based on limited information. I expect each question-asker to realise the limitations of the medium. No one on the moderating team has any interest in people thinking they can come here and get advice about complicated questions like this. We do not get paid and we have nothing to gain. No one is also advertising or claiming that TheGradCafe is the right place to come and get answers. TheGradCafe is simply a medium where people can discuss their thoughts and questions with other graduate students or early career professionals. But I am confused why I even have to explicitly say this or defend this? That is, no one is saying that you must come here, ask questions and follow advice given from strangers!

Interesting to see two different viewpoints here! I am also a math/physics background person and I think us math/physics types have a framework of math education that involves first learning foundational skills and then adding on the other stuff. From this perspective, I would say that although the GRE Q tests things other than Algebra, if one is severely lacking in Algebra skills, even the non-Algebra questions will be tough because 1) learning Algebra teaches you the "reasoning" skills to work out all sorts of math problems and 2) even non-Algebra problems will require thinking or computations that a lack of foundational skills might result in mistakes. So, I can understand why jmk's significant other is making this recommendation. However, I think us math/physics types tend to place too much value in this style of learning. I think TheBumChikiBum makes a good point that you will need more than Algebra! Ultimately, I think it should depend on how much time you want to spend on this and what you want to use the knowledge for! If you have a lot of time (i.e. time to learn even more things beyond a semester-long algebra class) and if you want to actually deepen your understanding of math and quantitative skills (for example, to prepare for other classes in grad school that involve statistics or something---I don't know what the abbreviations CSD and SPED mean so I don't know what field you're in!) then I think your SO has a good suggestion. You will learn more for your long term quantitative skills through strengthening your foundation first and then taking additional courses (or self-study) later. However, if your main goal is to do well on the GRE Q then I don't think your SO's advice is going to be good here. I think courses designed specifically to prep you for the GRE Q will, surprise-surprise, be the best way to prepare for the GRE Q. I know a lot of math/physics types don't like these kinds of courses because they will teach you skills that are useful for the GRE Q but they will usually not teach you the mathematical concepts behind them. This is not ideal because it does make one prone to using the wrong technique or reasoning to the problem, especially if it's a problem you haven't seen before. But, this still might be the best route for you if you just need the skills for the GRE Q and/or if you want to finish this in less than 1 semester. I just wanted to point this out because although I don't know you and your significant other, I do know that math/physics background people tend to have a bias towards the learning the foundations approach to mathematical education. However, this might not be the best route for everyone and you should pick what's best for your needs!

My first few months in the US was similar to music's, with the exception of the cell phone thing (as I said above, T-Mobile will accept I-20 or DS-2019 in lieu of a SSN and I was able to get a phone on a 2 year payment plan). I also used a Citibank student account to get a credit card! Just want to note something that music brought up though: The SSN that we foreign students get for our work due to F-1 or J-1 status is not the same as the SSN that Americans get. My SSN card says something like "For Work Authorization only". My utilities company explained to me that this type of SSN is worthless for any credit-related purpose, it is only for work authorization and tax reporting purposes. So, I still had to pay a $250 deposit to my utility company to open an account. $250 is almost a year's worth of electricity (in Canada, when I had to open an account for the first time, it was only a ~3 month deposit).

I cannot say for sure in case there are differences between our fields, but I never considered the (sub)field of my letter writers when selecting them. I always went for the ones that can speak the strongest about my research and academic abilities. For example, when I was applying for my Masters in Astronomy, I just picked three former research advisors. My intended area of research was in planet formation, and I had letter writers from medical physics, extragalactic astronomy, and asteroid science**. Of course, all three of them were physicists/astronomers of some kind---but I didn't worry that they were not directly in my region of interest. At some level research/academic ability is research/academic ability and it doesn't matter if I learned it while in a medical physics group or an astronomy group! (** For my PhD applications, I switched the medical physics letter (also the weakest) out for my Masters letter. My PhD application is to work on exoplanets, which doesn't really fit in the same subfields either, though!)