TakeruK

Applying to fellowships does not affect your admission results. Anyone can apply--it doesn't mean anything! Also, US schools will not be very likely to know about likelihood of receiving a Canadian fellowship based on your application. However, you should still mention each award you apply for, if you do that. Schools can and probably do consider fellowships you applied to if they can judge your likelihood of winning it (e.g. Canadian schools would think about your ability to win a NSERC, US schools an NSF). But this won't help you when you are applying across the border. Also, the Fulbright is extremely competitive. I think that if you are going to win the Fulbright then your profile would be competitive enough to get into almost any place you want, really. So, neglecting to mention that you applied to a Fulbright if you have such a profile is not going to make a difference!

Just to be clear, what happened in Canada is not what is happening here in the US, unless you are leaving out some details. You said that in Canada, you had an interview and then you were encouraged to apply, and then the graduate department rejected you because you did not meet University requirements. In Canada (and I believe in the United States too), being (strongly) encouraged to apply after an interview does not meet anything in terms of your chances of acceptance. All candidates in which a professor is interested in would be encouraged to apply. Usually, in Canada, if a candidate is supported by the department and the faculty member, then the department often can make a case for you and the graduate office will grant an exception to their university minimums. But, this generally requires the department to demonstrate that you are a better candidate than everyone else who met the minimums. It could be possible that the Canadian school felt you were a strong candidate when they talked to you but then when it was time to make the decisions, there were other candidates and they could no longer make a strong case for an exception for you. After all, they didn't say that you would be accepted, only encouraged you to apply! But in any case, my advice for this specific situation is that why not apply? You don't have anything to lose and you won't know what the result will be unless you do it. It sounds like you have a good opportunity here and so go ahead and do your best!

Like most human interactions, this really depends on the relationship that you have with the other person. I would think that for most people, if you are talking to them when they are not otherwise distracted or busy, if you mention that you are applying to their old postdoc place and they like you, then they will automatically offer to "put in a good word" if they felt they could be helpful. Sometimes asking them to do so would put them in an uncomfortable situation, especially if they don't really know you or actually do not think they can say very many positive things. However, the above things I wrote are all generalizations. Sometimes you are working with someone that would not take the hint that and you have to ask directly. Or sometimes, people are just unfair and they would not go to bat for you unless you asked directly (for one reason or another) even though they might do the same for their other students. So, even though I did say that, in general, it's not a good idea if you have to ask, this assumes that we live in an ideal world where everything is fair. So, there is a little bit of hesitation when I give this advice, because trusting the system will work out for you if you are a good candidate is a privileged position to take. In some cases, I agree with you and that sometimes we do have to take matters into our own hands and push people to support us. But whether or not this applies to you in this case is something for you to decide! I'm not sure how much support you can get if you don't know the department head very well though.

I think it will help but not because of the "prestigious brand name". I would highly encourage you to apply as widely as you can to as many research opportunities as you can for a position in summer 2016. It is very normal in my field for undergrads to apply to a ton of research positions each year and then if they are lucky, they will end up having to decide between a couple of choices. It's also good preparation for grad school applications! So, what you should do is first look at nation-wide fellowships or programs, such as REUs, that will fund undergraduate researchers. Once you know the names of the various programs, you should then look up specific places you want to be working at. Sometimes a large nation-wide program will have a database of all opportunities at different schools. Otherwise, you will have to look up the school first, and then find what opportunities are available there. When you look up each school, you should also check for additional programs offered by the school itself. For example, the school I'm at right now offers a summer undergrad research program for students at different schools to come to our school and work with us. Usually all of these programs require you to have a sponsor at the school you're applying to. Therefore, my advice is to start looking now for opportunities for next summer. Find out when all the deadlines are. You will likely have to contact people at these schools to apply for their programs so work that into the timeline too. You can get help from current research mentors, current grad students at your school, and other students who may be doing the same thing. Research the various programs that you are interested in and find out which places are doing cool research! This will also help you a lot one year from now when you need to do the same thing for applying to graduate programs! A few more notes about this: 1. Keep in mind that the list of "prestigious" institutions for your specific subfield may be very different from general undergraduate institutions. For example, many of the Ivy league schools are not very prestigious at all in my subfield. 2. I said above that "brand name" for undergrad research does not mean much on e.g. a CV for grad applications. But it does help in other ways. For example, my current school is a "brand name" school and they offer a very immersive and intensive summer research programs. If you are an undergrad research fellow here, you will have a special weekly seminar series designed just for you, opportunities to meet faculty members for dinner in small groups, mentorship opportunities with grad students and postdocs, and in general, these programs have a lot of money to spend on you in useful ways (e.g. send you to conferences etc.). 3. The environment is different too at a big research department in your field vs. a small department where they may only be 1 or 2 other people working on similar things. Being exposed to the breadth of your field can help you find what you are really passionate about. Many undergrads state a research interest mostly because that's the only thing they have had experience in! Also, at big programs, you are likely to meet more people and able to start building your network. 4. And it's just a good idea to get a different experience when you can! Different programs run things differently! However, it's not like you absolutely must have done this to get into a good grad school. During undergrad, I had 16 months of full time research work (did a co-op program that was 4 years courses + 1 year research + summers research) and all of my research work was at my undergrad school (it was a big research school though). So, it's more like a "bonus" than a "must", in my opinion. If you have reasons where you can't leave your current school for the summer then find the best opportunity you can for summer 2016. But if you have a chance to go elsewhere, invest a large chunk of your time in the next few months to finding and applying for the best opportunity you can get! Apply widely!!

I agree with everyone that if you have to ask, usually it's a bad idea and if you don't even know the department head that well, it is definitely a bad idea! An example of when it would work well is if you are applying to work with a professor that used to be the advisor of a postdoc that you know well in your current department, and you tell the postdoc this and the postdoc says "hey, I'll let prof x know you're applying!". It should be something that naturally gets offered by the other person once they know that you are applying to someone they have a connection with.

This is a good time to give your professors a heads-up that you will be asking them for LORs later this year. From my experience, it is too early to provide materials for the LORs (at this time in my application year, I hadn't even started writing a SOP yet!) but each professor has their own timeline. My recommendation is to ask to meet with your professors one-on-one if you can. Let them know that you would like to talk to them about graduate school. Use this meeting to let them know where you are thinking of applying, what you are thinking of doing and getting their thoughts and advice. Ask them if they would like to be a reference for you and then ask them what kind of timeline they would like to have all of the materials (as well as which materials they would want). I provided all of my LOR writers with all of my things about 1 month before the first deadline (i.e. early November) and then sent reminders 2 weeks and 2 days before the deadline.

You are essentially asking your department head to "put in a good word for you" and that's kind of only helpful when the department head has some kind of good relationship (maybe they used to be colleagues, collaborators, etc.) with the POI already. As rising_star said, if the relationship is bad (or even unknown) then this kind of recommendation is not useful.

I am similar to Eigen in the sense that I like to be informed about these kind of things. I would never ever bring up politics or drama to a professor unless it was directly relevant to me and I have a good rapport with that professor (i.e. as Eigen said, don't offer opinions that put yourself in jeopardy!). However, we encounter politics with our collaborators and coauthors when we have to navigate on who gets priority on publishing which result and whether or not we should cite person X because coauthor Y wants us to, etc. I think it's useful to discuss these things with my own advisor as they come up and I offer my opinions and thoughts so that I can learn how my advisor deals with these issues as they come up. I am glad that I have a good rapport with my own advisor so when I come up with a really dumb or naive opinion, my advisor points out why my approach could lead to problems and I am able to learn how to navigate academia without any judgement from my advisor. At the University level, through being part of various committees and student organizations, I've learned a lot about various policies on campus and the politics behind professors' actions too. Here, as Eigen suggests, I am extra careful to not offer unsolicited opinions as I don't know who will eventually hear them. I make sure everything I say to any official would be something I'm comfortable saying to any other University official/faculty member. This doesn't mean I don't get involved in politics though--as part of my work with the student government, I get involved where it is necessary and where it fits my role. But I am careful to learn a lot first before talking politics with another person (again, making sure I don't say dumb things that will get me in trouble though!)

Author order and inclusion is something that varies a lot between fields and maybe even subfields. In mine, it's pretty normal for the person to actually be writing the paper to be the first author, even if they did not do the bulk of the analysis. This person is also generally the "leader" that actually puts everyone's analyses together to form a coherent story. For example, a paper might have 5 separate pieces and maybe 3 or 4 other students did their own analyses that contributed to the paper, however their level of contribution is likely to be something like: someone told them what to do and then they ran their analysis on the data and provided the results and interpretation. If you came and did the "last 2 experiments" and also did all of the work to write the literature review section, consolidate all the methods, and collect all of the existing analyses to form a coherent and strong scientific argument, in the norms of my field, you would certainly earn first authorship. As I alluded to above, all of this work is actually a lot more time and effort required than what has been completed so far. That's why I really don't think opportunities like "oh it is just missing 1 or 2 experiments" to be as close to completion as people seem to imply they are!

The admissions committee is neither qualified nor has the right to decide whether or not you made the right decision on taking the year off. A year off isn't even a big deal so it's your prerogative on what you want to disclose. I feel that sometimes people in academia feel the need to disclose much more personal information than necessary, or sometimes people in power seem to demand much more personal information than necessary. When we (academics) are not qualified to judge something, we should refrain from judgement (i.e. admissions committee do not need to judge whether or not you should have taken that year off). For example, when one of my students comes to me with a note from the disability office asking for a special concession in lectures, or a note from the health/counseling center asking for an extension on the homework, my professor and I would always grant it without reservations. We would never ever ask a student what the details are and we would never try to judge whether or not the concession or extension is "necessary".

I agree with J. R. that spinning a negative into a positive is an important way to bring up issues in a SOP, in general. For your particular SOP though, I think if you choose to leave the details vague (I would probably do this too because I would personally not be comfortable with future colleagues knowing that level of personal history) and keep it just as a statement of a fact that something happened and affected your GPA, you don't need to go any further than that. I think it's tough to both be vague and "put a positive spin" on it. So if you choose the "vague" route, trying to put a spin on it would just extend the discussion when you really want to focus the SOP on your achievements instead. I would disagree with J. R. that it would be a "pity party" if you just leave it the way we discussed above (i.e. your second paragraph in your first post with the detail removed).

It sounds like you have had an interesting past and that your history has shaped you into the person you are today. If this is a statement of purpose (as you say in your title), then I would agree with fuzzy that you need to change the focus of your SOP. Your SOP should focus more on you as a scholar and as an academic--fuzzy gave good advice on what points to touch on in your SOP. I think you should remove the majority of the details of your personal life in the academic SOP. If you have the opportunity to tell your compelling story in another way (e.g. a personal history statement, or a supplementary essay), then I think that would be a great place to do that! However, by using the majority of your SOP space to tell your personal story, you are taking focus away from the main point of the SOP, which is to tell your academic story.

My advice would be to write your SOP to show that you have changed a lot since your last graduate program and that you've worked on other things and now have a concrete plan for the future. I think applying for Fall 2017 is a good idea as it also increases the amount of time between the last time you dropped out of a graduate program. I think that you would want to be convincing in your SOP that your experiences since 2013 has given you newfound focus and motivation and that their grad program is the right fit for your future goals. If you do this, I don't think your history will work against you at all. Note: Your sidebar info says your program is social work and you say you are saving up money so I am assuming you are applying to a MSW program rather than an academic/research based PhD program. If you are actually applying to an academic/research based program then I think your SOP needs to also address what you have done since 2013 to keep up as a scholar in your chosen field.

Personally, I think it's okay to ask grad students and postdocs without a referral from their PI. After all, we are independent people too, not just dependent on our PI I get questions from undergrads at conferences often. They see my name badge and if they recognize it as the name of the school they are applying to, they often ask me about grad school life at my program. I enjoy talking and meeting future colleagues in this way (even if they don't end up at my institution, I'll probably see them at other conferences too). But I agree with what lewin said. Respect their (our) time. Don't send the exact same question to a whole bunch of students. Pick a couple to ask and target specific students. Maybe ask the more senior ones. Or, the ones that are doing what you want to do (read their papers). Or, the ones that have similar backgrounds (academic or personal) as you (check their CVs, maybe they went to similar undergrad etc.) And also what lewin said about using the time to find out information for your own decision, not to try to influence us in some way. First of all, as lewin pointed out, we don't really have power to help you get accepted. And secondly, people won't want to respond if they feel like you are using them to get admission!! And finally, don't ask us about whether or not PIs will accept students. We can't really make these decisions for our PIs and we don't always know what they have in mind. Use your opportunity to talk to graduate students to get things that only grad students can answer for you or when you want the grad student's perspective. It's not helpful for you to ask questions that can only be answered by the PI or could be answered by the website or other source.

I agree with rising_star, this kind of thing is way over the scope of a graduate student's concerns. In addition to the fact that this guy might know the consequences of not moving his books, there are probably a lot of other factors in consideration too. It's unlikely that the story is that simple and that graduate students know the whole story. Just to think of what else might be going on: 1. Maybe the new professor wasn't actually supposed to occupy that new space but a different space, but is now putting pressure on the department to give him that space. And this space might have been promised to the old professor. 2. Maybe the new professor also has other reasons to go to other schools and this "books in the way" reason is just a easy explanation for the new professor. 3. Maybe the department doesn't actually want this new professor here after all and the "books in the way" reasons is just an easy explanation for the department. 4. Or it's some combination of 2 and 3 and the "books in the way" benefit both parties so neither party is particularly motivated to resolve that. Overall, I get the sense that you are frustrated because it seems ridiculous that the only reason that the new prof isn't starting is because there are some books in the way. And I agree with you--that is a ridiculous reason!! Which would imply to me that there are actually other reasons going on in the background. If both the department and the professor really really really wanted to be there, those books would be out of there very fast. I've seen my department redecorate and renovate an entire office (tearing down walls etc.) in a couple of weeks because a new professor they really wanted was arriving. And, this was for an office that was previously renovated a year ago for the previous occupant that just left. I think that you have to leave it up to the department and the professor on whether or not they decide to have the new professor actually arrive and start work here. I agree with rising_star--there's no point anticipating the new faculty member's arrival and you should just focus on the people who are already here for now.

I think what Sophie_B is describing is a lot different than what the original post was describing. Athabasca University is a real and accredited online-only university in Canada and I think an online degree from that institution is still useful. Sure, there will still be some people that think it's not the same as a "brick and mortar" university and in some ways, they will be right. An online-only graduate degree will lack some of the important aspects of graduate education that involve "residency" in your program, attending seminars and such. This is why many graduate programs have a minimum residency requirement (usually 1 year in Canada). However, Sophie_B is also describing a hybrid system that is also very common in Canada, where you take some (but not all) of your courses online. This is common at all levels. I don't think there is any issue with taking distance-ed / online courses and in fact, our transcripts do not indicate whether or not the course was online or in-person. For example, at UBC, it's possible to take a few courses either in a physical classroom or in an online classroom. The medium of instruction is different but the end result is the same. And, online-only degrees do serve some purpose. As Sophie_B pointed out, they are great for working professionals looking for additional accreditation. I think you would attend an online-only PhD program for a very different reason than a "brick and mortar" PhD program. For example, if you are working in a field already and you just want to upgrade your education and accreditation, I think an online-only programs are the right choice. However, if you want to be an academic and aim for a career in academia and especially for tenure track positions, then an online degree isn't going to work. It's not that the education is not up to snuff but you're missing the networking and collegiality and sharing of ideas/collaborations that you really need to succeed in academia. Finally, I feel the need to point out a couple of differences between these programs in Canada and in the US. 1. In Canada, tuition is much lower. We probably pay around $6000 (arts/science programs) to $10,000 (business programs) per year in tuition and fees. So, a PhD will cost (without considering living expenses) something like $25,000-$40,000 over 4 years, which is certainly affordable if you do it online while working full-time in a professional career to pay the rest of your bills. 2. In Canada, the number of schools that are just there to rip you off is way smaller. I think the response to the original post was appropriate because so many US schools are for-profit only and they exist to separate hard working students from hundreds of thousands of dollars. But in Canada, there are way fewer such scams and if you choose an online program attached to a brick-and-mortar university, or if you choose the one highly reputable online-only University that I know about (Athabasca) then it is fine. In summary--I think Sophie_B is right to point out that some of the responses here seem a little snobby when you say "You can't do a PhD if it's not at a brick and mortar school!" or "It's not a real PhD if it's online or part time!". I just want to add that a PhD program designed for an academic/research position is probably the mainstream PhD program but it's not the only one. It's okay that some people want to take online-only PhD programs that will basically provide accreditation but not much else. (As long as they are not being lead to scam programs!)

However, if you cannot take your GRE any earlier than December 8, you should contact the schools with Dec 15 deadlines and ask if it is okay that your GRE scores will come later. Tell them that for Dec 15 deadline, you can provide preliminary GRE Q and GRE V scores. Most schools will not review files until January so this is probably okay, but just check!

I am also sorry that I don't have very helpful comments because I am very unfamiliar with that whole system! But I can say that I think it would be really unlikely and difficult to "transfer" as a graduate student anywhere, and I know from my research when I was considering applying to UK schools is that funding is very very tied to the school only (especially for the international students) and funding is fairly rare for international students. So, I would actually frame your choices as stay and stick it out, or quit the program and applying to a brand new one, starting all over (either back in North America or in the UK but again, you will need to secure funding all over again). Maybe you are already thinking this way but your post title seems like you are planning/hoping to continue where you left off at a new UK school, which seems almost impossible.

To the first paragraph, I think reducing the amount of admitted students over time would eventually lead to fewer graduates without jobs. Probably not going to remove it entirely but it's still better to make a difference. But also, for some fields, there are plenty of non-academic career paths, so you wouldn't have to stop taking students altogether? The stats that I am familiar with show that the majority of PhD graduates do end up with some form of employment after their degree, just not all academia. The equivalent to the adjunct problem in my field is the eternal postdoc. Since postdocs are cheaper to hire than research faculty, some programs will just hire more and more postdocs, pay them poorly, offer no benefits etc. in order to keep that research output high. This results in some people working on 3, 4, or 5 postdocs before realising that they will never actually be considered for a faculty or permanent position. My suggested solution would be to treat postdocs as entry level position rather than yet another temporary training position. Drastically reduce the number of postdocs available--many people will graduate with a PhD without a postdoc, but I think I would rather just not do a postdoc (and go for a different career path) rather than find this out after 5-10 years of postdocing. But I agree with my_muse that I would find it really hard to believe that schools will just choose the more principled and way more expensive path when there is a cheaper alternative right there. On regards to "selling out", I suppose this depends on what one means by this. When I say pursuing other sources of funding, I am meaning that scientists should supplement funding from government sources with "non-traditional" means. For example, one non-traditional source would be donations from wealthy individuals. Earlier this summer, a billionaire invested $100 million to fund a 10 year program to search for alien life: http://www.wired.com/2015/07/russian-tycoon-spending-100-million-hunt-aliens/ Compared to decades ago, there are way more educated people in the world. Compared to decades ago, there are way more very wealthy educated people! These people already have a passion for learning and I think it's important to talk to them and get them to patronize our work. Philanthropists are looking for ways to use their wealth to benefit humankind, and while there are certainly many things that can benefits human, the pursuit of knowledge is still a noble cause. Another non-traditional method would be to employ lobbyists and other people to influence policy makers to better fund our work. I'm not sure if the Arts and Humanities have people doing this type of work, but a growing subfield of scientific work is "Science Policy" where we have scientifically trained academics that then learn about how to influence policy in order to achieve our goals. Our large national organizations employ people whose job is to influence policy for our benefit. This means that some scientists will not be spending the majority of their time directly working on science, but this is a more effective division of labour than having every scientist being part-scientist and part-policy person. And I definitely agree one of the big first steps is accessibility of higher education and also accessibility of the work we do and the knowledge we produce. Outreach is a really important aspect here. In the above example, we are not going to get philanthropists interested in our work if we are not able to communicate why our knowledge can benefit people. I'm not even talking about "practical" things like engineering, but even the benefit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. I think all work and all knowledge benefit humankind but it's a challenge to do outreach and convince people of this. But I believe this is as much part of our job as it is to create new knowledge! In my opinion, I believe that the work we have to do in order to secure funding, do outreach, educate the public, etc. is as much of our "job" as academics as the actual knowledge and research we produce. If some people consider this "selling out" because they only want their field to work on knowledge/research/subject matter itself, then I guess I don't really have anything to say to that. Of course, I want to clarify that I don't imagine one person doing all of these things. But instead, these are the actions and work we must be doing together as a community/field. Each person may do a little bit of each with one primary role. National-level organization is required so that we have some academics doing mostly new research, some academics doing policy, some academics doing education, some academics doing outreach etc. for their primary roles.

I guess what I do not understand is that it seems that some users of the board are refusing to accept the fact that someone else may have a different opinion and may choose to present it in a way that does not agree with them. I do agree that the style and the content of an argument are not independent and that an argument is both what you say and how you say it. Again, I am not saying people should not disagree with VM (or any other user). Originally, I wrote about my confusion about people discussing the style but I think you have convinced me now that discussing the style is as much part of interpreting and responding to VM's argument as discussing the content. But I am saying that people should stop writing things that tell VM to stop posting, or writing things that tell VM to write their argument in a different manner or with a different tone. Again, I think it's a valid part of the analysis of VM's argument to say that "I don't agree with this tone" but if VM is making bad rhetorical choices (in your opinion), it's not really any of our jobs to correct them. I see the act of saying "Your argument (style + content) is bad because of X, Y and Z" as different from the act of saying "You should not be expressing your argument because it is bad because of X, Y and Z". The former is okay and good for discussion, but the latter is not, in my opinion. I know your post here is about the Arts & Humanities but in the sciences, we have had similar discussions too. I actually do not know if we are facing declining numbers, but certainly our budgets have been smaller or not growing. The question we think about is whether or not we should take fewer PhD students because we know there aren't enough spots for everyone, or if we should keep taking the same amount of PhD students and advocate for more spending on STEM. Some people argue for the former because they believe it is irresponsible for academia to train more PhDs when we know there aren't jobs for graduates. Others argue that we focus on the latter and create more funding to pay for more permanent PhD positions. Personally, I would go for some hybrid that leaned more heavily on the latter. I am concerned that reducing the number of PhD students via smaller cohorts means that we are taking opportunities away from groups that have a harder time getting these opportunities in the first place. It reduces the diversity of thought as schools and programs are less likely to take risks and accepted non-traditional students if they have less money to take students. I think this applies in both STEM and the Arts & Humanities. I think what we should spend a lot more energy and resources on is to advocate for more money to be spent on our fields. I am also fond of a new acronym STEAM where the A is for Arts (and Humanities). I really don't think we should have a divide between STEM vs. Arts & Humanities because both of our fields benefit humanity equally. Unfortunately, as far as I know, I don't see a lot of collaboration between the major organizations of our two fields working together to lobby Congress for more money or to do more Outreach so that people don't think "Literature degrees are useless" or "What's the point of studying the stars when we have bigger problems on Earth" etc. So, to respond mollifiedmolloy's last sentence, I don't think expanding because of a sense of duty to preserve one's field is a good idea at all. Instead, we should expand (or at least remain steady) by working harder to 1) reinvent our fields and present ourselves to the general public as useful contributors to society (i.e. outreach! break down the ivory tower) and 2) to advocate and raise more money for our fields so that we can actually support the people we have in the field. For the second part, I think we should also be more creative and move beyond "traditional" sources of funding.

At my current school, undergrad summer students have a one-day seminar where they present their results. They call it a "X Seminar Day" where X is the name of the summer research program. That is the official name from the Program's website, but it's not an official conference name since it's not a conference. I think X Symposium is a great way to put this on your CV for both poster and oral presentations. I'm actually a little confused why you say you are happy with "X Symposium" for your poster but not for your oral presentation? When I put presentations on my CV that are not published in proceedings, this is my usual format, something like: TakeruK, "Awesome work about awesome science", Awesome Science Symposium 2015, 18 September 2015, poster presentation. (and replace "poster presentation" with "oral presentation" as appropriate). This format is also very similar to the format required by NSERC (the Canadian version of the NSF) for their fellowship application, especially for distinguishing between oral and poster presentation. Caveat: The above format was what I used when applying to grad school and the first couple of years at grad school. Now, I do not distinguish between poster and oral presentations at all.

I also think that you are a good teacher and a great TA. Your philosophy and approach sounds very similar to mine and what we teach TAs here at my school. I'm sorry to hear about the problems that you are having with your TA coordinator! As the others said, this does not reflect on your suitability for a PhD degree!

As fuzzy said, each school has its own policies and regulations. Exactly how much freedom and flexibility you will have depends a lot on your individual school and program so you should be talking to the administrators at your school and/or program (as I said above, sometimes it's easier to first talk to administrators outside/above your department). In general, for schools in North America, graduate programs are not like undergraduate programs where it is easy and encouraged for students to take a lot of extra courses in unrelated departments. Many programs have the mindset that you are here for them and you are expected to work full time towards completing your degree. There's also a difference between spending your free time doing your own things (for example, joining a club, pursuing a hobby, whatever you want) vs. spending your free time doing things that will cost the school time and money (for example, taking a course in another department). I very strongly urge you to talk to your school and department about this. A lack of communication is what ends up causing a lot of graduate student problems I've seen in my colleagues.

This is a good point and I did think about it when I wrote my post. I was thinking "in some ways, what I am writing is "policing" the critics of VM while criticizing the critics of VM for policing VM's message!" I should clarify that I don't mean that there should be no criticizing of VM's message. What I felt was strange/weird was that people are not just criticizing VM's message, but also criticizing VM for having that opinion or presenting their message in their own way itself! And even some people obliquely suggesting that VM not post anymore (even though VM has every right to continue posting). I agree that if a poster writes a strong opinion in an abrasive (or whatever) style, as it is their right to express themselves, then responders should certainly feel free to respond in kind. So, to clarify, I mean to defend every poster that have had another poster tell them to not say something a certain way. I am defending the posters who have had other posters tell them not to write about a topic. I am responding to recent posts that have told VM to do both of these things (however, while I have read every single post as they appeared in the past many months, I admit I do not recall every point and counterpoint and certainly was not keeping score). I am not defending VM by saying only VM can post strongly worded opinions about the topic matter. When VM writes something you do not agree with, I think that by all means you should write a counterpoint. But don't write a post saying that VM should not be posting X or that VM should write in style Y etc.

Just want to point out that even if your department does not sponsor you financially, they are still spending their time and other resources on you as a student. This means that, as I said above, it is reasonable for the department to expect you to not take on other courses or activities that will delay graduation and for them to approve your courseload.