TakeruK

I don't think anyone *needs* a Macbook Pro, but it is certainly really nice. When I started grad school, my school had a sale on their MBPs and I got one in 2012 for $1050. But the newest MBPs are a lot more expensive now, unfortunately . In my program, I would say 90% of the people use Mac and probably over 2/3rds of my entire field uses Mac. My cohort was 100% Mac! At five years old, my current MBP no longer runs fast enough for me to do serious work on it. I am looking to upgrade soon, but can't buy one yet since there's lots of startup costs with moving and I only received my first full postdoc paycheque recently! I am currently encountering tons of problems opening large PDFs or even just working on powerpoint when I have large files. Not so much a problem for scientific talks, but I also give a lot of outreach talks which have nice movies and animations so my powerpoints are 50MB+ and it can be very difficult to edit them. Even opening a dialog box (e.g. if I want to save a file from Google Chrome, it takes 30s or more to open up that screen that asks me where to save the file). My advice for laptops is to get something that will still be useful to you in 3-4 years. Although each person will vary, I regularly take my laptop with me whereever I go, so I have found that 3-4 years is about the time where laptops start to fall apart (although my MBP have been way more sturdy than the Dells I had in the past). Because of that, there's no point getting the top of the line laptop for a regular user, since your laptop could fall apart physically before its hardware becomes obsolete. For desktops and more sturdy computer, I think it's best to get as close to top of the line as possible, so that it is still computationally relevant in 5-7 years. When my advisor in grad school bought me an iMac desktop, they asked me to put all the upgrades possible on it. It was only a few hundred dollars more, but now that I've left, the next student is able to use my 3 year old iMac and it's as relevant today as it was when I got it. Finally, while I agree that with Mac, you pay more than you would for the same computing power with a HP or Dell, I think the look and feel of a computer has value too. And its ability to interface with your work computers and your colleagues. I probably should have upgraded my laptop last year, but waited to see what setup I could get at my postdoc location. Since I am able to work on a Mac here as well, I'll plan on getting another MBP when I upgrade my laptop later this fall.

Depends completely on each school. You could contact each department that lists this to find out. At my PhD school, programs could only choose between "Required", "Strongly Recommended" or "Not Required". If it's "Not Required" then applicants cannot submit scores. So, programs that want an optional reporting have a website that says "Strongly Recommended" even though it could really just mean "completely optional". However, other places are more like what you've said: they expect you to take it unless you have some other reason, or they expect some people to take it (e.g. a multidisciplinary program related to Physics might expect you to take the Physics GRE if you had a Physics undergrad but not if you are coming from a Biology degree with the intent to do Biophysics research). So if in doubt, just ask!

Sorry to hear about your supervisor For your latest question, I think it depends on what you are hoping to get from the "on-paper" supervisor. It sounds like you are very close to finishing, right? So, your "on-paper" supervisor might just be that: on-paper only and you may not require that much interaction with this person in a supervisory role. In this case, it doesn't really matter who your "on-paper" supervisor is because they are largely filling an administrative role: just signing off on your thesis and graduation documents. In your case, I would still put the name of your current supervisor as your thesis supervisor on things like CVs etc. and explain the situation if it ever comes up. However, if you are looking for more guidance from a faculty member as you finish up, have you considered asking both of these faculty members to be on your MSc thesis committee? Your MSc supervisor serves two roles: someone who can read over your work and give you guidance on the science and someone who knows you professionally and can provide guidance on career and professional development. It seems like you can split these two roles between the two people you mentioned quite nicely. It might also work out better because these two faculty members might not have time to suddenly add a whole student to their groups, but if you split the duties, it could work out. In addition, if you do decide to go for a PhD program and cannot get a letter from your first supervisor, you might want to have both of these letters. One can speak to the significance of your work since they know your field better and the other can speak to you as a researcher because they know you better (if you could only choose one letter though, I would pick the stronger relationship prof). Finally, if you are actually constrained by who can officially serve on your committee, for some reason, I would pick the person that would be the most helpful to you finishing sooner. If the person that is aligned with your field is the type of person that continually asks students to do more experiments, you might want to avoid that person for your committee, especially since someone who is close to your field but isn't actually in your field is the type of person most likely to ask for unnecessary experiments/analysis! But, if you feel that not having this person on your committee might make your dept/committee think that there is no one "expert" enough to evaluate you, then there's good reason to include this person. I think this is a good discussion to have with your dept chair, or whomever is in charge of determining the transition plan for your supervisor's group.

Ah, interesting. All of the society-run conferences (i.e. the major networking ones) in my field will list your membership type (Jr, Full, Emeritus, Associate, Sponsor, Non-Member, etc.) on your badge. And at specific networking events, these badges are very helpful to identify where a person is during their career (i.e. a Non-Member is likely an undergrad, most Jr. Members are grad students, and postdocs/faculty are full members). It also helps prospective grad students: we're told to look out for Jr. Member badges to distinguish between grad students and postdoc/faculty if you are seeking someone from a school you are applying to.

In addition to what Eigen said, a typical score might be an average, which by definition, means that about half of the people actually accepted score below this typical score. Even at the top schools, an accepted student is not necessarily one that is above-average in every aspect of their application. Your profile is evaluated as a whole, not in each part individually. You may be surprised at the large range in things like experience, GPA, GRE, letters within an admitted class of students. Within the department, it is easy to weigh some aspects above others, and in STEM fields, experience is often weighed much more highly than GRE scores. As Eigen also said, the part where applications can get stuck are when there are requirements from beyond the department (e.g. the grad school) that the applicant does not meet. Depending on the school, this may require a special appeal from the department, which costs time, effort and "political capital" (i.e. one can only make so many of these appeals). As long as you don't fall below these minimums, I would still apply if there's a great fit. And even if you do fall below, it's worth a discussion with the profs there before skipping that school, unless you have other reasons to not be interested anyways.

Here are some reasons why I would not register as a student when I am a postdoc: 1. If it's found out and there are consequences, it will all come down on you. So do only what you're comfortable with. 2. Events like this are meant to support students, and they still cost money. The reason that students are free are either because there is outside sponsorship to cover students, or the paying attendees subsidize the cost for students. I feel that it's only right that we stop benefiting from free student things once we have gainful employment and are no longer students. Especially if there is a limit on the number of free student spots at this conference, I'd feel wrong about taking it from an actual student. 3. Usually at these things, your name badges clearly say what you've registered as. If you are here to network, having it say "student" (or the wrong thing) isn't going to help you. So, honestly, I feel like misrepresenting yourself doesn't really do yourself any good and could cause harm to you. It sounds like you do want to talk to your advisor about this so if you are looking for advice/encouragement, I would say you could consider something like point #2 and #3 above instead of just saying "we shouldn't break the rules" since you know this angle doesn't work with him.

Hint 1: The remainder when dividing by 10 is always the ones digit (i.e the last digit) of a number. Hint 2: When you have crazy large numbers like this, you are rarely expected to actually calculate the entire number. Instead, look for a pattern in the part of the number you care about and then use that pattern to get your answer.

I've noticed that these suggestions have gotten better over time, however, they almost always suggest articles that are quite old and I've read years ago! e.g. most of the articles they suggest to me were published 4+ years ago. Hopefully this feature will improve over time, as right now, I feel that the suggested articles are too outdated for people who keep up with the literature and not well picked enough to be a representative sample for people who need to catch up! I think they come up with suggested articles based on how many other people in your field have accessed a particular article, so hopefully as more usage data comes in, the algorithm is able to pick out the classic/important papers in each year (might still need another way to suggest brand new and interesting articles though!)

After checking out all the other schools and deciding on which ones to apply to, if you are still interested in this school, then sure, apply again. Whether or not you apply to that school again, now is a good time to ask them about reasons, before the next school year begins. It would be helpful to know this information before applying again this fall/winter. I'd recommend to phrase it as looking for feedback instead of sounding like you need them to explain their decision to you. Almost everyone applies to many schools so everyone who asks this question expects you to name a couple other schools you're applying to. Be honest about the places you're applying to. But also be tactful, i.e. if you are interviewing with your #4 choice school, don't tell them that they are #4. My advice is to first answer their question honestly, (e.g. I am applying to schools X, Y, Z), have a brief pause for them to ask followup questions if they want to, but then switch the focus back onto their school. Just say something like, "I am excited to apply here because ..." or something like that. Basically, act like nothing happened. In the application form, they might ask if you have applied before, so answer that honestly. It's mostly an administrative question anyways, not like your answer will affect your application for this year. However, there's no point mentioning your previous application or referring to it during the application materials (CV, SOP etc.). If you do get asked about it during the interview, again, answer honestly. Be prepared to answer a question like, "What have you done since the last application?" with examples of how you have improved as a candidate from last year to this year.

@lewin's advice is really good. I am not in your field but I did exactly what lewin suggested to find my first work experience in my field! I would add that since you say you know some professors well, you can talk to them too because they might have some department-specific advice or might know some good opportunities. Having a good connection with your faculty is important, and one way to continue cultivating this relationship is to email the profs you know well to say that you're thinking about applying to grad school in Psychology and that you would like to meet with them to get some advice / ask some questions. Then, come with some good questions, such as what are some courses that they recommend, what is their advice for selecting grad schools and how to find research experience. They will probably have additional good advice too.

Personally, I would recommend only taking the test once, in November. Three weeks, especially with a busy schedule (also my case when I was taking the GRE) is not much time to make a huge difference in score for a retake and not worth the extra hassle! Also, you may not know your Analytical Writing score before the deadline to register for a November date. November test date is early enough to get your scores in for mid-December deadlines. Should be okay for Dec 1 deadlines too, since it should only take 10 business days to send the scores, at the maximum. The only real advantage of taking the GRE twice in such a short time is that the October test could be a practice run and to get experience writing the test in real test conditions. However, you can also take advantage of the many free online practice tests / simulated tests available.

I agree that a copy editor could be a worthwhile expense for you. My PhD school hired copyeditors for all submitted dissertations and the edits were very helpful. I did not interact with the copy editor directly though: they made the suggestions and edits and it was my choice on what to implement. The copyeditors hired generally have at least Masters degree in a scientific field in addition to knowledge of the English language so they are experienced with technical language. I would say that 95% of the edits did not inadvertently change the meaning of the sentence. In 2 or 3 cases, the copyeditor wasn't sure of what I meant, so they offered two alternative edits, e.g. "If you meant X, then ABC but if you meant Y then DEF". We only get one pass through with the copyeditor. In my field, the journals also provided copyediting as part of the publishing fees and I learned a lot of grammar rules that I didn't really think about before. So paying for a copyeditor could be a good learning experience too. That said, copyediting can be expensive (I have never paid out of pocket for it before), so it's also a matter of how important this is to you. At my PhD school, there is a two-week turnaround time for copyediting and since you need to provide the thesis at least two weeks before your defense, most people submit their theses to their committee and the copyeditor at the same time, otherwise you would have to finish writing a whole month before your defense. So if you don't care about the nicely written thesis in the end, then the expense may not be worth it. However, if your advisor is suggesting a copyeditor because they think your committee won't be able to read your dissertation without these edits, then you have to weigh the costs of copyediting vs. your own time in getting your manuscript to the point where your committee would be willing to pass you on your defense. I think a copyeditor can edit your work at least 5 times faster than you can do it yourself, and I think most copyeditors don't charge a rate that is 5 times your equivalent hourly income. But it can still be a big expense, so it's a matter of what you can afford. In summary: I think copyeditors are great. I would advise hiring one if you can afford it and if you need your manuscript copyedited before you can defend. I understand your feeling of wanting to do this yourself, but I don't think your degree is any less deserving because a copyeditor was hired (otherwise, no one at my school would "deserve" a PhD). And during the stressful time of writing, saving yourself 1-2 weeks of work by hiring a copyeditor is super helpful.

It's very different in the US. Most international students in the US cannot work extra at all because the TA or RA ship that is already funding them takes up all of the allowed work hours (as in the OP's case too). Generally, it's only unfunded students (i.e. no work assigned since no funding assigned) that can seek employment and it's already limited to on-campus work (e.g. work-study type programs). Off-campus work is only possible by using the special training statuses (OPT, CPT) and they would have to be related to your field of study (e.g. cannot work as a server to supplement income etc.) There are some exceptions for extreme financial hardship where you could appeal to Immigration to waive your restrictions. But it seems like these are meant for something catastrophic to have happened after you arrived (e.g. you get very sick and lose your work assignment and/or have large bills you cannot pay otherwise). If you need this in order to make ends meet at the beginning, it's likely you wouldn't get admitted to the US on F-1 or J-1 status at all, since these require you to have the funds (whether through the school or personal funds) to pay expenses.

Probably a good idea to disregard what's written on RMP. I remember learning about the website near the end of my undergrad and so I looked up some of my past professors, out of curiosity. Some of my favourite classes had terrible reviews and some of the classes I hated had rave reviews! I am pretty sure the only students who write these reviews are the ones who had extremely good or extremely bad experiences, and that's not very helpful at all. And as I wrote in these forums before, reading my own TA evals showed me that students often don't really know whats going on behind the scenes and then will give ratings based on assumptions (e.g. one student hated the grading style but still rated my grading highly because they wrote that they thought I was "just following the professor's orders" when in fact it was completely my "fault" that the grading style was the way it was). I'd echo what people have said above, especially fuzzy's advice about deciding how you want to handle the TAing (low profile vs. being a lifeline for students). I probably would err on the lifeline side (without undermining the prof) because I find it very rewarding to help students learn the material. I also think that since this is a 3rd year class, you will hopefully get the students motivated to learn the material since it doesn't sound like it would be a "breadth" requirement type class (but I could be wrong!). Finally, a piece of advice to help you keep your sanity should you decide to take the "help the students extra / be a lifeline" path. Before you begin, you should set some limits for yourself: how much time will you put into providing extra help? If you run out of time, how will you prioritize your student appointments? What is the "line" for you in terms of helping....e.g. at what point would things be too stressful that you will revert back to the "keep your head down" approach. This is especially important since it sounds like one of the reasons you wanted to TA this class was to ensure it doesn't take up too much of your time (e.g. no recitations/tutorials). Revisit these limits at the midterm and adjust as necessary. Personally, although I love TAing and helping students, I have other priorities too, so my limit was 9 hours per week (a full assignment at my school, same as the number of hours students expected to commit to a class) and if I had too many requests for meetings, I tried to split my time to be helping the students getting Cs and Ds with 80% of my time and spend 20% on the students who were doing well in the class. But find the ratio that works for you!

My school just very recently changed its embargo program because too many students were just embargoing their theses indefinitely without actual progress towards a publication or a patent. This defeats the purpose of a PhD, in my opinion (and apparently, in the opinion of those who championed the change) because it is supposed to be new research that is widely and openly shared with the world. Basically, too many people were just embargo-ing things just because they thought it was better to do so. So, the new policy is that everyone can have 6 months of embargo if you have a legitimate reason (e.g. preparing a paper or patent). This embargo only applies to external users....campus users can still view your dissertation. Students can apply for an exception (either extend beyond 6 months or embargo even on campus) under special circumstances. Exceptions are normally only granted if you already have a paper in review or a patent in review (plans to submit do not count). If you apply for an extension, you are granted 6 more months and you can continue to apply for exceptions as necessary. Almost all graduate students on campus are not in book fields where I know it's common to take many years to turn a dissertation into a book. Instead, we are generally in fields where we publish first and then put the publications into our dissertation. The expectation is that most of us will have 2 or 3 peer-reviewed papers that make up our dissertation. It's a lot more work for the student when they have to write material not already previously published! I do have some concerns about the new policy because it could encourage students to either leave important things out of the dissertation entirely (and defeats the purpose of the policy, which is to share info) or pressure students to delay their defense so that they can work on one more project while their methodology is not yet widely known. However, I think the harms introduced by the new policy is much less impactful than the unnecessarily large number of embargoed dissertations, some dating back decades. For me, the project I left out of my dissertation was not yet complete when I left and it was not necessary to complete my PhD. It was a side project that I plan on finishing as part of my postdoc. It also would have felt very much just "tacked on" to the coherent story told by the other chapters in my dissertation! So, instead, I framed this side project as "future directions" because while there are some good connections, I think it fit a lot better as "the next step" instead of "another thing I did". I feel like in my field, it's common for students to 1) not include all of their work into the dissertation, just the ones that are most relevant** and 2) start side projects near the end of their PhD so that they have something to give themselves a head start going into their next position. (** My program in particular requires you to do two very different projects in your first year, kind of like rotations, so even if people end up publishing a paper on the project that doesn't evolve into their dissertation work, it might not get included in the dissertation since it's so different)

At my PhD program, all of the grad classes in my department were TA'ed by other graduate students. I think a small fraction of new grad students feel weird about this at first, especially if they come from more formalized education settings where there is a hierarchy and places where grades/protocol/procedure really really mattered. Eventually, everyone learns to adjust and change their perspective. But I think learning to become not-bothered by this is an important step in your transition from an undergraduate student to a graduate student. It's part of the transition from becoming someone who is learning from the experts to someone who is in training to become a colleague. This is part of professional development as well. You will become friends with many of your fellow grad students and they might end up being your TA. That's okay. There's no problem with being good buddies with your instructors, the problem only occurs if one makes decisions in their instructor-role while influenced by the friend relationship. By the way, if you continue in academia, you will be expected to balance the personal and professional relationship you have with your colleagues further. Research is all about "peer" review after all, so people you might develop good friendships with will eventually be the ones that review your grant proposals, referee your papers, determine who gets to give talks at the conference you applied to, serve as external committee members on your students' thesis defenses etc. If you become a faculty member, you'll serve on committees that will make important decisions that can influence the career of other faculty members (your colleagues) such as tenure/promotion review, admission committee (e.g. deciding whether or not a student your colleague really wants can get in), allocation of common funds for things like travel or office upgrades etc.

This is a question best posed to your school's international student office. One thing might make it cleaner though: if you were paid in your home country instead of the US. I don't know if it matters whether you were physically in the US when you did your writing or not though. Again, talking to your international student office or a lawyer might be a good idea since it's not worth risking your student status from non-expert opinions!

Sadly, as the author of the linked post writes, this does happen fairly often and at various levels. The bright side is that a case as egregious as the author's is quite rare: I don't know anyone in the same position but I have heard of several in just as bad situations. And the common thread is that the University resources often are much more concerned with protecting the University than helping the student. (And that for students close to the PhD, there is just so much power held by faculty and committee members). Since my dissertation will be online about 6-12 months before I expect the final stuff from my PhD work to be published (or at least accepted for publication), I left out a ton of stuff in my dissertation. A project that I had been working on for 2 years (not exclusively) was relegated to only 5 pages in my dissertation, describing it only in vague terms. I know that most students in my field rarely put unpublished materials in their dissertation (my field is one where you publish first and then write the dissertation instead of the other way around). Still, I am a little wary about some of my ideas being copied (intentionally or not). I had been speaking about one research idea I have last year and during the job application season, I saw that someone was hiring a postdoc to do exactly what I had said I would be interested in doing. I don't think there is anything nefarious going on in this case, since I don't know the person (although we have mutual professional contacts) so it's more likely that we just came up with the same idea. I'll take the optimistic approach by seeing this job ad as demonstrating that I am coming up with ideas that are "good enough" that someone will want to hire someone to do it! However, I am now extra motivated to work on this idea before the other group beats me to it (not sure if they were able to hire someone or not). Finally, I strongly agree with the author's fourth and most recent post on the topic, where they encourage students to know what their rights are and what they should expect from their advisors and their committee. It's helpful to fight for better student rights on campus through affecting policy changes. For example, at my PhD school, the "thesis advisory committee" (the faculty that check in on you each year and ensure you are on track) and your "thesis examination committee" (the ones that sign off on your thesis) are two potentially distinct sets of people. Furthermore, your advisory committee can change from year to year as you change your direction of research (or as new people come / old people leave). Typically, your examination committee is the same as your advisory committee, but if there are issues like in the author's case, the student can simply not ask one of the advisory committee members to serve on the examination committee. The really nice part is that your examination committee does not have to be finalized until 2 weeks prior to your defense date. Practically, you need to inform your committee much earlier for scheduling purposes, but the names are not set in stone until 2 weeks prior, leaving you plenty of time to adjust if necessary. As such, it's often recommended to students here to have one more faculty member than necessary on the advisory committee, so that if someone can't make it to the final defense due to some last minute thing, you can just drop them from the examination committee!

Yeah, looking into programs about topic X might get you really interested in topic Y. One of the most helpful pieces of advice I got from professors when applying to grad schools came after I said that I really wanted to work on X in my PhD program. They asked me to reflect on why I was so interested in X and to ensure that my interest didn't just come from the fact that I was already familiar with that topic from my undergrad/Masters work (i.e. the only topic in my field I knew well enough to be really interested in it). A lot of US programs in my field actively encourage you to work on multiple projects in the first few years so that you know what you don't want to do as well as what you wanted to do!

Sorry to hear about the Australian program. 1 in 50 are very tough odds! With regards to research topic, I see that different fields have different expectations on how well formed a research topic needs to be when applying! When I was applying to postdocs last year, I definitely needed to have a well fleshed out research program. But the odds of these positions are even lower: typically 200 applicants for one or two positions. So, my strategy was to not be too invested in any particular project. I found good opportunities out there and then came up with a research program based on what would be a good fit there (in terms of who is there and what resources are available). In the end, I wrote at least 3 distinct research plans for the 15-20 positions I applied for (telescope resources in my field are shared by networks of schools, so fairly similar research proposals can be used for several different schools). Again, I know this is different between fields, but my advice above wasn't just that you should be more vague/broad in each application---as you said, your field requires you have a specific project in mind and go to it in depth. But I meant that across all of your applications, you could consider a wider range of research possibilities. So maybe you find 5-6 schools that would be really great for human-horse relationships and write a strong proposal to do that. Then, maybe through your research of these schools, you find programs really great for another topic that you also care about, maybe another animal. But whether or not this is a good idea for you would depend on whether or not you still wanted a career in Anthropology even if you never studied human-horse relationships. And that's just up to you of course. Maybe this part is different between fields too, but one warning sign of a field that only has a very limited number of programs in human-horse anthropology is that the number of researchers interested in human-horse relationships might be very low. One of the reasons I decided to change research topics from during my Masters to my PhD is that there were like 20 people in all of the US that study that topic. To me, it felt that if I wanted an academic job, I would likely have to work at one of those places, which would very strongly limit my career options. In addition, there is no non-academic application of that field. So I switched to something that is a major subfield in Astronomy now in order to improve my chances of finding work. So, I think it's important to also consider your post-PhD plans when deciding on which subfield/topic to follow. In my opinion, passion for the topic is important, but so is employability and interest from others (to get grants for example). My personal concerns about entering a topic with very limited interests (even if it was what I wanted to do the most) was that 1) I will likely have to change it after the PhD if I want to have more work opportunities and 2) if I become too specialized in an unpopular field, then that might make finding future work difficult. So, my approach was to be passionate about the methods and the idea of the science, but never actually become too invested in any particular topic. Kind of like a "science mercenary", I wanted to develop a set of skills that I could use to solve whatever science problem comes up. So far that has worked well for me but this is a personal choice of course. Not saying that this is what you should also do, but just providing a perspective to also consider. Good luck!!

Disagreement with you does not mean I do not understand your arguments. I understand what you are saying. But let's talk about just one specific thing: the idea that people should report things that "feels" wrong to the Title IX office (if it's relevant to Title IX). I argued that this is important in order to ensure a welcome and safe campus. You argue that if reporters/complainants do not take care to ensure that a Title IX violation actually happened, then these reporters are causing more harm than good. Is that correct? I already wrote about why I think more reports is better because students generally are in a position of less power and when one does not know how things are supposed to work, people in power can take advantage. The student may feel that this is normal behaviour that they "just have the deal with" or that they are just being "too sensitive". You countered by saying that harm comes to people being reported. I argued that a Title IX report is not an accusation and that a Title IX investigation is distinct from discipline/punishment. You presented the case of the USC football player. I don't know of the details of this case case and your telling of it sounds like it is an example of Title IX gone badly. But cherry-picking specific cases where the above idea failed doesn't mean that the entire idea is bad. From working with the Title IX office from my old campus, I know that there are many cases where something inappropriate happened many times but the proper resolution only happened because people said something. Many students have reported something, thinking it was just something small and insignificant but it was actually a clear violation. Or, someone thought it was just a one-time thing that only happened to them, but after reporting it, was surprised to hear that 10 other students reported the same person for the same violation. Your example of the USC football player shows that the system needs further adjustment but it is the failure of that Title IX process, not the fact that the neighbour made the report that led to that outcome. This is how I parsed this specific point of the discussion. From my perspective, when the system fails, it is not due to "unjustified" reports, but because some other process broke down. I am not privy to the details of the USC player's Title IX investigation (I believe these are meant to be confidential) so I can't comment on where it broke down. But to say that the neighbour's report is responsible for an unfair Title IX decision would be placing blame on the wrong part of the process. Again, I wasn't there, but the story that you linked would suggest to me that the problem was with how the Title IX office handled the complaint, not the fact that the complaint happened.

I don't know if I will ever get the balance figured out. My perspective is that I do not want my career to define who I am as a person. I see my career as a means to allow me to have the life I want, instead of defining the life I want as my career. So, in that sense, I lean more towards the second thing you mention (although my bucket list may not involve motorcycles lol). Or, the other way I look at it is to think about how I want to spend my life and my top priorities are my family, my hobbies/friends, and making an impact on my community (locally and globally). In that order. My career provides the money for me to do the first two things the way I'd like to. In an ideal world, my career would also allow me to achieve my 3rd priority. It would be awesome if I could work as a planetary astronomer forever and get to teach new generations of students, produce research valuable to my field and inspire people to think about science. However, this is my 3rd priority because I wouldn't pick a career that allows me to do this at the cost of my relationships with my family, hobbies and friends. If I can't have the 3rd thing in my career without losing the first two things, then my plan is to find a way to "make a difference" outside of my work. So, to answer your question, the things that I feel are absolutely necessary in a career are (all equally important): 1. Reasonable work expectations (no more than 40 hours per week on regular basis) 2. Reasonable working hours (not places that expect 12 hour days or startup-culture where you have code-a-thons etc.) 3. Not a ton of required travel that requires me to be away from home (I love travel, but some positions have you travelling multiple times per month!) 4. Policies that allow for good work-life balance (e.g lots of vacation time, sick leave time, time off to care for family, etc.). Also, actual vacation time (some places I've seen will expect you to make up time taken off!) 5. A salary to support the lifestyle I want and commensurate with the work I do 6. Benefits such as pensions The things that I would like to have, in an ideal world, are: 1. Training/mentoring of junior colleagues (e.g. students, but not only that) 2. Teaching/outreach/interaction with external groups (e.g. general public, school groups etc.) 3. Some occasional travel for work (2 or 3 times a year) 4. Feeling like I am making a difference in other people's lives Overall, I think a position as a researcher of some sort fits these goals the best. And graduate school is an excellent way to qualify for research positions. I'm interested in research position within and outside of academia. So far, things are going well. I graduated earlier this year and just started a postdoctoral research position that meets all of the above (both the necessary and the ideal). It's a 2 (or 3) year contract position, so it's not forever, but I hope to continue to be lucky enough to find more positions like it. Just want to also point out that grad school helped me figure out what career paths I don't want to pursue. I am pretty sure now that I do not want to be a tenure-track professor at a super intense research-driven school. Although I do know a few people that seem to have a good work-life balance, the majority of these professors work way more and devote way more of their time to their careers than I am willing to. I have also attended a ton of career fairs and recruitment sessions to know what types of positions I don't want to work in outside of academia. I had originally thought that a consultant type position would be very interesting and rewarding, but one particular company (that does failure testing, i.e. figure out why some product failed and what the root cause was) that came to my campus discussed their day-in-a-life and it's not for me! The main red flag (for me) was that this company sold how much travel you would do (every week, it seems, to go to clients all over the USA) as a positive, while that would be extremely negative for me. Of course, I know that there are other companies with different working models, but these experiences help me figure out what to look out for. So that's another "indirect" way grad school helped me find the balance!

I second what @Sigaba said about thinking about your long term career goals and whether or not this PhD program is necessary (or helpful) to get there. As @rising_star also points out, there are huge disadvantages of pursuing a part-time PhD program and you need to consider them. To put it another way, and to be blunt, you will be disadvantaged compared to people who graduated from full time PhD programs. Therefore, if you haven't already factored that into the benefits of having a PhD, you should. Since you wanted opinions from other people, here's my third-party opinion. You say you have a comfortable job now with steady employment, but you want to improve your future career chances. I think that if you have a sure thing lined up after your degree program, then this PhD might be worth it. I would think about it as career advancement / professional development. What I mean is that if you are planning to stay working with your current employer and that this extra credential represents a pay bump / promotion then it would be a great idea to take advantage of your employer education benefits. However, if you were planning on this PhD program as a way to change career paths and transition to a more "traditional academic career", then I don't think this is a good idea at all, personally. I don't think a part-time PhD program will provide the support and resources you need to pursue these types of positions. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but your chances would be a lot lower than people with full time PhDs. If you really want to go this route, I think it would make more sense to leave your job and pursue full time graduate studies. In your field, you can definitely find fully funded programs that will not require you to accumulate any further debt. It would pay less than your current job though. Also, you say that you are currently making $55k per year with good benefits. From what I know about my friends in your field, this is higher than many postdoctoral research positions (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-16-131.html). It's almost twice as much as much grad student stipends. So, if you are going the postdoc route post graduation, it will be many more years before you get back to the pay grade you are currently at. Money is definitely not everything, so I don't mean this as an argument against going this way, but to provide information to help you make the decisions that meet your priorities. I think there are also some alternate options right? For example: 1. Since you are currently making a lot more than what grad students would make, perhaps your budget could be adjusted to pay for the credits without taking out more loans? Unless you are going to be also part-time at your work, meaning that your current salary won't continue. (In this case, I'd crunch the numbers in case that fully funded grad student stipends might actually be higher than unfunded part-time PhD + reduced work salary). 2. Will you qualify for in-state tuition soon? Maybe waiting until then to start the PhD program would make it more affordable and your employer's education benefit would cover more of the costs. 3. There's no rush right? You could work a few more years to save up more money so that when you take the pay hit to go to grad school, you can be a bit more comfortable. Or, maybe in the future you will be able to better determine whether or not a part time PhD program is necessary to advance in your career? I know that if you don't continue schooling, you'll have to start repaying student loans, but it might cost less than entering a part-time PhD program that might not get you where you want to be.

@orange turtle: Sorry for sidetracking with all the Title IX discussion. I felt it was necessary to respond to the comment that seemed to discourage reporting because others who read this might feel discouraged from reporting when it could make a difference. Back to Canada, as I wrote earlier, each province has different policies and laws. They are similar to the United States Title IX policies though. There are province-wide rules that are general as they mostly just govern what workplace-specific policies are allowed. Here is the policy of the largest university in the province where I live, hopefully you can find something similar for where-ever you live/work: http://bullyingandharassment.ubc.ca/. Each policy will be different, but the chain of escalation (if you wish to do so) is pretty much the same. This particular policy does require people like your supervisor to forward your complaint to a higher level. In any case, you did the right thing by going to her first, but since that didn't go anywhere, if you want to go further, you can escalate this above your supervisor. However, it's up to you how far you want to go. Maybe you want to just do what you need to do in order to avoid contact with the creepy prof, but you do have the right to go further if that is what you wish!

None of what I said (including what you quoted here) implies that I think someone should accuse another person of misconduct because they are uncomfortable. I have said it twice now in this thread but I am not sure what the misunderstanding is. If someone is feeling uncomfortable by the actions of another, and they do not feel comfortable enough to talk to that person directly, they should be encouraged to report it to the appropriate place. If it's related to Title IX, then the Title IX office is the right place. A report is not an accusation. As I said earlier, when action is warranted, I believe that the most common action is just education/training/providing resources. It doesn't result in disciplinary action or loss of privileges. If someone is acting inappropriately without malice, I think that in most cases, the best course of action is someone from the Title IX office having a discussion with the person to let them know why their actions were inappropriate and to come up with strategies to avoid this behaviour in the future. I agree with you that it would not be good to promote policies that unfairly discriminate against people on the autistic spectrum. But I don't understand your point on asking people to not report if it's "just doesn't know the social norms". I don't see how not knowing social norms should allow a person to make others feel uncomfortable. If someone doesn't know the social norms or is inadvertently making people feel uncomfortable, reporting it would help prevent this from continuing. As we both agreed on, if someone doesn't know social norms and the complainant is comfortable doing so, it's probably ideal to have the two parties discuss it. But sometimes, external help from resources like the Title IX office is needed. Title IX is supposed to exist to help students and the campus---it is not a disciplinary process. By the way, the Title IX office investigates and comes to a decision on whether policy was violated but they do not discipline. They forward the decision to whomever is in charge of the reported person (e.g. a Dean for students, Provost for faculty members, HR if staff, etc.)