TakeruK

I'm part of three research groups, each with their own 1-hour weekly meeting. We're not as big as some of the lab group meetings that my friends in bio/chem have. But three meetings a week is a lot. I have one "primary" research group affiliation and I attend that meeting every week but I just don't attend the other group meetings when I don't have the time. I don't know how mandatory these meetings are (whether formally or informally mandatory). I definitely would not suggest randomly skipping group meetings, but after awhile, you can tell the difference between whether you're expected to attend certain group meetings or not. (In my department, almost everyone is part of 2 or more research groups so most group meeting mailing lists are something like 1/4 to 1/3 of the department, and you will never get full attendance). I also second ShogunT's advice to do something about the format if that's possible. Again, this is something that depends on the norms of your group. At one group meeting, the format was terrible: there were 10 of us each giving 5 minute updates that were completely useless because 5 minutes is not enough time for the presenter to explain the context to the rest of the group and also get useful feedback from the prof. The format was basically each member getting a 5 minute conversation with the PI while the rest of the group is unable to be helpful in any way. We got together after a couple of weeks of this and asked the prof to change the format and now group meeting is a lot better! I like my primary advisor's group meetings the most. We try to set a theme for a semester and follow that theme. For example, one summer, we all wanted to learn more about X so we decided to have it as "Journals Club" format where we selected important papers on the topic of X and signed up to do a 1-hour presentation on that paper and its implications. Last semester, the theme was "professional development" and we had a series of meetings where we talked about academic websites, applying for jobs, how to interview, how to give job talks, how to set up job talks, networking, academic vs non-academic jobs, and also research-jobs vs. teaching jobs. Currently, we are in a format where the goal is to generate our own research idea. So, we sign up for a week each and we pick one paper we found intriguing and that we think would be a good topic for a new research topic. The group also reads the paper beforehand and then together we all brainstorm and discuss new research ideas based on stuff from the selected paper. Then, the people interested can start a new collaboration/proposal. So far, one major proposal has been submitted from these meetings. Finally, in weeks where there isn't anything to talk about (maybe everyone is out of town or really busy or something), we just cancel group meeting. There is no point meeting just for the sake of meeting. We also have occasional meetings where it's just a practice talk for someone with an upcoming conference (and we are giving feedback). Ultimately, I think the purpose of the group meeting is to provide something useful for the group members**, not for the PI. In most cases where I feel group meeting is not useful, it is because the PI is trying to get the most out of the meeting but not thinking about how it would benefit the group members (e.g. those "update" meetings that are useless to everyone else). In my field, it's more common to have weekly individual meetings with our PIs, so maybe that's why we're able to keep these updates out of the group meeting and focus group meeting on something beneficial to everyone. But I suppose that in groups that are so big, the group meeting is the only time the PI gets to interact with some members (but if this is the case, then I think small sub-groups is better than a giant group meeting!) (** Another idea that I've heard from other groups but we haven't done ourselves is that some groups have an annual meeting where the PI goes over the budget for the entire lab and explains how they determine the budget. This helps students be a part of lab management but more importantly, it familiarizes them with how to financially manage a lab and how to ask for a start-up that's big enough etc. And another idea is the entire group helping another member

Do the grants in your field allow graduate students to be listed as such? In my field, there is a fellowship that is basically a grant but only the faculty member can be a PI, a co-PI or a Co-I. However, the grant is really a graduate fellowship so 100% of the application must be written by the student only (except the letter of reference). Instead of being listed as a PI/Co-PI/Co-I, I am listed as the "graduate student" on the grant. This way, I can include this on my CV since I'm part of the grant, but I'm not the PI. I list this grant on my CV under "awards" (where most people would put things like NSF) rather than grants though. In my field, this is the common way for graduate students and sometimes postdocs to be included onto the grant. Most grants where I participated in, I'm listed as "Graduate Student" or "Participant". At my school, if you are listed as a PI, you must allocate at least 1% of your time doing this work (and thus 1% of your salary must come from the grant). So, as Eigen points out, it's usually complicated and/or not possible for graduate students to be PI on major grants. Edited to add clarification: With the exception of the fellowship/grant above, I don't include any of the other grants where I'm listed as a graduate student/participant on my CV. In these cases, the idea has not been mine and although I might still have contributed a lot of work towards it (i.e. if it were a paper, I'd be a coauthor), I wouldn't include a grant that I didn't write the majority of on my CV. In my field, many grants are for telescope time (sometimes it's just time, but others it's both time plus funding to pay someone to analyze the data) and usually graduate students are expected to write one of these during their degree but often the faculty member will have to be the PI. In the future, if I ever write a grant (whether it's for money and/or telescope time) where I do all the work but someone else has to be the PI, as long as I'm included in the grant authorship in some way, I'd find a way to put it on my CV (making my actual role clear though).

I have never heard of the non-resident tuition being refunded in California after you become a resident. Instead, at most UC schools, if you are funded, the first year's funding will cover the non-resident tuition and you will be required to get resident status within 1 year because you will have to pay the non-resident cost out of pocket in subsequent years. If your Masters program is unfunded, you should probably ask this question directly to the school's bursar or whatever office collects tuition. If paying the non-resident tuition is a problem, you might consider moving to California a year early (or deferring an existing offer for one year) and working to both gain extra money and attain residency status so that you can avoid paying the non-resident fee.

Oh, I forgot to say---usually most schools in Canada will pay international students extra to cover the extra cost of tuition. This usually comes in the form of an award/scholarship, of which there are a limited amount. In your meeting, you should check if there is such funding allocated for you.

Stipends are almost always discussed in per-year amounts in Canada. Tuition waiver is worth money, so that is good. Usually, the minimum stipend for PhD students in Ontario is around $18,000 per year before paying for tuition. This means that in some cases, the take home pay can be as low as $11,000 per year (tuition will cost between $5000 to $7000, typically). Usually graduate departments will list their funding information clearly for all applicants to see, but I just looked on UOttawa's website and it's not shown at all (at least not in any easy way). I did find information about an "Admission Scholarship" which is automatically awarded to everyone with a 8.0/10.0 or higher. https://www.uottawa.ca/graduate-studies/students/awards/admission-scholarship This sounds like what you got. The award is $18k per year, $9k from the Graduate Office, probably will be mostly used to pay tuition, plus $9k from the department, in the form of RA or TA. This is the minimum stipend according to the website. So, it depends on what the department means. It could just be $18k total, (i.e. you'll be paid $9k for both TA and RA), or you might get more, i.e. you are paid $9k per year in RA plus the TA wages. (Don't forget, you will still have to pay tuition out of this). I would say that the typical STEM PhD student stipend in Ontario is around $25k per year (before tuition, so around $18k-$20k take home pay). If you want to have $30k or more per year, it will be hard to do without an external scholarship. Are you a Canadian citizen or permanent resident yet? If not, then you won't be eligible for most awards. However, you can apply for the OGS (Ontario Graduate Scholarship), worth $15,000 per year. This will be harder to get until you start your program. Note: If you get these higher awards, it will generally replace the lower awards that are automatic. You'll still get money for TA and RA work, but it's not like you will get this in addition. Ottawa is a lower cost of living place than most places in Canada. I am not sure if you really need $30k per year to pay for cost of living there. Usually if you are going from a "real job" like what you have to a graduate program, you'll take a big pay cut. It's up to you whether you think it will be worth it. As to what to decide now....you can still visit the professor and the program before deciding right? Why not take them up on the offer to visit and see what the department is really like. Will it have the facilities and resources to meet your needs? Talk to the students when you visit too---are they able to afford living in Ottawa on their stipends?

Oh I see that I missed the fact that your programs have rolling admissions. Sorry I don't really know how that works so I'm not sure how helpful I can be! I have no idea how long rolling admissions take to respond. For fixed deadlines, I found that Canadian schools will make decisions within 4 weeks of the deadline.

I think the email is short and to the point, which is great. I would do three things differently: 1. Don't attach your transcripts and no need to draw extra attention to the topic of your degrees. This information will be in your resume. If your grades are good, add it to your resume entry for your schools, in a way that is understandable to Canadian readers. Normally, you don't put GPAs on a resume, but for this purpose, you should. 2. Your second paragraph needs to be a lot more personalized and specific. It sounds like you could send this same email to 30 professors, which is not great. I would change this to a 2 or 3 sentence paragraph stating your specific interests for working with this professor. What is an example project/research question that they work on that you would want to work on? 3. I'd change your closing paragraph to be something like "Will you be taking on new graduate students in Fall (or winter) 2017?". I think your current closing is vague. It's not clear what you are asking for ("your support" is very open ended). What you want to ask them is whether or not they will be taking on students. Then you would hopefully have some short conversation that demonstrates that they will be interested in reviewing your application when it arrives. You can't expect them to say "Yes, I'll accept you" on the spot via email though, and not even after a conversation. The point of the email contact is to i) find out if indeed you and the prof are a good match and ii) whether or not they might be interested. This lets you know whether it's worth your time applying there. --- Some other notes: Your timing is wrong. It's not the best time to be applying to PhD programs in Canada right now. I'm afraid that most professors have just finished thinking about applicants starting in Fall 2016, so they might be ignoring your email because they aren't taking students right now. And, most Canadian PhD programs only have Fall starts---unless the program website mentions a Winter 2017 start, your next opportunity will be starting in Fall 2017. Therefore, following the advice I gave above, you should wait until November 2016 or January 2017 to contact professors about Fall 2017. Don't worry about transcripts. When you apply, you can indicate to the school why you cannot send official transcripts (i.e. they require a physical trip back to the UK). Let the school know that you can send scanned or copied unofficial transcripts. They will probably be okay with this and only require official ones once you are registering (save one of your official transcripts for this).

TheGradCafe results definitely do not represent the entire applicant pool. Most of the people that know about this site, check it, and have the willingness to post their information will be top applicants.

I have a few questions for you: 1. What are you including in the email to the potential supervisors? 2. When did you send these emails? It's a little late in the year to contact supervisors now about starting a program this Fall. The best time to contact supervisors in Canada, in my opinion, is about a month or two before their school's application deadline. Most Canadian schools will have deadlines between January 15 to March 1. December is always a bad month (deadlines, conferences, exams/teaching and then holidays). So I'd contact people in November for January deadlines and early January for all other deadlines. 3. What do you mean that you have a limited number of transcripts? Can you get more? 4. There aren't a ton of schools in Canada, so I don't think you will end up applying to 15 schools, but 2-3 might not be enough, since you are not a "traditional" applicant. It would also be a good idea to find 2-3 supervisors per school, not just 2-3 supervisors total. 5. You don't always have to get a supervisor to say "yes" first. And note that if they say they are interested in you that doesn't mean you'll actually get accepted. It just means that if you do get accepted, then they would be interested in working with you. So, if you aren't getting a lot of responses, it might be worth it to apply anyways because then you will be able to describe yourself in the application package more fully and that might make them more interested in you.

This sounds very bad to me. Since it sounds like you want to find out if this is "normal", I'll respond to each complaint one by one: Thesis committee thing: In theory, these guidelines should be posted online anyways so you could have found this out yourself. It's crappy of them to only give two days' notice, but as long as there were no actual consequences for those who couldn't get it done on time, not a big deal. This kind of disorganization isn't ideal but it's not a dealbreaker, for me. Failure to pay: This is a major issue. I haven't ever heard of this happening elsewhere without actual consequences for the school (however, most of the places I were at had labour unions representing students, so if a school pulled something like this, they would be in breach of contract so the school takes it very seriously). Also, I don't get why they "have" to pay you a lower stipend than other students. That sounds like BS. Reimbursement: Unfortunately, departments tend to operate this way and they are often not understanding of the fact that not everyone can pay upfront for big costs like this. I think this is something academia in general needs to be more aware of, but unfortunately, it's a problem common to many places. The Graduate Office at my school provides loans to help out with students who can't put the money upfront. Also, sometimes there are ways to minimize the impact on yourself. For example, most hotels don't charge you until you finish your stay (it's weird that you had to pay upfront). And, sometimes the price difference between "early registration" and "late/onsite registration" for grad students is very small ($10-$15 in my field) so registering late can delay the amount of time between paying and getting reimbursement (although make sure that this is okay with your advisor). I've only been to one school where they have a good solution to this---students can get a $1000 advance on travel expenses, but US schools seem to be reluctant to do this. Core classes: 20 hours per week of lecture time or total time? Our program is 9 hours per week of lecture and 27 hours per week of total time on coursework. Poor instruction in grad classes is kind of a norm, but your description sounds on the really bad side, especially the professor you describe. Online classes: This seems pretty unreasonable but it could be okay depending on the details. Seminars: The fact that they invite other chairs or prominent professors is not a bad thing in general? I think it's actually a good thing! In my department, the primary goal of seminars is to expose our students to other researchers and help us build our network. That's why they set up meetings with these speakers and students take the speaker to lunch and dinner. However, from your description, there must be something wrong if only first years are going to the seminar. No one forces anyone to go here, but we all know that the department seminar is the one thing we all "should" do together and we do it. It's mostly good speakers though (the 3rd year students invite the speakers and set it up). --- Now, what should you do about it? I'm really not sure. I am not sure how much you are able to change things and whether it will be worth your time. You could try to make some changes but if you are really unhappy, perhaps leaving with a Masters and going elsewhere would be better for you personally and professionally!

I don't think a 20 hrs per week RA is a full time RA (sure, it's a full RA appointment for a grad student, but generally full time hired research assistants work 40 hours per week and aren't also students). Also, I don't think it's necessarily true that the RA should have first priority---what if the thing that the professor wants the RA to do is something in your skillset and not in the RA's skillset. Or, the RA might not be interested, as you said, because they want to work on something else. But all of that doesn't matter. There's no use wondering why the other RA isn't being asked to work on this. Instead, just focus on this job/task you're being offered. First of all, I think the more confusing thing to answer is why won't you get coauthorship credit for one of these projects? I can't imagine doing any serious research work for anyone if I don't get coauthorship! Unless this is the norm in your field or there is some other great benefit to doing the non-authorship work, I would certainly turn that down. The next question is whether or not the work will benefit you. Do you need funding and this work will provide that funding? If so, then probably a good idea to take it. Or, will this teach you / train you in a useful skill? Or, is the research topic relevant to your interests? If these are true and the pay is worth your time then don't worry about what the professor's RA is doing. Take the offer. Usually in grad school, a lot of what we do is driven by the need to fund ourselves. This is likely true beyond grad school too. So, yeah, a lot of grad student opportunities will be crappy work that the professor doesn't want to do themselves. Hopefully, you'll be able to meet some important need for yourself while doing this work though (whether it's funding yourself, developing a skill or nurturing a new collaboration for even better things in the future).

I find that most schools (even across disciplines) have the same general guidelines for SOP length, so I'd write a first draft that would be a "typical" length for the other schools you're applying to. But it's far too early to have a final draft where you need to know the exact word limit. You can wait until after the applications are open and the details appear online before you need to worry about polishing a draft to the point where the difference between 750 words or 1250 words matter.

This is interesting. Your program (@tajob) sounds similar to mine---in our first year, we must also do two research projects on two different fields. Planetary Science is a very multidisciplinary field---we accept students with Physics degrees, Chemistry degrees, Geology degrees, Math degrees, and Astronomy degrees. And we are highly encouraged to go broad in our knowledge. We have a six core classes than span a large range of topics then five elective classes with pretty much no requirement at all (other than that they are graduate level classes somewhat related to our work). So, some people who study planetary astronomy will take astronomy electives. Those who work on satellite data might take classes over in electrical engineering. And this is all encouraged. I've taken classes in five different departments (the five required electives were in 3 departments related to my work but I also took two classes "pass/fail" for fun in a language and education, which were just extra classes). That said, I still agree with the spirit of @ExponentialDecay's advice above. There does need to be some focus. You don't have to only care about your research and teaching and nothing else, but I do think it is important to have a set goal and ensure that you, as a grad student, focus on your energies and efforts into meeting this goal, say, 80% of the time (just an arbitrary number). What I mean is that as a graduate student, you will have opportunities to do 1000 things! There will always be this class, or you can work more on this assignment, or spend more time TAing X or you could collaborate with Y or take workshop Z etc. etc. You're right that there's more than one way to do academia. But what you wrote here sounds like you aren't taking charge of your path and instead, you are "reacting" to your environment. This sounds a little mean but I hope you understand I intend it well. As a second year, you don't need to know everything about your future. But, I think this is a good time to think about what you want and then think about what things will get you there. You can't take all the paths at once, or you'll just end up partway down each path and not reach your goal. It sounds like you are already on your way to thinking about this the "right" way. I just wanted to write this post because it sounded like you might want to hear from another multidisciplinary perspective too! So, like I said above, I think you need to find some balance. For me, it's something like 80% of my commitments are things that are certain to get me towards my goal. The other 20% are things I want to do for fun, to explore new ideas, etc. It's important to take some calculated risks as well! Finally, it's not that rare in my field to work with untenured professors. In fact, I think the biggest groups are usually run by untenured professors (although it does depend on each professor's style). My advisor is not yet tenured and I think they will be up for tenure around the same time as I finish. When I started, the Department Chair sat all the students down in small groups over lunch and chatted with us about whatever might be on our minds. I asked about the tenure process and they told me that not once in their memory (around the past 25 years) has a professor been denied tenure in my department (not everyone gets tenure because they might end up leaving academia or going to another job though). So it's not always a concern to work with an untenured professor.

The way I understood it was that they open up the applications and they will accept applications first come, first served. But if they exceed the cap in the first 5 business days, then they will use a lottery method to determine which 65,000 out of the 200,000+ applications to process. So, yes, whether your applications gets processed will be chosen via lottery but there is a limited number of "lottery tickets" (so to speak) and whether you can enter the lottery is first come, first served (i.e. you won't be able to have your application chosen via lottery if you submit it in like June, because the applications will be closed by then). You are right though that I did not word that very clearly in my original post! Sorry!

Pretty cool, but I'd be most excited for that sweet sweet stationary.

I know a few international people that have successfully found jobs in the US both in industry and academia. In academia, you don't really have to worry too much if you have a PhD because that makes you eligible for various skilled worker visas as well as temporary academic visas. Almost all universities will be willing to help you get the right immigration status---getting a job is probably harder than the immigration hassles (although I can imagine that citizens of some places might have a harder time than others). Outside of academia, I think H1-B is the best shot and most of my friends have gone this route. The challenge is that you have to find a company that is willing to sponsor you on H1-B status. This costs them money, time and mostly importantly, there is a quota on H1-B. I think this means that companies might want to make sure you're a proven good worker before they are willing to sponsor you (since if they choose you, they can't choose someone else). Also, there is a nationwide cap on H1-B applications they will process. I think it's 65,000 per year plus an extra 20,000 for those with US masters degrees or higher. It's first come first served so you have to apply really early. I think the US Immigration fiscal year is October to October, and they open applications for the upcoming fiscal year on April 1. So, April 1 2016 was the start of the applications for the fiscal year beginning October 2017. I did a google search and found that they reached the cap of applications by April 9 2016, so there are no more H1B applications available until next year. So, because of the very tight timeline, you generally need to be able to work in the US and convince your employer to support your H1-B petition the upcoming April. Most of my friends who go this route do so by working on F-1 OPT after graduation and use this time to find a place that will sponsor their H1-B and also to prove themselves. I remember that in another thread you were considering withdrawing early from your program---if you want to work/stay in the US, it might be better to finish your program so you can use your OPT. All of the above is assuming you meant a post-graduation job. If you are looking for work while you are a student, then you could qualify for CPT or OPT while studying too. There are limits on how many hours you can work (20 hours per week during school year, no limit when school is not in session). Talk to your international student office to find out how to use these benefits. OPT and CPT is managed by your school, not the employer.

I laughed out loud when I read "at faculty rates". Along with all of the other requirements/obligations that are being marketed as benefits! Sidenote: The faculty rate for the gym at my school is actually one of the most expensive rates! The fee structure is basically based on income---students then postdocs, then staff, then faculty, and finally community members that aren't affiliated with the school.

I think this depends on the field too. In my field, reviews are not double-blind and are only optionally single-blind. Authors don't know who the reviewers are, but the reviewers will know who the authors are. The editors in my field's main journals encourage reviewers to maintain anonymity but do not actually require it. So, some reviewers choose to sign their review with their name (sometimes they won't sign the first review but they will sign the second one that says they think your changes are great and it's ready for publication). They usually do so if it's a positive review. And, it's not rare for reviewers to do things that reveal their identity like correcting spelling of their name or mentioning that it's a good update of their work (Sidenote: In my field, if you are submitting a paper that is an update of X's work, you're likely going to get X as your reviewer). And, if the reviewer doesn't reveal themself in the review, they might tell you the next time they see you in person. I think you should do several things: Find out what the norm is in your field. You can ask other students or your advisor. If you are in a field like ShogunT's where letting the editor know that the referee revealed themselves would get that person in trouble, keep that in mind in your choice of actions too. (Although in my field, all referee comments go through the editor first so the editor would already know this, however, they might not have read it carefully enough to notice it). As others suggested, check with the editor. You might even ask the editor to ask the referee for their opinion (like fuzzy said, maybe they are comfortable revealing themselves to you in a semi-private communication but don't want to be identified publicly). I would also say ask the referee directly, however, my field's journals strongly discourages direct contact between referee and authors (more so than anonymity). The journals tend to want all communication to go through the editor, through official channels that will leave a paper trail.

I understand how you are feeling. I don't want to generalize too much, but grad school is made up of people who are already some of the best in their undergraduate classes. So, you are taking a big group of people who are used to doing well and achieving a lot and putting them all together. When you are in this situation, if you are seeing other people do better than you, it's easy to think that you are somehow falling behind or not doing enough. But don't forget about the big picture. You have already achieved a lot and you are currently learning a ton and achieving a lot more too! Don't be compare yourself to others. I find it useful for me to track my own accomplishments and focus on what I am doing for myself because I want to, not because someone else is doing X and I'm afraid they will be better than me. I think I am pretty good at handling these feelings when they crop up now because I've been a grad student for awhile. But they still crop up from time to time. For example, last month, I was pretty bummed that I didn't get awarded a talk for an upcoming important conference in my field. A friend and classmate of mine did though and I was very happy for them. But for awhile, I felt like I was messing up my career and wondering what I was doing wrong that I didn't achieve this thing (other crappy stuff was happening to my research at that time too). I allowed myself to be disappointed and feel bad/sorry for myself for a day and then reminded myself that there are factors outside of my control, I am still good at what I'm doing, and I shouldn't be comparing myself to others. To help me do this, I keep a list of things that I'm good at and accomplishments I've made in the past. Sometimes on days where I feel like I am a total screwup, going through this list helps me reaffirm to myself that I am capable of this. Grad school will have some moments where it will suck but others where it will be awesome. And then a few weeks after the disappointing moment, I got notice that I will be giving a talk on my research at a different conference coming up! Sorry that I am rambling, but my point is that your anxiety that everyone will be better than you is common and I bet most of your classmates might feel the same way about you. I think it's really important to learn to not compete with yourself by comparing yourself to other people (it's part of learning to say no to yourself that I wrote about earlier). It means making peace with the fact that you cannot achieve everything and if you try to do everything, you might end up doing poorly at everything instead of being good at a few things that are actually important to you. As GradSchoolTruther suggested, the school counseling center is an excellent resource. They are here for students, so make use of it. I find that they are great for helping you process your thoughts and come up with solutions that work for you. They are not only for severe mental and emotional distress (although they are good for that too!). Going to see a counselor does not necessarily mean that you have a problem or that there is something wrong with you. They are a resource that is meant for us to use when we need it!

I am not as sensitive to specific word choices as telkanuru but I do agree with their reaction. Even if a TA makes a mistake and triggers a student, and the student reacts badly to it, the student is still responsible for their actions. But I think livenlaf did include this in the statement I quoted here---livenlaf says that "no one is excusing" the behaviour, and I agree, it's not an excuse. So I think both telkanuru's and livenlaf's points can be complementary. For example, let's say I had told my class that their homework will be graded by date X, and then I had a personal situation come up and was unable to meet this deadline. I made a mistake and I would apologize for the delay. However, if a student who may be stressed out about a lot of other things (which I don't know about at the moment) reacts badly to this and swears at me, then the student is still responsible for their action. Even if I made a mistake, I don't deserve to be cursed at. But I think part of being a good instructor is understanding that your students may be struggling with other issues that you don't see or don't know about it. This doesn't mean that if a student swears at me during class that I just ignore it and let them "off the hook". Instead, it means that I will likely have to decide what action to take immediately, if necessary. Depending on how it goes, I might ask the student to leave the class immediately, or as fuzzy wrote above, maybe a different action is more appropriate (i.e. let the student know the behaviour was inappropriate but if I don't actually have the power to remove the student, trying to do so might disrupt the class even more). After the class, I would certainly follow up with the student and/or the Dean's office (or whatever appropriate office). Maybe during this stage I would find out that there are other issues that I don't know about. At my school, this would be the policy because usually the student will confide in the Dean and the Dean might just let me know that the student is getting help and that they have been made aware that their actions were not appropriate. To me, this what it means to be aware of the impact of your own actions and this is how I hope to run my classroom. In short, I think what livenlaf wrote at the end of the paragraph is what really matters and summarizes how one ought to approach these issues: That is, my understanding of this is that we, as TAs, should be aware of the fact that we don't know the full story of our students. This means that bad actions by them should still have appropriate consequences, but that we take action in the best interest of the class and of the students where possible. (i.e. I wouldn't "punish" a student just for the sake of punishing them, but to make sure they seek help and learn from their inappropriate action). I don't really agree with most of the sentiments in this paragraph. I think this paragraph reads very "transactionally" and I don't think this applies evenly to all universities in the United States. Post-secondary education is not always a transaction where students fork over money and educators provide training. Students are not customers and (research) universities are not in the business of training people. As you wrote here, most professors are not interested in teaching and in fact, they are not hired by the University to teach. Similarly, TAs are not even trained to teach at all. In most programs in my field, your TA work is considered paid on-the-job training for your graduate education. At research universities, the model is that the University hires professors and graduate students to perform research. The graduate students learn via mentorship from the professors and they also learn by working as TAs. In my program, TAs are not always assigned based on what they are experts in, but sometimes TAs are assigned to a class in an area that the TA is weak in, so that they can also learn the material and improve themselves. The undergraduates pay tuition to be a part of the same community and to take classes, but they are not paying for dedicated instructors and TAs that are here to ensure that they learn. It's the student's job to figure out how to learn. But I agree that not all schools work like this. I think that if you are writing about a school whose main purpose is to train the students that pay to come to the school, then what you wrote here applies. It would be fraud if a school presented itself as providing dedicated instruction but then hire faculty with the primary goal of having them do research and teaching is just a chore. I want to be clear: I'm not disagreeing that faculty and TAs need better training as instructors. I wish I could get more training than the limited amount I have access to. And I'm not saying that I think teaching is unimportant---I enjoy teaching more than research! I agree with almost all of the ideas behind what you wrote here---it shouldn't be teaching vs. research, why can't we aim for a program that is strong in both? But, I don't agree with you that just because students pay a ton of money in tuition that they automatically deserve an education experience catered to them or that they deserve well trained and dedicated instructors. I think that schools should be more honest and upfront about the University's priorities and the actual education that students will receive. Students should know what they are paying for and they should know that at many schools, they are not paying to become "customers" and they are not going to always receive qualified instruction.

Here are some ideas if you don't already have them (all generic things since I don't know your field specific needs): (in no particular order) 1. Noise-cancelling headphones 2. Ergonomic keyboard, mouse, mousepad, keyboard 3. New desk chair (unfortunately the really good ergonomic ones are much more than $150!) 4. Desk chair mat, if your desk chair has wheels and is on carpet. 5. Filing cabinet 6. Various office organizers to help sort your papers or other work. e.g.. those magazine folders, document trays, binders, folders, hanging folders etc 7. Software! e.g. Dropbox Pro subscription, Papers, any other things you could use 8. Membership fees for your field's national society, if this is allowed Hope that gives you some ideas!

After reading the follow-up responses and getting more details, I agree with the other posters that you are taking on too many things at once and this is likely the biggest contributor to the reason why you feel very overworked. You already got a lot of good advice from other experienced people! So, I'll try to add something new: One of the most important things you have to learn as a graduate student is when to say no. Not just saying "no" to other people making demands on your time, but when you say no to yourself. Remember, you cannot do everything. There is always more courses you can take, more minors/accreditations to attain, more research to do, more teaching, more everything. You cannot do it all. You are allowed to let yourself not do everything. Trying to do a little bit of everything will hurt you more in the long run than being very specialized at a smaller group of things. The point of a PhD is to become a specialist in one set of skills and knowledge!

The CRA agent I talked to told me to not enter US scholarships.

Baggage limit depends on your ticket. When you buy your ticket, your airline will tell you the baggage limit. All important documents and valuables should be in your hand carry if possible. For long trips, I usually pack one change of clothes in my hand carry. It's helpful if you want to change into fresh clothes when you arrive, and also just in case your checked baggage is lost or delayed, you can at least have a fresh change of clothes while dealing with this extra problem. You can usually buy a sim card at a store in the airport, and they are available at convenience stores and phone stores around the US. You don't need a credit score to get on a pay as you go plan. This type of plan means you pay for some credit on your account and as you use the phone, it depletes your credit. However, I found that most phone companies will allow you to get on a plan without much credit at all. T-Mobile, for example, uses your I-20 or DS-2019 instead of a SSN to open your account. I think wire transfers are the easiest way to receive money from other countries. I think you should bring money in a form where you can access it within a few days easily. I would say you would want money in cash to last you for one week and a US dollar money order drawn from a US bank to last you the first 2-3 months if possible. Open a US bank account right away and deposit the money order---you should be able to access it within a week. Note that if you cannot get a US dollar money order drawn from a US bank in your home country, it might mean that you cannot access this money for many weeks, so make plans for that. Usually, you are responsible for moving the furniture you buy from the store. Some stores will charge you extra for delivery if that is helpful. For places like IKEA (good place for cheap furniture), they will deliver for something like $100-$200, depending on distance. Many people will rent a big van or a big truck and buy all their furniture in one day. Renting a truck like this will probably cost around $50-$100, depending on the size of the truck, how much you drive it, and how long you take. Note: There is an exception for really big items, like mattresses or sofas. Usually, the store will deliver this to you, and they might even set it up for you in your apartment too! Sometimes this is part of the purchase price, but sometimes you pay extra. It depends on what price you agree on.

I agree with most of what everyone else said. It's within the contracted policies and no one is doing anything wrong per se. But it sounds like you are saying there is sort of a two-tier TA system in your department. I'm not in a linguistic department so I don't know all of the inner workings but what you describe does seem unfair. To me, it sounds like you are saying there are more desirable TA options because they are more relevant to the research and they don't take up the full 20 contract hours. And there are less desirable ones that aren't relevant to research and they also take up more contract hours. At the basic level, yeah, some TA positions are going to be more work than others and sometimes you get unlucky. But, you are saying that the department is systematically assigning the less desirable TA positions to one group of students (those with a foreign language) and assigning more desirable TA positions to those without. To me, it doesn't sound like this is done with malice, because they are probably trying to put the skilled workers in the positions that need those skills. However, they might not realize that they are acting unfairly, especially since this means everyone gets paid the same for TAing but one group of student systematically has to work more for the same pay. The first thing I would do is to find out if other students feel the same way and approach the department. I can think of lots of different ways to resolve this fairly. One way would be to make sure they aren't assigning TAships unfairly. It's okay for the department to assign TA work to someone who is not 100% skilled in that course, because what if they have no students with language X in one year? Someone will have to teach it. (Similarly, theory physics students sometimes have to TA in lab courses where they have very little experience). Or, they can put more hours into the more intensive courses. Maybe if you are TAing a language course, you only TA twice per year while those TAing the lower workload courses will TA 3 courses per year. Ultimately, even with a fixed budget, it sounds like the department could do some work to reallocate these hours so that everyone still gets paid the same amount while everyone also works the same amount. But whether or not it's worth your time to complain is up to you and your colleagues. I feel like you have a case here. It's not fair to have a "two-tier" TA system and systematically assign less desirable positions to a group of students.