TakeruK

Many people also believe that journals subscription practices are unfair because taxpayers' money (i.e. government grants) are being used to pay for costs related to publishing an article (in my field it's about $1000 per colour image) and then Universities have to pay again (using government money) to subscribe to the journal and get these articles.

Even though my agreement with the library may or may not allow me to share articles with others, I would still do it anyways. I want to see a change towards open access journals and not having to pay for ideas (it makes sense to charge if you are still getting print copies delivered, or a nominal fee to pay for server costs etc. but the Ivory Tower economic model should not be a for-profit one.) Researchers in the science generally lose money for every article published -- it costs money to pay us to work on the articles as well as publishing fees. But we do it because the point of research is to communicate our findings and published articles help us get grants for more research.

I think people should break the law/status quo, in non-violent ways, if they want the law/status quo to be changed. I also think that a rule/law that is hard/impossible to enforce is an invalid rule/law but that's just my philosophy. So I would encourage people to continue sharing articles and violate closed access agreements as much as possible, with as much risk as they are willing to take.

Your advisor is likely right---in our field, there ARE tons of valuable insights that remain to be made from the precious data, especially data from missions! For most of these missions, even when they have ended, the existing dataset is going to be the best data available for a good long while. It takes so much time, energy and especially money to get missions to other planets/moons and there are just so many cool places to see in our Solar System that unless you're studying Mars, there may only be one mission (two if you're lucky) to your favourite celestial location in your career. 
You are also right that you should be working with your advisor during your first year(s) to develop projects into a PhD. I don't mean to insult you but it's not that worrying that a prospective grad student is unable to come up with ideas that haven't already been done by other researchers. If you can do this, then you would already have a PhD  The reason why it is hard for your specific case is that with missions, the "low hanging fruit" and the most obvious studies to conduct are done first. In fact, they are often already planned by the science team years before the mission even launches (of course, the missions themselves yield data that leads us in more directions!). So, in your shoes, I would not worry that I can't come up with a novel way to analyze the data that the rest of the field has not already considered. There is way more data out there than people in our field to work on it and your advisor can help you carve out a niche for yourself. 
I consider grad school to be an "incubation" process to becoming an independent researcher. At first, you would "rely" on your advisor more to come up with project ideas. You should definitely still try to come up with your own but it's okay if these ideas are already done by others (in fact, it's a good sign, because this means that your thinking is in tune with the field's). Discussions with your advisor can help you figure out how you can take a different approach than others have in the past. Planetary Science is also a beautifully multidisciplinary field (in my totally unbiased opinion :P) so during your grad studies, you will be meeting other people with different approaches and you will get opportunities to combine something you learned from one area with a dataset from another area to develop new results. In fact, during my grad studies, this happened quite often amongst our students  
As I said, grad school is a training/incubation process. The goal is to leave with a PhD and the ability to not only come up with good ideas for yourself but also some wisdom/experience in knowing which ideas are worth pursuing and how to really refine an idea into an actual project. If you could do all this already, then you wouldn't need a PhD. So don't beat yourself up if you are only at the "ideas" phase (which is already itself a great start).

The OP isn't saying that they want to go to grad school solely to meet a future spouse, right? To me, the post reads as someone who is concerned about meeting a future spouse while in grad school. More generally, worrying about how grad school may affect the non-academic parts of our lives is a legitimate graduate student concern!
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with choosing to go to grad school for other reasons in addition to academic ones. I think it's even okay to have non-academic reasons to have similar priority to academic reasons. For example, my wife and I have thought about starting a family while I'm in grad school. So, when we were deciding where I should go, we picked the program on lots of non-academic reasons (close to family, good stipend, good health insurance, childcare benefits, safe environment, multicultural city, nice weather, etc. etc.). Most people would agree that these are all important factors to consider when picking a school. And, I don't really see a huge difference between any of the factors I picked and something like "potential to find a spouse" (e.g. picking a big city). 
 
Graduate students should not be expected to, nor should they need to put their personal lives on hold while they get their graduate training. I'm not saying it's a bad thing when people choose to focus solely on school/work while in a graduate program. However, if you don't want to do this, you should not have to, and I don't think it's fair for people to say things that imply one does not belong in graduate school/academia if one has non-academic priorities. The only factor that matters is whether or not the applicant wants to go to grad school / believes it's the best course of action for them.
 
To answer the OP's other question about experiences with dating in grad school. I started grad school with a significant other and for most couples I meet with one (or both) partners in grad school, they usually had begun their relationship before grad school. But I also know plenty of couples that begin relationships while both partners were in grad school, or one person in grad school and the other not. Grad school is definitely time-consuming, but it's not time-consuming to the point where the only thing you can spend time on is school. Granted, I don't know the workload of a MSW program, and it might be way more intense because it's a shorter program than a PhD. I think that with good time management skills, grad students can definitely find time to date, to spend time with their spouses, to raise a family, to play on a competitive sports team, to volunteer in the community, etc. (obviously not all of these at once!).
 
Grad school can easily take up all of your time if you let it, or if you want it to. You have to make time for your own activities if you want to have time to do other things.It's not necessary to always put school as your priority. There will be times where you will have no choice but to buckle down and get the work/studying done, but it's important for me to have balance and other interests/priorities as well. 

Wow, that blog link is really interesting and I think I can learn a lot from that! I can share how I read scientific papers but I don't think I have such a detailed system.
It does depend a lot on what I want to get out of the paper because that dictates how much time/energy I spend on the paper. Since you asked about reading papers "quickly", I'll talk about the three methods I use for the lowest level of reading.
Level 0, for "keeping up" reading: The goal of this reading is to ensure I know about the latest papers. Every day, the pre-print server I subscribe to sends me a list of paper titles and abstracts for my subfield. This is how I mostly "keep up". The other way I "keep up" is to follow social media for my subfield---there are several facebook groups for various areas of interest to me and papers are discussed there. I also stay connected with my colleagues and see what papers they find interesting.
When I do this type of reading, I will read the paper title and the abstract. If I remain interested, I might also skim the introduction since that's how people put their work in context with the field. Once you are familiar with the subject area, skimming for key words and citations will tell you what area of the field they are building on. The main goal of the Introduction reading is to figure out what important question they are addressing and why I should care. Then, I skip right to the conclusion and see what their results are. I do all of this reading/skimming without taking notes. Usually over my morning coffee. I try to spend about 5 minutes per paper.
At this point, I decide whether or not to spend more time on the article. If I find the motivation compelling and the results significant, I will put the paper in my Mendeley library for further reading (see below) at a later time (sometimes right away if I'm really excited about it). Otherwise, I move onto the next one.
Level 1, for "cataloguing" papers. The goal is now to take good summary notes on these papers so that I am able to find more details when I need them in the future. I may never need them in the future. I download the PDF and import it to my Mendeley library. I assign it a unique ID (usually AuthorLastNameYear plus additional letters for extra papers in the same year). I have some Mendeley tags that I use to organize papers by topics (like Gmail labels) that I also assign. I also have some special tags like "citeThisinPaperX" so that I don't forget to cite the paper when I get around to writing it. After adding this meta-data, I read the abstract, intro and conclusions again.
This time, I will highlight key words. The goal is that if I am looking for details about X in the future, I want to be able to quickly flip through this PDF on Mendeley and have these important words pop out to me. I will also read over the methods section to ensure I know what they are doing. Often, this allows me to classify the paper further (using tags if appropriate). I'll also skim the rest of the paper, particularly the discussion to see their interpretation and any caveats. I use the "Notes" field of Mendeley to write a very short summary of the paper. Here, I also mention anything interesting that comes up or if I have any concerns, e.g. a new method, an unorthodox method, interesting interpretation, problematic assumptions, etc. I think this type of reading takes me about 30 minutes to do per paper.
Level 2, for "understanding" a paper. This is a more careful reading. I actually read every word this time instead of just skimming. I use more highlighting. I also now use the sticky notes annotation tool in Mendeley. One big use of the sticky notes is to make sure I can understand the authors' flow of logic in each section. After each section, if I found the logic hard to follow, I try to figure it out and then write a sticky note that summarizes what I thought they were trying to say in that area. I also add sticky notes for Methods. Since these notes are searchable, I try to use standardized terms so that I can find related papers easily. For the discussion and results sections, I use sticky notes to summarize each and every one of their individual findings (whereas in the above sections, I focus more on the big picture results). I add my own commentary to their interpretations where appropriate. The goal is to annotate the paper enough that when I view the paper in Mendeley, I can click the notes tab and see just the list of my sticky notes. I should be able to reconstruct the main argument from the sticky notes without having to read the paper again.  If I have done the "Level 0" and "Level 1" readings before this, then this more in-depth reading usually takes 1-2 hours, depending on the paper length and whether I already know a lot about the field. Sometimes it can take up to a half-day if I'm trying to read way outside of my area. I sometimes also print out a paper to read at this depth because it's a little easier for me to read things in print and when I want to be able to read it while away from my desk. I try not to print too much because it wastes paper and I will have to spend time importing my annotations into Mendeley.
I usually do "Level 0" and "Level 1" every day (or at least try to). The "Level 2" reading happens maybe once per week (a little bit more recently because there's lots of cool stuff). This is the depth I read to when I want to be able to speak about a paper at a Journal Club or something informal. Deeper reading levels, for me, include reading related papers , comparing results across papers, and making even more notes. I don't usually seek out papers to read to this depth level. Instead, I only do it when I need to, for example, when starting a new area of research and needing to know the foundational papers, or when I really need a question answered.

I think that every generation/cohort thinks that the previous generation are doing something wrong, that things were better in the old days. And every generation thinks that the older generation is irrelevant and stuck in the old ways! This semester, a bunch of us who were TAing were mentioning how much undergrads these days want their TAs to just tell them the answer, and they get mad when we ask them questions in response to their questions. But if we're complaining about our undergrads now, I wonder what our TAs said about us ~4-5 years ago!

Easier said than done, but it seems ideal for the new generation to do as Sigaba says, and remember that the older generation gained a ton of experience getting to where they are now. At the same time, the new generation could be bringing in fresh ideas and it might not be a good idea to dismiss these thoughts simply because we don't have the experience. I am thinking more of the generation gap between current students and junior faculty members, but it could also apply to the gap between PhDs-about-to-graduate/postdocs and incoming grad students.

Now, to "defend"/"explain" "my" cohort despite what I said above

1. I don't agree that Internet BBs are ONLY meant to be repositories of knowledge where someone with a question should try to find every single thread on the topic and read everything. Sure, this is exactly what we do for a literature review for our work, but discussing graduate school, while related to work, isn't work. I think this was the original intention now, but with more and more people growing up in an Internet dominated world, Internet technologies are changing fast. Here's why it makes sense for a new user to post a new question instead of digging up old ones:
a ) Internet rule of not reviving dead posts. On most BBs, it's poor etiquette to post in a thread that has been inactive for some period of time
b ) The user wants to interact with current, active members, not just passively read something -- maybe they already read some of the stuff and now want interaction
c ) Related to ( a ) and ( b ), posting in an old (dead) thread is not effective at getting the attention of current active members. If there is an existing thread 5 pages long, most people will not read the previous 5 pages and write responses taking into account all of the past posts in mind. Most people will either see that it's 5 pages long and not bother, or just write a response based on the new post and not consider the previous posts. In the former case, the OP doesn't get the interaction. In the latter case, there was no advantage to continuing a year-old thread since few people make use of the past -- it's more organized to start a new thread.
d ) It's more satisfying to ask your own question, in your own thread, where you can define the parameters of your question instead of a thread where a mood/tone might have already been developed. This point is more "frivolous" but still plays a factor I think.

My solution? I'm a new member of this community but I've been on other BBs for many years and see the same stuff get asked all the time. It might be more useful to link to a specific post that we think is helpful or just copy and paste something we've written before for the OP, if we think we are repeating ourself.

I think nowadays, a BB is more of a place for a person to announce something (e.g. I have a problem!) and then whoever is around and interested can gather and have a discussion. Although it has the capability to function like a library of knowledge, and there are many who do use it that way, I would say that the majority are drawn to BBs because of the ability to talk to active members, not read through past posts. But it's a good thing that BBs can function in both ways and allows users to choose how to use the BB.

2. Regarding the "sense of entitlement" of "our" cohort. I think this is partially due to the fact that the people entering graduate studies today are VERY different than the people running graduate studies (i.e. profs). It's clear that nowadays, more and more people are going to University and getting degrees -- it's the norm to go to college and I think this is spreading into grad school too. So, the demographics are different. I'm not sure if it's true but it sure feels like many programs expect graduate students to devote themselves to academia. I'm not saying this is the case for any particular person, but I feel that someone from a family who has had people in grad school before (so they understand us) and/or aren't from a "working poor" class would have a much easier time adjusting to graduate student life and doing well than others. Someone who wants to start a family, or needs to send money home to their parents, or wants to do other things than just academia will face more challenges in grad school. One can argue that grad school isn't for those in the above categories and aren't able to / willing to face the challenges, though -- but I don't think this is the right way to do things.

I don't know for sure what the job prospects were for our profs though. Maybe it was just as bad for them but they just toughed it out. I don't think it's a bad idea for our cohort to come with certain expectations and fight/push for changes for things that we want. We should have the ability to voice our opinions and shape the way our graduate program is run. Maybe when all of the new people entering college in the past decade reach faculty positions, graduate programs will be drastically different. Or maybe it won't, if the system ends up doing a good job of self-selecting like-minded people. But fighting for better working conditions or improving student life shouldn't be considered a sense of "entitlement". That is, graduate school shouldn't be a place of "conform or perish" -- the norms of the department should be set by all of its members, including students. If the issues are important enough, the students' voice could be strong enough to cause change.

I guess when it comes down to it, I feel this way because I believe that educational programs (at all levels, i.e. BSc, MSc, PhD) exist to serve the students and it should meet our needs. The faculty members with experience would know what kind of skills are important for academic success so they would build the degree program on this. But it's easy for people to think that "I suffered through this to get to where I am so the students have to as well". And the needs of students back in the day may not be the same as the needs now. So it's important for department to seek feedback from students and incorporate what we would like to get out of our degrees into our degree programs. Maybe this is the "sense of entitlement" that Sigaba is referring to, but I don't think it's unreasonable to want to have some say in our degree programs if we are going to spend 5-6 years of our life and potentially opportunity costs during our PhDs.

I think if this freelance copyeditor is a professional, they should be prepared to answer questions about confidentiality. It's part of the job. If they are insulted by the discussion, I would find someone else to work with.

I agree that TAs should be nice and not overstep their "powers". But I definitely do not agree that we should be nice with grades and only give grades we would also want. Remember that TAs are graduate students who, on average, got into grad schools because they tend to do better in courses than the average undergraduate student. Therefore, it's not surprising that some of your students will do fairly poorly in certain classes and I would say that you should not be afraid to fail or give a D grade if that is indeed the quality of their work. 

I have never heard of a graduate student in a graduate program being expelled for "moral negligence". Of course, some private schools may have their own code of conduct and expectations, but the majority of public schools (and I think the majority of schools, period). So if there is no explicit policy against it and if one is not breaking other school policies (e.g. not using school resources to conduct business) then I don't know what grounds a school would use to expel a student.
That said, faculty and students are humans and it goes without saying that people don't need a policy to make a student feel unwelcome/unwanted. So if people wanted to be unfair towards a student who was a sex worker, there are plenty of ways they could do it. But then again, there are plenty of people that are unfair towards others anyways, for whatever reason.
Obviously, I am only writing from my experience, and what I think might happen. Nothing is guaranteed! 

First of all, I think it's a misconception that all graduate students must always be in love with their topic of study all the time. I love astronomy, space, and planets but when the new Cosmos (with Neil deGrasse Tyson) came out, I could not bring myself to watch it because I already got my fill of awesome astronomy things 40 hours per week doing research! I have other passions too, and would rather spend my free time pursuing those.
And, there will always be parts of your research that you will hate doing even if you are super passionate about your topic. Some parts of my field are just super boring to me too. I love studying hot Jupiters and how these planets have their orbits modified by other stars and planets. But I find discussions of studies on whether these hot Jupiters have clouds made of X or Y pretty boring. I still read the papers to understand important things, like for example, what the clouds are made of could maybe teach us something about how close to the star the planet was created, but I have no passion at all for the methods used to determine cloud content. 
I also find it a little hard to disambiguate "passion" and "ego". Primarily because you need to have passion for the field in order to derive some "ego" based pleasure from being an expert on it. I admit I am a little excited and get a ego boost when I go to a conference and see someone cite my work! But honestly, if I had no passion for hot Jupiters, why would I be excited about that? Compared to the world at large, PhD work and academia is really about studying the highly specific details of a topic very intensely. It's about finding out some knowledge that very few people in the world would even care about. But the fact that you derive pleasure from doing such a thing means you must have some passion for the field. Why else would you care about knowing some things that few others even want to know?
And finally, I don't think measuring your level of excitement/boredom while reading papers is a good way to determine whether or not you actually like/have passion for your field. Each person has their own set of things that excite them and drives their passions. I personally do not enjoy reading or writing papers at all. It's the worst part of my job (but an absolutely important/required part). That's okay though. I think every job, no matter how awesome, will have parts that just suck. My strategy is to know what excites me and make sure I have lots of that in addition to all the mandatory boring parts. For example, although I hate reading papers, I really enjoy discussing them with other people and I learn a lot more that way. So, I started a little weekly papers discussion group in my department. Another thing that really excites me is going to conferences and meeting lots of other people working on really cool things. I find myself extremely motivated when I return from such a trip and I get a lot of work done in the few weeks following that motivation. I am also a type of person that gets more excited about big picture questions, which might explain why papers are so boring to me. Papers are usually focussed works that treat one tiny part of a big picture question at a time. So, I balance out my reading by making sure I step back and look at the big picture. Sometimes it's helpful to find a big review paper that goes over the whole idea and re-read parts of it to remind yourself why the tiny details matter. Or, I like to meet up with a friend from a different subfield and talk about our research's big picture questions to each other. Forcing myself / reminding myself of the "why" is a big motivator for me and doing this helps. 
PhD level research is supposed to uncover new knowledge that no one has ever known before. You definitely will come up against roadblocks and struggles that make you wonder why you even care about the topic at all. I think this is a pretty common occurrence and can happen as often as once per week or several times per month for me. Sometimes I just can't read another paragraph of this dreadful paper and I just need a short walk or a break. Once in a while, I need to take some time off completely---take a vacation or an extra day off for a long weekend and not think about it at all. You probably have heard people say grad school is a marathon before. You have to pace yourself and manage your energy levels. This is true for things like how many hours you work as well as your motivation level. It's helpful to be aware of what things decrease your motivation and which things increase it and plan your work schedule so that you maintain a good level of motivation. You can't expect raw passion to fuel you through the whole PhD, just like you can't finish a marathon on pure determination.

Coming here to also chime in: Don't attend program A. You've listed all the warning signs of a terrible mentor-student relationship and like others have said: you're in his good books now, but what about later? How long are you willing to have to put aside making your own decisions to please this guy? Eventually, inevitably, there will be something that you want to do that will upset this guy and burn bridges. It sounds like whether the bridge is burnt now or later will make no difference to him (i.e. he's not going to be any happier with you later than now) but you would have already invested all this time doing what he wanted. So I'd say it's better to cut him off now, than later.
In addition, I feel like this guy is super creepy/sleazy/unethical/manipulative. Getting himself on the admissions committee so he can let you in? Telling you this? Making you feel like you "owe" him your admissions and your success? Say no to that. You don't owe him anything. You say that he put his name on the line at your home dept to get you in, but he didn't really do it for you. He did it for himself. Committees are supposed to act in the best interests of the department, but he forced his way onto the admissions committee to get what *he* wanted. He told you that he did all of this for you, in order to make you feel like you need to do what *he* wanted. 
No wonder the rest of the department does not get along with him. He sounds like a terrible colleague and an even worse mentor/supervisor. If you can be happy at School B, go there! You don't have to do anything to actively burn the bridge with this guy---remain friendly and keep communication open but don't do favours for him or anything. If he wants to cut you off, then I think you might actually be better off. After your PhD program, you won't need his letter and from the way he acts, I would not be surprised if everyone knows what kind of person he is.

Just note that you will likely have to inform your department about any successful funding you get. Most of the time they will know and support you anyways since they might have to write letters etc. For some schools and funding scenarios, if you have external grants, it does influence how much internal money you get.
For example, at my MSc school (in Canada, but some American schools work the same way), we're funded through a combo of RA, TA and internal fellowships. Winning a really big external award will remove your internal fellowship and reduce your TA by half. Overall, you still end up with more money than not having an external award, but you aren't going to get to increase your stipend by the total amount of this award. For concrete numbers, the base stipend was about $25k, winning an award valued at $15K-$20K raises that to $30k. Winning a $35k award raises it to $40k-$45k, I believe. Note that in Canada, we pay tuition from our stipend (which is about $7k for this school, so subtract that to get the take-home stipend).
At my PhD program in the USA, the department has a set stipend level for every student regardless of their funding source(s). That level is currently $33k. If you win external awards valued at less than $33k, your stipend doesn't change at all---your internal funding gets reduced by the value of the external award. You only get more money if you win an award that covers all of your regular stipend plus extra (e.g. the NSF GRFP is $34k or something like that). During my PhD, I had fellowships valued in the $20k to $25k range and did not see any increase in my stipend. 
That said, even if your stipend doesn't change, there are side benefits to having external funds, as they decrease your cost to the department and advisor and that money could increase your opportunities. For example, it could mean an extra conference or work trip. Or it could mean that a prof who doesn't have funds to fully fund a student can accept you because you are "discounted". But this does mean that I think students should be judicious in choosing which external awards to apply for, based on the benefits they would get out of it. It's worth checking with your new program on the policies of external awards to help you make the decision.

I thought for the EU fellowship, anyone is eligible regardless of citizenship as long you are hosted by an EU organization (e.g. https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/actions/individual-fellowships_en). 
For a direct answer, I found this FAQ page: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/support/faqs/faq-890.html
I know of at least one American who was an EU Marie Curie fellow. I also know of others non-EU and non-US people that are Marie Curie fellows working in the EU. 
I think the fellowship where you are working outside of the EU may have more restrictions such as the list of countries Warelin mentioned. 

It all depends on your own comfort level. I would almost definitely say all bedding should be new: mattress, pillows, sheets, etc. The only exception is if you know the person you are buying them from very well and you trust their hygiene and bedbugs status. As a fun aside, if you are bringing a used mattress into Canada, it must either have been in your possession from the original purchase or you must present a certificate that you have had the mattress fumigated for bedbugs in order to import it into Canada.
For things like a couch, I personally would not buy a used couch. The "ick" factor is too high for me there. I don't mind communal couches in study lounges, offices etc. but in the comfort of my own home, I'd like to have a new clean couch.
For me, almost everything else is okay used. I think pots and pans are okay to buy used if they are still in good quality. A dishwasher or a good hand washing takes care of most things. These items are made to be cleaned throughly!
Small appliances are also generally okay. My only word of caution is with microwaves. Microwaves are relatively cheap (you can get them as cheap as $30) and a lot of people don't take good care of their microwave and allow a ton of gross crust to build up on the walls. So, although I would be fine with a clean used microwave or if I was able to clean a used microwave, since they are much cheaper than other appliances, it's worth the cost to just buy a new one lol. Oh I think I would probably buy a new coffee maker too since it's hard to clean (you can't really see if the previous owner cleaned it well). Wasn't on my list at first since we didn't own one before.
Buying furniture from departing grad students is a great idea. We were happy to sell a ton of our old stuff to new students. We generally sold them for 1/3 of the purchase price (most items have had 3-5 years of use). I think one of the best used furniture items to get is a dining table set. They can be quite pricey ($200 ish for a basic one) because chairs are weirdly expensive for some reason. However, they are also a huge pain in the butt to move (we've sold our table every time we moved). People were happy to buy a decent dining set for $50 and we were happy to get that $50 and avoid the hassle of moving it  

It all depends on your own comfort level. I would almost definitely say all bedding should be new: mattress, pillows, sheets, etc. The only exception is if you know the person you are buying them from very well and you trust their hygiene and bedbugs status. As a fun aside, if you are bringing a used mattress into Canada, it must either have been in your possession from the original purchase or you must present a certificate that you have had the mattress fumigated for bedbugs in order to import it into Canada.
For things like a couch, I personally would not buy a used couch. The "ick" factor is too high for me there. I don't mind communal couches in study lounges, offices etc. but in the comfort of my own home, I'd like to have a new clean couch.
For me, almost everything else is okay used. I think pots and pans are okay to buy used if they are still in good quality. A dishwasher or a good hand washing takes care of most things. These items are made to be cleaned throughly!
Small appliances are also generally okay. My only word of caution is with microwaves. Microwaves are relatively cheap (you can get them as cheap as $30) and a lot of people don't take good care of their microwave and allow a ton of gross crust to build up on the walls. So, although I would be fine with a clean used microwave or if I was able to clean a used microwave, since they are much cheaper than other appliances, it's worth the cost to just buy a new one lol. Oh I think I would probably buy a new coffee maker too since it's hard to clean (you can't really see if the previous owner cleaned it well). Wasn't on my list at first since we didn't own one before.
Buying furniture from departing grad students is a great idea. We were happy to sell a ton of our old stuff to new students. We generally sold them for 1/3 of the purchase price (most items have had 3-5 years of use). I think one of the best used furniture items to get is a dining table set. They can be quite pricey ($200 ish for a basic one) because chairs are weirdly expensive for some reason. However, they are also a huge pain in the butt to move (we've sold our table every time we moved). People were happy to buy a decent dining set for $50 and we were happy to get that $50 and avoid the hassle of moving it  

In that case, your dissertation project might not define the researcher you'll become, but it will certainly influence the way you present yourself when you go on the job market your first few years out of grad school. You'll find yourself saying things like "I am broadly interested in XYZ; in my dissertation, I specifically study ABC and conclude that [blah]" fairly often when introducing yourself to people. Your dissertation topic will obviously change how the ensuing conversation goes and how people then perceive you. It might change what jobs you're perceived as most qualified for. Now, that said, it's also not the be-all end-all of your career. There's something to be said for picking the more promising project, especially if the other project is in a similar area so it doesn't change your academic profile as much. Another important factor is who you'll end up working with. A wonderful topic with a difficult advisor might not be worth it. But also keep in mind that the dissertation writing process is hard, even when you're very passionate about your project, so you should be at least somewhat enthusiastic about whatever you choose now. Something my advisors said to me that I came to appreciate a lot was not to put everything in my dissertation, and instead to have a project that's in earlier stages that could become my first post-PhD project. This was important because it removed a lot of the struggles that I saw some peers go through trying to figure out what to do next, now that this huge project they invested a few years of their lives in was suddenly over. So even if you don't pick a project to run with now, it doesn't mean you can't work on it later. This is an important decision, but it doesn't have to solely define who you become as an academic. 
I hope you're noticing from this that I'm not going to tell you what to do. There are pros and cons to either decision and you need to make your own. 

@AstroMason Thanks for coming back to update us, and congrats on your successful interview! 

I would attend, especially if you're about to be applying for a fellowship. You want people to know you finished your PhD, are doing well in your postdoc, and where your research is headed next so that you can potentially find support for it. You don't have to go to every session or go all day. Be strategic about where and when you attend the conference.

I assume you mean whether you should put the paper with your name on it on your CV, obviously you can't put the other one there however much you think you deserve to. It's your choice what to put on your CV; you're not obligated to put all of your papers on there. If you do put a paper on there, though, I think it's fair game in the sense that you might get asked about it (e.g. in any interviews, or just in casual conversation), and you're signaling that you stand behind the results. If it's a paper stemming from undergrad work where you're a middle author and you're not even sure how your name got on it, personally I would leave it out. I don't think it'll help your career any, and frankly I would prefer not to have my name associated with something like that. 
And on a broader note, this practice of putting people's names on papers without their knowledge sounds just crazy to me. Also of not giving junior staff their due credit, but geez. How does a paper go through an entire review process when there are authors who aren't even aware of the paper? I would think at the very least there'd be an email and an opportunity to read a draft and comment/withdraw. I hope this isn't common. 

Some programs have this. But the reality is that writing tons of letters is an expected part of the professor's job now. 
I would recommend that you do as much as possible to make the lives of your recommenders easier. This means deciding on what universities you will apply to and noting down their deadlines and then providing a one-page summary with all of the dates and schools. This helps them plan their time. Once they write their letters, they just need 5-10 minutes to log in and upload so if they see that you have 3 things due Dec 15 and 5 things due Dec 20, they might know to put aside 1.5 hours on Dec 13 and upload it all at once, for example. 
It sounds like you might be making requests one at a time, as they come up, and that could be very frustrating. It also means they don't know when the next one is coming up. So if you still have more schools to apply to, I'd take some time right now to figure out all the remaining deadlines and make the remaining requests all at once, promising that this is the last set.

As a grad student, I almost always showed up to my advisor meetings with a notebook open and a pen. Ahead of each meeting, I make notes (like 2 or 3 words) for each item I wanted to bring up. I quickly jot down their responses after each one. To help ensure I keep my notes short, I write each item on one line only, so I am fairly limited in what I am able to write, which allows me to spend most of my time in conversation instead of looking at my notebook.
Most of my items are seeking approval/clarification that can be easily written in one line, or I just jot down a few words for me to write out a fuller explanation for myself later. 
I leave the rest of the notebook page blank in case something more complicated comes up that requires more notes. Sometimes my advisor and I derive something together and that takes space. Or I just use this space later to summarize the meeting after I return to my desk.
Each advisor's style is different so you'll have to find what works best for you and them. For me, I took the lead in most of the one-on-one meetings, although my advisor would also ask for updates or questions on specific things if I forgot to include it in my list. 
In addition, I felt it was normal and expected to be taking notes during the meetings, especially when we were starting a new project and especially when I was a new student. These meetings are basically laying out the instructions for my work in the coming weeks so it makes sense to have a good grasp on them. So, in the beginning, when my advisor led the meetings more, they always paused and waited for me to finish writing notes. Later, when I led the meetings, I might ask to pause the conversation for 30 seconds to ensure I get a citation written down correctly for later review (or to check spelling etc.). Overall, it felt pretty natural to me, to have a discussion on a topic, take a pause to jot down some notes, and then when I look back up, we continue the conversation. (as I wrote above, pauses were short since I only jotted down key words). If we ended up working out something on the board, I can just snap a photo later.
So far, I apply the same strategy when advising undergrads working with me and it seems to work too. I think my advisor appreciated the fact that I had notes prepared ahead of the meeting and that I took notes on what we said to ensure I did it right and to avoid asking the same thing over and over. I know I definitely think it's a good thing when my students show up with notes / notebooks and I am glad when they take notes during our meetings. Again though, so much of this is dependent on your personalities and the type of advising relationship you have.

I think I just read the best / most helpful post in this whole forum! I am going to save juilletmercredi's post and read it from time to time, thanks for that!

Don't do this.
If I was reading a candidate's diversity statement and read what you described, it would seem that you are being dismissive of the real struggles people from under-represented backgrounds actually face. At best, you would seem naive and uninformed, and at worst, it would appear that you are co-opting a space that is not meant for you. To me, this would be like showing up to a campus support group for people struggling with X and telling everyone about how great you are instead of sharing relevant experiences.
And if the reader doesn't actually care about diversity in their student population, then it is unlikely that being quirky here will help you anyhow. They might not even read that essay.
---
Now hopefully something more useful/helpful. Have you done any work towards increasing diversity in your undergraduate student groups or overall population? Generally, an undergraduate may not have much influence on the admissions process at their school, but there are smaller scale things that might be relevant. For example, if you were part of the leadership team of a student organization, did you do work towards ensuring your organization reflects the population you were representing/advocating/supporting etc.? Did you actively seek diversity in recruiting new members and/or new directors? Just an example.
Someone who is serious about increasing the diversity of their student body will value these attributes because it is not very effective to simply increase diversity for the sake of being able to say there are X people from underrepresented groups. It is important to cultivate a culture that values diversity and build support infrastructure that allows everyone to thrive, not just be present. So, people from majority/overrepresented populations in their fields can be very valuable in terms of diversity if they will be good allies and advocates.

Don't do this.
If I was reading a candidate's diversity statement and read what you described, it would seem that you are being dismissive of the real struggles people from under-represented backgrounds actually face. At best, you would seem naive and uninformed, and at worst, it would appear that you are co-opting a space that is not meant for you. To me, this would be like showing up to a campus support group for people struggling with X and telling everyone about how great you are instead of sharing relevant experiences.
And if the reader doesn't actually care about diversity in their student population, then it is unlikely that being quirky here will help you anyhow. They might not even read that essay.
---
Now hopefully something more useful/helpful. Have you done any work towards increasing diversity in your undergraduate student groups or overall population? Generally, an undergraduate may not have much influence on the admissions process at their school, but there are smaller scale things that might be relevant. For example, if you were part of the leadership team of a student organization, did you do work towards ensuring your organization reflects the population you were representing/advocating/supporting etc.? Did you actively seek diversity in recruiting new members and/or new directors? Just an example.
Someone who is serious about increasing the diversity of their student body will value these attributes because it is not very effective to simply increase diversity for the sake of being able to say there are X people from underrepresented groups. It is important to cultivate a culture that values diversity and build support infrastructure that allows everyone to thrive, not just be present. So, people from majority/overrepresented populations in their fields can be very valuable in terms of diversity if they will be good allies and advocates.

Don't do this.
If I was reading a candidate's diversity statement and read what you described, it would seem that you are being dismissive of the real struggles people from under-represented backgrounds actually face. At best, you would seem naive and uninformed, and at worst, it would appear that you are co-opting a space that is not meant for you. To me, this would be like showing up to a campus support group for people struggling with X and telling everyone about how great you are instead of sharing relevant experiences.
And if the reader doesn't actually care about diversity in their student population, then it is unlikely that being quirky here will help you anyhow. They might not even read that essay.
---
Now hopefully something more useful/helpful. Have you done any work towards increasing diversity in your undergraduate student groups or overall population? Generally, an undergraduate may not have much influence on the admissions process at their school, but there are smaller scale things that might be relevant. For example, if you were part of the leadership team of a student organization, did you do work towards ensuring your organization reflects the population you were representing/advocating/supporting etc.? Did you actively seek diversity in recruiting new members and/or new directors? Just an example.
Someone who is serious about increasing the diversity of their student body will value these attributes because it is not very effective to simply increase diversity for the sake of being able to say there are X people from underrepresented groups. It is important to cultivate a culture that values diversity and build support infrastructure that allows everyone to thrive, not just be present. So, people from majority/overrepresented populations in their fields can be very valuable in terms of diversity if they will be good allies and advocates.

It is a HUGE faux pas to ask to read them. Don't do it. Those letters are not meant for you to read and they were written with the expectation that you would never see them.
Unless they offer to show them to you, don't ever mention wanting to see them.