SeriousSillyPutty

My friend lived with her parents after her master's degree for several years, because she got a job in her home town and like others have said, it made the most financial sense. It made it a little trickier to invite people over, but she was also able to save up funds and just bought a house (she's 30). I don't know if you were planning to pay rent, but doing so may remove any stigma that gets sent your way -- maybe you pick up the internet bill or something that you'll be taking advantage of? Either way, as long as you and your parents talk about what's expected, I think it's a good setup. (Ex: If your mom is a worrier, maybe as a courtesy you let her know if you won't be coming home that night. Or maybe you set up beforehand if you will be doing dinner with them.) Look at it as being financially savvy now to be more physically AND financially independent later.

I see what you mean about science norms being generated by men, but you used a line that makes me like the science cheerleaders. I have often said (perhaps on this forum even) that, growing up, I never absorbed the stereotype that girls couldn't be sciency, but I DID absorb the stereotype that scientists couldn't be girly. I was a smart, logical type, which meant that I was such "trivialities" as caring about my physical appearance. The result? In middle school I only wore loose-fitting t-shirts. I posed as someone who didn't care about what people thought, but I was terrified of someone asking me to justify why I was trying to look nice. (So I never tried.) I was a freshman in college before I ever wore a skirt to class -- and if someone doesn't like skirts, that's fine, but I actually did like how they looked and felt, I was just too afraid to wear them in high school. There was a point where, "women can think scientifically, like men" was a step in the right direction toward equality in science. But now I think it's important to say, "women can think scientifically, like women." And women who think scientifically can still value elegance, beauty, fashion, etc. From that standpoint, I'm in favor of science cheerleaders. I can see how, on one hand, it's like in "A League of Their Own," they made the women play baseball in skirts, which is stupid. Science girls shouldn't have to be hyper-feminine to make their mark. But, for all the girls who think there is a dichotomy between beauty and (science) brains, seeing people with both can prevent them from a forced choice of one or the other.

If you do look at US programs, find out how many of the master's classes they can count toward your course requirements. (If it's a lot, that could shorten up the US program by a year or so.) It will probably vary by school. And then there's the things everyone should think about -- what kind of resources/support systems there will be in the town, what kind of connections the professors have (useful even if you do have a job), what the focus of the research would be, etc. Even three years is a long time, so you want to find some place where you can be happy, and that may mean thinking about the weather or if there is a community of people from your home country, how hard it is to get international food, etc. (Granted, most research universities have a large international population, but it's worth looking into.) Also, the United States has better peanut butter. Just sayin'.

When I took the tests, I was a little distracted, so I should probably take them again, but I thought it was interesting: I took the gender vs career test, and had a strong association between women and home, which is ironic because I grew up with a working mother and a stay-at-home dad, and I myself don't have a family yet and, incidentally, am horrible at homemaking. But that's society's influence for ya, I guess. So I was expecting something similar when I took the gender vs science test, and got an association between women and science, which seems odd because virtually all of the science profs I interact with are male, as are most of the students. I should take both again under more controlled circumstances and see what happens.

Same as for in-person interviews, but with slippers and no pants. :-) Seriously though I think dressing up like a normal interview will make you feel more confident, and make them treat you like a real interviewee. (As a fellow yank, I unfortunately cannot tell you what that dress code should be.) Also maybe use some friends to help you find a place for the interview with a neutral background and good lighting. If you have pets, move them do a different room. I watched a Skype interview and could hear a (well behaved) pet walking around, jingling its collar in the background, and it was a bit distracting.

Ooh good list.With regard to #5: Last year I did a Chronological Bible in a Year on Kindle: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/01/170863255/an-oscar-nominated-guacamole-your-friday-visual-feast?ft=1&f=1001 . It seems silly, but I had much more success with it broken down and dated for me, rather than just a reading plan of verses that I used with my regular Bible. They have a cover-to-cover version too, but I liked doing the chronological because it was easier to keep track of who's who in the OT stories found in multiple places. (It also broke up the "A begot B, B begot C and D, C begot..." because you read the genealogy bit by bit as you read the actual lives of people, which made it less dry.) You could start in February, then cycle back to Genesis next January? My list: 1) Make good contact with profs/researchers from other schools interested in my sub-field 2) Publish a journal article (hopefully more) and also a less academic piece that museum educators would actually read and find useful 3) Teach a class. (Typically TAs at my school just hold office hours.) 4) Get better at identifying the difference between things that don't go as planned because of poor decisions/attitudes on my part, and things that don't go as planned because "that's life" and things never go as planned. 5) Teach "Little Sister" (mentee) to drive. (She is currently twelve, so the thought of her driving -- not to mention the thought of me still being in grad school at that time -- is terrifying!)

Is this only for people in/from the UK, or for anyone?

My 2 cents that will probably turn into $2: 1)I recommend people take this Implicit Association Test on gender and science: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html Sometimes even though intellectually we know that women can be scientists, and that scientists can be women, the fact that they are underrepresented means that we can still sub-consciously group the occupation more with men. This is a test for that. 2)I was a physics undergrad, and I felt treated fairly. (It probably helped that I was the "smart kid" in class growing up, so I was academically confident even when I was no longer the "smart kid" in physics.) One of the other girls in one class noticed that, during the help session, the prof would start the problem if the boys asked, but would do the problem if the girls asked. It might have been because of sub-conscious bias, but the girls in that class were (on average) more studious as well, so maybe he assumed we wouldn't ask unless we had already attempted the problem. I felt a little conspicuous in the lab I worked in at times, but nobody was ever demeaning, said anything offensive, or treated me differently in a way I could tell. I felt more conspicuous because of my lack of musicality (it was an acoustics lab) than because of my gender. By sophomore year I was confident that I didn't want to become a physicist, even though I loved physics. It wasn't because of poor treatment (I didn't have any) or classes that were too hard (well, it was physics, so they were hard for everyone), it was because I enjoyed talking about the physics achievements of others far more than I liked number crunching or equipment trouble-shooting. Based on diagrams, this makes me one of the leaks in the pipeline that they're trying to fix, but I don't want to feel like a "disappointment" to the physics community because I didn't do my part to close the gender gap. 3) I'm totally fine with acknowledging that the arm-strength bell curves for males and females have males stronger, on average, although there is plenty of overlap. If true, I'm equally fine with the possibility that,say, the number-crunching patience threshold of males is, on average, higher than females, or that the collaboration skills of females are higher than males, although there is a lot of overlap. If it were true that a smaller percentage of women were inherently interested in physics, then equality could be reached without a 50-50 split in the workforce -- BUT we have a long way to go before we have to worry about the exact ratio. Right now there are still girls who do have the disposition to be excellent scientists, but who are told (explicitly or implicitly) that science is a man's world. I was shocked to hear that a friend actually had a middle school science teacher that told her girls weren't supposed to be good at science. Entering college, it never occurred to her that she could major in science; instead she majored in journalism (which her inquisitive brain excelled at) and took science classes just for fun. (Who takes chemistry just for fun, and get to the lecture hall an hour early to eavesdrop on the physics class?!) I think this is easing, but we've still got a way to go. I've convinced my friend's 12-year-old son to pursue engineering instead of pro wrestling, and he recently told me, "My brother and I will become engineers, and then we can take care of our little sisters, because girls don't like that stuff." He said this to ME, the GIRL who had taught him to build a robot! 4)I noticed that no female science grad students (who have identified themselves as such) have replied. That probably says something right there. 5) http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=55 <- a classic!

Job application usually have (or at least used to have) a box you can check about not contacting the current employer for that exact reason. Of course it's a little tricky if they are your only references. See how far you can get without listing references, or with listing an old (less professional) reference from undergrad days, if one is absolutely necessary. If you're miserable in your grad program, there should be some adviser type whom you can share your struggle with. Most good souls don't want you to be miserable, even if it's more convenient for them, and will help you. If the program is okay, but you're considering all your options, the best to keep things on the down-low so you don't burn any bridges.

I've vented on this elsewhere, so will try to contain myself here, but I would strongly, strongly discourage anyone from doing Teach for America as a back-up plan. If it is your absolute plan-A dream to TFA, and you succeed at it, it's still exhausting, soul-sucking work. Doing it as a back-up plan? **shudder** It's not fair to you or the kids.

If you're a native English speaker, teaching English abroad can be a good plan B -- It gives you valuable experiences, is something that is harder to do the older you get (well, if you don't have kids anyway), and could give you a different perspective on things. (If you just want a summer thing, ACLE hosts English camps in Italy, and I had a good summer experience there. Closer to home, Americorps has programs in a variety of fields, and this could also "broaden your horizons", give you some work skills, and make you a more interesting candidate for the next round, if you decide you still want to apply. My cousin worked a couple retail gigs... it wasn't as satisfying as something in her field, but it actually paid better than my job in my field (ah the joys of non profits) so it's a good setup for her while she figures out her next move. Something like that is nothing to frown at either. Perhaps become a pickpocket? You'd get to interact with lots of interesting people I bet!

Yeah, I think it's best to send them. If you can put something in there to remind them of what you talked about, so much the better. For instance, someone talked about an article I should look into, so I looked into it and thanked her for it in the email.

The people in my department dressed up for their interview days. The girl who is naturally more stylish wore a suit, most of us wore sweaters or collared shirts and dress pants/skirts. (I would not recommend you wear a skirt, but it is the 21st century, so whatev.) I like the sports coat idea.

It seems like the obvious and friendliest way to distinguish them is to point out that, like juilletmercredi said, you are doing a research PhD, designed to train people for research (generating new information) whereas hers is about applying current research (consuming others' information). You are applying to programs that are "hiring" you to produce a product (new knowledge), and it is a long-term commitment on their end, so naturally the application process and the grad school process itself will be more intense. If her program is clinical (sort of), would it be fair to compare it to dental school? (Apologies if this is ignorant. I know nothing about the rigors of dental school; I'm just guessing it's more practice-based and less "academic".) She's paying for training that will help her get a job, so she's investing in education (which I'm sure requires hard work) but doesn't have an institution investing in her.

If you department has a doctoral student handbook, read it, but know that it may be all lies -- or at least very out of date. Ask the grad student adviser and/or current grad students how things really work. In my case, classes that they said were required for my concentration aren't even offered, so naturally they don't require them. But they're classes I was actually interested in, so it would have been good to know that the department doesn't offer any science ed grad courses, if I'm going into a science ed program. :-/

In the US context, I know the difference between a CV and a resume. However, when I was in Ireland, they used the term CV for (non academic) job situations where Americans would use the term resume. Ireland tends to follow British English, and, in my (limited) experience, so does the rest of Europe. So in other parts of Europe, are both terms used, or just CV? And if only CV is used, does one just base the content of it (i.e., would it be more similar to an American resume or an American CV) around context clues, or is there another way to distinguish academic vs professional summaries. What are some of the differences between the American and German CV?

Haha I agree, no one is going to reject me because of which spell check I use -- and they deal with so many Americans that it wouldn't phase them anyway. On principle, though, I want to minimize distractions, and unusual spelling is a small and easily avoidable distraction. (Likewise, when I'm teaching kids here, I will talk about a "soda can" even though I grew up in strong "pop can" territory, because I want them to focus on the activity, not the word choice.) My bigger concern is watching out for cultural/professional norms. Again, they're exposed to Americans enough that it's probably not a big deal, but I don't want to make the wrong impression if I can avoid it -- especially given the "ugly American" stereotype that already exists.

Thanks for the tips! What's your definition of bragging? Here they tell us to describe accomplishments like, "Earned $20,000 grant to improve student literacy" or "Supervised 10 employees," or "Received Nobel Peace prize for supervising employees and improving student literacy." Is that an acceptable part of the description, or is it to boastful?

Be prepared to explain any blips in your resume, and try to put a good spin on them. My first job out of college (Teach For America) was an epic fail, but it led to my next job and explained what I was doing for nine months, so had to be listed under the work experience section. Naturally, they wanted to know why I quit mid school year. I tried to present thing diplomatically, putting the responsibility on myself, not my school or the students. I explained what TFA did well and what the didn't do well, and the parts of the job I felt ill prepared for as a consequence. I highlighted the things I learned and the ways I had grown in the time since then. A med school person said she always asked med school applicants why they wanted to go to med school, and when they answered "because I want to help people", she would push for why they wanted to help people through becoming a doctor, rather than in one of many other "helpful" fields. I think the same can apply to grad school. Make sure you answer why you want to go into THIS field rather than another, and THIS university rather than another.

Prepared with Kleenex and CVs... well played. This isn't a worst case scenario, but one of my interviews was (fortunately) after my lunch with the current grad students who warned me that the head of the department wouldn't ask me any questions about myself; he would just ask, "what do you want to know?" Fortunately I had made a list of questions for each prof based on their online profile, and I could just review that before meeting with him. However, if I had gone into that situation unprepared, it could have felt awkward. I had (have) pretty specific interests, so most of the people I met with weren't really related to what I wanted to do. I was glad I was able to look at their profiles ahead of time and find some common ground. Sometimes I had to go beyond the academic: One prof had worked with youth in poetry slams (I'm a science ed person) so I asked her if she'd done anything with the local story slams going on, because I've participated in those. She'd also worked with technology/gaming and education, so I asked her her thoughts on kids spending so much time on video games. She told me about a paper to read, I took note of it (always good to have a notebook on hand) and then had something to talk about when I sent the thank-you email. The morning of my visit/interview (they never called it an interview, just a visit where I had scheduled meetings with several profs -- which just made it a wee bit more to plan for, but I digress) I put on my suit and realized that the jacket I planned to wear looked kinda dumpy, even though my other suit I knew didn't fit (ah the joys of weight fluctuation). I opted to wear the suit skirt and a sweater at the last minute, and it ended up being fine. I found out from the current students that the girls who tended to tress up had warn suits, while those who tended to dress down hadn't, and it all worked out. Still: Try on your outfit a few days before, just so that you know things fit how you think they do. Oh: If you're driving to an interview, knowing the closest place to park and having a parking pass is NOT enough. Spots fill up fast, and you don't want that panic of not finding a parking space when you're barely making it on time because of a last minute wardrobe malfunction. (Trust me.) Assume that you will have to circle around the parking and then end up at the farthest possible place from where you want to be and then walk from there.

Before my visit/interview day, the grad student advisor told me which faculty I would meet with, which allowed me to read their website to get a gist of whom I'd be talking with. It's always a good idea to scope that out, but in your case you could also keep an eye open for who's done talks overseas, who's from other countries, etc. A friend and I have a running joke about "place dropping", which is the traveler's equivalent of "name dropping." In every day speech, you don't want to appear to be going out of your way to place drop. (Ex: "Boy this ice cream is yummy, but it doesn't compare to the gelato I had in that small village in northern Italy.") Interviews are such a contrived situation though that I think you can bend the rules a little bit, and at least feel free to bring up the travel if there is a logical, non-contrived way to do so. I would also outline a mental list of how your travels will make you a better student, so that if it comes up you can make the connection. Some possibilities: - Increased ability to work/interact with different personality types and different cultures; more open-minded to other ways of approaching things. - Better perspective on how big or small a problem is. (Passport getting stolen: Big problem. Prof saying something discouraging: Not so much.) - Stronger sense of your identity, beyond how it is defined by academic life. Good luck!

Everyone in my department was really friendly and deliberate about helping me to adjust. Then just before finals last semester, one of the girls quit talking to me, but I think it was because she was stressed with dissertation stuff and was naturally a little introverted, so she didn't have extra energy to expel on being unnecessarily sociable. There's a conference our department goes to, and I obviously don't know the drill because it's my first year, but I know last year all four girls in the office shared a room. This year I overheard two telling a third that they had just booked their tickets and hotel. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it was still a little disappointing. They've been really friendly to me, but they're not quite... welcoming... or something. Maybe I had different expectations because I have been involved in integrating "the new kid" into the social circle at work several times, and assumed they would do the same? Maybe it has to do with the fact that I (and another lady) were "tacked on" to the group that was there last year, without anyone leaving, so they envision the group as fixed? Maybe it's because I can't dish celebrity gossip? And again, everyone was really friendly at the beginning of the semester, and the chattier ones still talk to me now... I'm just still having flashbacks to middle school where there's no seat for me at the lunch table. :-/

I am in contact with someone at CERN about doing a summer internship with the education department. Since they don't normally have such internships, I'm not going through the normal application process that physics/engineering students would be doing, which I imagine is more formal. Anyway, he asked me to send a CV, so I have a few questions I'm hoping someone here can answer. (For what it's worth, the person I'm in contact with is German, though CERN is a very international environment, and I don't think any country's norms would be that new to him.) 1) I know that in the UK (and I assume most of Europe) they use the term CV for what Americans call a resume. But for Americans, a CV is the term for something slightly different -- an academic resume that lists publications and such. Since I have no publication to brag about, I end up submitting a resume instead of a CV anyway, so this is perhaps a moot point, but which do you think he is referring to? 2) Are there any "do"s or "don't"s for a European CV that might be different than the American version? (For instance, I would advise people to not include salary information on an American resume, though I have seen that on some international ones.) 3) In Europe, British English terms/spelling and A4 size paper are standard, right? (I love me so me theatre, but graduating with "honours" makes me feel like a poser.) 3) Regardless of the country it's for, I'm curious how I should adjust my resume now that I'm in grad school. My old resume listed my undergrad GPA... in general, should my new resume also list my grad school GPA? And do GPAs mean anything in a European context anyway? Should I drop my UG GPA and other information, just as one drops any mention of high school once college is commenced? Thanks for any/all tips. I'd also be interested more generally on what people do or do not put on resumes/CVs in their countries.

I know what you mean and it is SO FRUSTRATING. I feel like I could be locked in a completely empty room with nothing but a typewriter, and I would just twiddle my thumbs forever. I had it as an undergrad, but since I only had a max of one class per semester that required real papers, it wasn't so bad. Grad school, of course, is all about the writing, and I found that my time away from college did not shake my paper writing anxiety. Ironically, I have no problem writing under informal situations. I am a slow writer, but aside from that I wrote a blog for work with no problem, I have been known to write 1,000-word emails and then have to edit them down, and a quick perusal of grad cafe will confirm that I am naturally long-winded. Doesn't matter. With papers for courses... it's something different. I don't have a lot of advice, but I did get in with a counselor last semester, and he asked me to try to keep a journal/log of how I was feeling/what I did when I was in these writing situations. It was mostly to guide our conversation for our next meeting. You might try starting one now, so you have more to talk about -- or more concrete examples of it -- when you have your session. One thing I noticed about myself was that, although I would never consciously frame it this way, I think of papers as a reflection of my intellectual soul. Any poorly argued point is a reflection of a mind that hasn't fully considered the issues. Any repetitive word usage is a sign I don't know how to wield the English language. And so on and so on. (Note I am not writing papers on "soulful" things -- it's the writing process, not the topic or even my opinions, which make me feel exposed.) I've never considered myself a perfectionist (certainly my housekeeping habits would confirm I'm NOT a perfectionist in other areas) but even being a "good enough"-ist can be debilitating if I can't even write a rough draft for my personal perusal that I can clean up later. Ironically, the one "escape" I have from considering a paper an extension of my soul comes when I am simply out of time and have no choice but to turn in a bad paper. Then, it's not a reflection of my soul, it's a reflection of my circumstances. But of course, this procrastination results in WORSE papers. It's illogical, which is what I hate most about the situation I think, because I am generally a very logical person. The way my counselor is trying to get me to think about things is more like a law of averages. It's okay if sometimes a paper only reflects a B- intellect, because that paper will be viewed in the context of other things -- better papers, class participation, etc. -- that will, together, combine to give people a sense of me. When I write a 5-page policy response paper, I may feel like I'm baring my soul, but the prof grading it probably isn't making such strong connections between the paper and my worth as a human being; he's just grading the paper for what it is. He actually recommended I shoot for B-quality work sometime, just so I'm not paralyzed by a need to get it all right. A friend shared a quote with me a really like: "Done is better than good." Note that it's not, "done is better than perfect," which everyone would agree with. This is stronger in favor of getting something done so that more important things can come. Of course this philosophy could be abused by some people, but people with writing anxiety are not the kind of people prone to just blow things off. We made avoid doing them, but it is because of revery, not neglect. Anyway, it's a good motto. I tried something that helped me a bit at the end of the semester on this big lit review I had to do... it is FAR from perfect, but I at least felt that I kept the wheels spinning, even if forward progress was really slow. My strategy was break the writing process up into so many parts that it lost its reflection of me in the process, and because of this, I was able to write it. Here is a glimpse into my neurosis: There's this great website, writeordie.com, that basically offers a text window that you start writing in, and it makes annoying sounds when you stop writing for more that 5 seconds or something. It's designed more for creative writing, where one wants to keep the creative juices flowing. It doesn't work very well for academic papers, where you need to stop to look stuff up regularly. So, I decided to make an outline first, with the quotes and page numbers as needed, so that I could reference that without having to stop writing. But, an outline a big paper is still a reflection of my intellectual soul, and even this was overwhelming. So, I instead made outlines of the articles, much as you would outline a textbook chapter or something. I used the author's headline, made brief notes about the paragraphs, put in some quotes I liked, etc. This was outlining someone else's work, not creating my own, so I could do this without the anxiety setting in. Oh, and I limited myself to a half our per paper, which was not enough time for a good outline, but it was enough to get something done and kept me on pace. I figured if I found a gaping hole in my research, I could always come back. THEN I used Write or Die to convert the outlines into paragraph form. Since the program doesn't allow for formatting anyway, I knew I'd be going through it again, so I was more liberal with making notes to myself like "[closing sentence about irony of budget cuts resulting in more spending down the road... Falk quote maybe?]" which kept me going. I could do this because I was summarizing an outline, not creating original thoughts. But, in the process of summarizing, my voice started to come out and I started to make a few connections between things, which helped me to create/organize the thoughts that I would want to put into the final paper. THEN I copied & pasted into Word, moved paragraphs around, and started to flesh out the summaries with connections and evaluations. I think I finished the closing paragraph about 3 minutes before the paper was due to be emailed... sigh. Like I said, things were far from perfect. This was the first time I've tried writing this way, and I don't know if I could transfer it to something beyond a lit review, which has less of "me" and more of my sources than other kinds of papers. But what I do know is that the simple act of writing short summaries of journal articles we'd read had been an earlier assignment for the class, and I had major writer's block even doing that. So, by breaking things down a lot, I was at least able to do SOMETHING where I hadn't been able to before, and maybe if I had done that all along, I wouldn't have had so much to do the last few days of the semester, and maybe I would have spent the proverbial "eleventh hour" finding better ways to phrase things instead of writing things for the first time. I don't know. I'm interested in seeing what others have to say. In the mean time, know that you're not alone, and that counselors at student health centers are used to such issues. Good luck!

I knew a physics grad student who started teaching part-time at a community college while he was working on his PhD... but it was after he finished his classes, which is essentially like earning a master's. Physics teaching is, of course, a less saturated field. I have no idea how an MFA works. Is there a portion dedicated to independent work, or is there coursework the entire time? It seems like networking and getting experience during the program would be especially important, if you wanted to hit the ground running after graduation.