nohika

Ain't this the finest example of misogynistic slut shaming I've seen on GC so far. Well done.
 
I do agree with the it-will-never-be-perfect argument. There's always going to be something that stops it from being a 'perfect' time.

I initially had planned to follow the mantra of "If we ignore her, perhaps she will stop commenting and go away."
 
I don't wish that Pinkster12 never gets an MSW.  As she mentioned, she already got into a program.  Furthermore, we were all 22 once and we all probably believed things that would embarrass us now.  She has 2 years in the program and then many years to grow and mature.  Perhaps one day she'll look back on this thread and feel ashamed of herself.  And perhaps she won't, but maybe she'll be an excellent counselor in several other ways.
 
I do want to address two things, though.  One - even when used correctly most of the time, condoms have a 14% failure rate and hormonal birth control pills, a 5% failure rate.  There are 3.2 million unintended pregnancies in the country every year - half of all pregnancies.  That means about 5% of women will have an unintended pregnancy in their lifetime. - if you have 10 female friends, 2 of them will likely have an unintended pregnancy at some point in their life.  And since a little less than half (48%) of those pregnancies occur in women who were using birth control consistently and correctly, one of those friends will have been on birth control when it happens.  That's not even including the women who were using birth control, but not perfectly.  So yes, they are THAT common.  I have a friend who got pregnant after she was sterilized!  And I know several women who got pregnant using IUDs, which have a less than 1% failure rate.  It happens.
 
In addition to that, many women who have abortions choose to tell no one about it or only a few friends.  My closest friends don't know about mine (I got pregnant...on birth control!); it happened before I even met them.  I didn't tell my college friends at the time either.  So it's entirely possible that some of your friends who you think have not gotten pregnant on birth control actually have and you just don't know it.
 
Two, there's nothing irresponsible about getting pregnant with a lower income.  The OP says that he owns a home and 2 vehicles with his partner, so I'm guessing that at the least they are middle-income.  They also have family support.  But furthermore, there are many many people in the world who live on very low incomes.  As a social worker, you will be working with them almost exclusively.  Everyone has the right to have children, and it is not at all helpful (especially as a future social worker) to tell those people that they should have been "more responsible," first of all since they often don't have the resources to be what you consider "responsible" (birth control requires access to a doctor, transportation to get there, and money for prescriptions; condoms require money and transportation too); second of all because the child is already here and can't be put back by your finger-wagging; and third and most importantly because there's nothing irresponsible about having children when you're poor.  Either way the OP needs help now, not five weeks ago.

See, sweetie, what you need to understand is that your experiences do not generalize well to the rest of the world. That's how stereotypes are created and perpetuated. One of my close friends got pregnant while she was both on BC and using a condom. Gasp! She obviously is a terrible person, right? Not a good mother to an adorable 4-year-old. Oh, and she's not married!
 
Also, your comments about being 'married' and 'responsible' are adorable. Guess what! You can be married and the most irresponsible arsehat on the planet. Marriage does not make you responsible. In quite a few cases, getting married is the worst decision you can make. Staying married because of children can be an equally horrific decision.
 
You can have your opinions. You can have your way of planning your life, and your perceptions. THAT DOES NOT MAKE THEM MORE RIGHT/BETTER/SMARTER/etc THAN EVERYONE ELSE'S. Just because you wouldn't have kids before getting married DOES NOT make someone who does so irresponsible, uneducated, or liars. The OP seems to have a stable, loving relationship. Just because they don't have a piece of paper that claims them legally binded means nothing.
 
I kind of hope you never get into an MSW program and go into counseling because I think you would do a lot more harm than good with these kind of attitudes. Especially with the changes in society's population today.
 
To the OP, it's hard, yeah. But I know several people in my program with kids (two are pregnant with their second) and they're both doing well. The first two years of med school are actually better than the last two when it comes to having kids (I have quite a few med student friends), so that's something to take into consideration if you want more. Congrats and best of luck to you in the future.

See, sweetie, what you need to understand is that your experiences do not generalize well to the rest of the world. That's how stereotypes are created and perpetuated. One of my close friends got pregnant while she was both on BC and using a condom. Gasp! She obviously is a terrible person, right? Not a good mother to an adorable 4-year-old. Oh, and she's not married!
 
Also, your comments about being 'married' and 'responsible' are adorable. Guess what! You can be married and the most irresponsible arsehat on the planet. Marriage does not make you responsible. In quite a few cases, getting married is the worst decision you can make. Staying married because of children can be an equally horrific decision.
 
You can have your opinions. You can have your way of planning your life, and your perceptions. THAT DOES NOT MAKE THEM MORE RIGHT/BETTER/SMARTER/etc THAN EVERYONE ELSE'S. Just because you wouldn't have kids before getting married DOES NOT make someone who does so irresponsible, uneducated, or liars. The OP seems to have a stable, loving relationship. Just because they don't have a piece of paper that claims them legally binded means nothing.
 
I kind of hope you never get into an MSW program and go into counseling because I think you would do a lot more harm than good with these kind of attitudes. Especially with the changes in society's population today.
 
To the OP, it's hard, yeah. But I know several people in my program with kids (two are pregnant with their second) and they're both doing well. The first two years of med school are actually better than the last two when it comes to having kids (I have quite a few med student friends), so that's something to take into consideration if you want more. Congrats and best of luck to you in the future.

Ok but who got the OP into the predicament that he is in? Like honestly? 
 
I get the whole it COULD happen, I don't know anyone it has happened to but I get it, it happens but still.. It's just annoying like seriously people get themselves in these positions and then freak out, whose fault is it.. honestly. 
 
I have thought a lot about the fact that when I am working I am going to see people like this and I am obviously going to have to tell them how "oh it's ok blah blah" and that does worry me BUT there are other aspects I like and I won't have to deal with totally irresponsible people all day every single day I figure. 

I don't think you know how funding for most molecular biology programs works.... He probably has a pretty decent stipend (larger than a MS program or other fields as far as PhD programs go) with healthcare and his girlfriend also has a job. That sounds pretty good to me, and I"m sure they can work it out. They even have a house and two cars. I'm in a molecular biology PhD program and I'm fairly sure if I had to, I could support a child and not be destitute on my stipend... and that's not even including or thinking about the income my boyfriend has. Am I going to get pregnant? Probably not, because that would require him to be a lot closer than 13 hours away and that I was no longer infertile (according to doctors, but I haven't "tested" it). However, I could deal with it if it did occur.
 
On top of the fact that he and his girlfriend have a stable income and aren't accruing debt because of his school, once you pass the first couple of years of a molecular biology program, your coursework consists almost entirely of lab work and seminars. You design the experiments and work on generating something new in the field to publish and generate your dissertation (and hopefully a few papers). He can work his own schedule as long as he generates his data, and at that point it is more like working a job with weird hours than going to classes all day.
 
As far as maturity and responsibility goes, as a 4th year, the youngest this guy probably would be is about 25, but these days, lots of us are older than 21 when we start. On a daily basis, he may handle things that could be really dangerous if he wasn't handling it responsibly (i.e. radiation, human cancer cell lines, etc). He has had to have responsibility to adequately pursue his studies... or he wouldn't have made it this far.
 
This means that it is possible for him to be the type of supportive father he will want to be, and I have no doubt that he will successfully graduate AND be an awesome dad.

Who are you to say what's 'ideal', though? What gives you the right to judge the OP for what YOU consider bad decisions?
 
The answer is NO ONE.
 
And they're not common, no. But statistically, SOMEONE has to lose the lottery, and it looks like the OP did. Just because you haven't had it happen doesn't mean it hasn't. For example, I could make this claim: "Oh my gosh, I drank OJ and don't have cancer! That must mean orange juice prevents cancer." See how stupid it sounds?
 
I'm just shaking my head at you right now, I'm afraid. The OP actually has more of an income PLUS a stable relationship than a lot of people have kids. Can you even step back to gain some perspective to see exactly how judgmental you're coming across?
 
The OP is being /incredibly/ responsible. Shit happens. And the OP and his girlfriend are dealing with it in a mature, responsible way by accepting mistakes happen and preparing to take care of the child. That's far better than sitting at your computer trashing someone else for not making the same decision you would have made for YOUR life and YOUR body. Not everyone is the same. I hope you figure that out sooner rather than later.
 
And congrats. Good luck with all you'll learn. Maybe some of it might sink in.

Believe me I know the stats of contraceptives, the chances of getting pregnant while correctly using them is not that high. Is it my fault that people aren't responsible, don't ask their doctors questions etc...? No. Like I said I haven't been pregnant from BC I don't personally know people who have. Most of my friends have been on BC for years and not gotten pregnant. I'm not saying it doesn't happen obviously I understand it does but I'm saying people use that as an excuse way more than it should be. I don't even know that that's is the OPs situation, either way it was irresponsible.

Support? Umm I think I was pretty supportive in the first post. I said "good luck" that's about as supportive as I can be with such irresponsible behavior.

Can I take a moment and be honest with you Eigen?
 
While I feel that leaving my response to you with just a snide remark - fitting of the offensively smug superiority you use to address others - I want something to be perfectly clear. Lest you continue to have even the remotest inclination otherwise.
 
I think exceptionally little of you, your clique, and your ways. I think you'll amount to nothing, but worst of all think you've accomplished something. I think you'll make no mark on the world and die unknown, uninteresting, and as unappealing as a human being as ever. You've constructed this entire little world where butt-kissing and doing as your told is the right and righteous way of being and you tell other people to do so to stay within the good graces of your chosen peer set.
 
I'm just waiting for the day the real world gets ahold of you and does what it always does.
 
I don't doubt you can eat data and crap out conclusions so you're "good" at academia - but I seriously doubt you've ever learned anything and I would never believe any of your research work is going to amount to anything other than a gold star from your superior... which sadly is all you live for.
 
My attitude toward you and your equally rotten little cohorts is contempt - and it is "justified."

I am very glad that this is true (sincerely, no sarcasm intended) but all of this is completely irrelevant to what she will write in her LOR. Science professors don't base their LORs on things that their students tell them about, they can only write LORs about things their students actually did under their supervision/guidance. In this case, what you did under her guidance was take her class, not your conversations about your knowledge of the field.
 
(emphasis added below)

In my opinion, taking full responsibility for an event means owning up to all of the consequences of said actions too, including not getting an LOR because you got had tons of chances to rectify your grade, and you chose not to so you got a B-.
 
 
Again, like I said above, she will be writing this LOR as your instructor, so she will be expected to comment on your performance in her class, not about her opinions about your competence as a scientist. Now, if you had collaborated or worked with her and demonstrated your science research ability, then she could write about that. But in this case, she can only write about your classwork. I totally agree that classwork is one of the less important parts of being a graduate student in a science PhD program, but if you knew this, then you should have looked for someone other than your instructor to write your LOR. I still don't understand why you would say "classes are not important" and then asked your class instructor to write an LOR (which would be about classes).
 

This is exactly what everyone else here is saying and I think this is the right thing to do. I even think it's a good thing. For some people, it's hard to say no so some profs will go the route of writing a useless LOR instead of saying no. You would have gotten a negative (worst case) or useless (best case) LOR from this person. I am glad for you that you learned why you did not get the LOR and that you did not end up submitting an LOR from this prof. I do not understand why you think this person did a bad deed and why you think it would be out of spite.

I contest the notion that "professional reputation" is really a factor in 99.9999999999% of these transactions.
 
The adcomm usually has no idea who the LOR writer is and just guesses based on their school affiliation and title.
 
We could make up names and titles and probably even schools and get it past several of the most selective adcomms.

That's been something I didn't really realize until coming here. Yeah, grants are short, etc. But manuscripts also have to conform to those limits - my advisor was talking about how many references she's had to cut out sometimes in order to stay under the limit the journal wants. It's interesting. She's encouraged me to use as many as I can now and then learn how to cut them out later.

I'll just point out that I've been accepted to more programs and offered more funding than you have, if you want to pull people's history into things as a means to belittle the advice they're giving. 
 
The goal here is getting in and getting funded, is it not? I offer sound advice for that. It is not presented in a manner to spare your feelings. 

Everyone's been freaking fantastic and nice and awesome. People are super supportive. My adviser's amazingly kind, so is my student mentor (we're going out to coffee this weekend).
 
It's...tomorrow will be two weeks of class and I'm dealing with a lovely wave of imposter syndrome. Haha. I love it here - the program is /fantastic/ and everything is amazing, but man do I feel stupid. I have a class where I'm the only first year and everyone seems so much smarter and that's not helping. My other class there's five of us and I have a fellow first-year in it and we're both feeling stupid. Lots of reading and thinking and I still don't know conclusively what I'm doing right or wrong. I might, if I took a few steps back and thought about it, but.
 
Overall I love it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, most of the time.
 
But it gets a tad overwhelming if I let myself think about it too long. Oh, and I have one of the most exacting advisers in the department, and she's the prof for one of my classes. So that's terrifying.

Everyone's been freaking fantastic and nice and awesome. People are super supportive. My adviser's amazingly kind, so is my student mentor (we're going out to coffee this weekend).
 
It's...tomorrow will be two weeks of class and I'm dealing with a lovely wave of imposter syndrome. Haha. I love it here - the program is /fantastic/ and everything is amazing, but man do I feel stupid. I have a class where I'm the only first year and everyone seems so much smarter and that's not helping. My other class there's five of us and I have a fellow first-year in it and we're both feeling stupid. Lots of reading and thinking and I still don't know conclusively what I'm doing right or wrong. I might, if I took a few steps back and thought about it, but.
 
Overall I love it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, most of the time.
 
But it gets a tad overwhelming if I let myself think about it too long. Oh, and I have one of the most exacting advisers in the department, and she's the prof for one of my classes. So that's terrifying.

'It's weird, but it works' sums up just about every coping mechanism I've got that works for me. I find myself saying it rather often lately when I explain to a cohortmate why I'm doing something totally ridiculous.

Sooo I'm just entering graduate school (this Thursday, actually), so I don't know wholly how much it's going to effect me, but I'm already getting hints of it as my assistantship's started.
 
I have to have a to-do list visible somewhere. Mine will probably be on my 'notes' section of this giant whiteboard calender I have right next to me. Which also has things on it. I'm contemplating scheduling things (9-9:30 this, etc), but I'm not sure that'll work for me.
 
As much as I want to take notes electronically, it's looking more and more like that won't work for me. I'm too easily distracted when I'm working on a computer. On the bright side I've got a binder for each class, dividers for each binder, and have a nice cheap printer to print out any articles I'll need to. Which will be a lot. Sigh. I'll still have my computer on while working - I like virtual company - but it will be awkward to reach and I'll have to work for it, which makes it less desirable and I'll focus more. With things printed I can just walk away and not worry about it. I do have an iPad mini I like to read on, but anything I need to read intensively will be harder. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with articles I need to take notes on. Ugh. Write the notes, then type them, or just type them straight away. The goal would be to keep everything electronic, but we'll see.
 
Routine and order are stupidly important. So we'll see how that works. I'm living with a cohortmate, so we'll see how that goes. Going to try a study group for stats. My adviser is similar to me in terms of the way her mind works, so that helps.
 
I don't plan to ask for accommodations or mention my 'problem'. I've spent years coping with it. It's nothing new, really. Just new challenges to tackle.

"Mom, I accepted my offer. Stipend was X amount."
 
"Are you sure that's enough? I'm really worried about you living with the cockroaches and eating ramen, like all the grad students."
 
"...what the heck?"
 
"It doesn't sound like enough...ask them for more money."
 
"[mentor] says it's a good award and the grad students say it's enough to live on. I'll be fine."
 
"I just don't want you living with cockroaches."
 
...I love you Mom, but dear god.

"Mom, I accepted my offer. Stipend was X amount."
 
"Are you sure that's enough? I'm really worried about you living with the cockroaches and eating ramen, like all the grad students."
 
"...what the heck?"
 
"It doesn't sound like enough...ask them for more money."
 
"[mentor] says it's a good award and the grad students say it's enough to live on. I'll be fine."
 
"I just don't want you living with cockroaches."
 
...I love you Mom, but dear god.

Ahhh, prestige... My whole family seems much more interested and happy with my sister who's a business major who wants to get her CPA than me who is applying to PhD programs. I think that comes from them not really knowing much /about/ PhD programs, but it still hurts.
 
I agree it's the fear of failure - for me, it's of disappointing others, as if not getting in will make me look worse in their eyes. I've had a bad past and not done so well (I was 19 and not very good at juggling priorities). I own up to it. It was my mistake. I wasn't mature enough to handle the situation well. It still sucks that one quarter can haunt me so badly. I own up not studying enough for the math section of the GRE, hehe. Although a 65% isn't that bad, it could be much better. I was just lazy.

"Mom, I accepted my offer. Stipend was X amount."
 
"Are you sure that's enough? I'm really worried about you living with the cockroaches and eating ramen, like all the grad students."
 
"...what the heck?"
 
"It doesn't sound like enough...ask them for more money."
 
"[mentor] says it's a good award and the grad students say it's enough to live on. I'll be fine."
 
"I just don't want you living with cockroaches."
 
...I love you Mom, but dear god.

"Mom, I accepted my offer. Stipend was X amount."
 
"Are you sure that's enough? I'm really worried about you living with the cockroaches and eating ramen, like all the grad students."
 
"...what the heck?"
 
"It doesn't sound like enough...ask them for more money."
 
"[mentor] says it's a good award and the grad students say it's enough to live on. I'll be fine."
 
"I just don't want you living with cockroaches."
 
...I love you Mom, but dear god.

One question one of my LOR writers suggested was "If you had to go through your program again, what would you change?"

I just got an acceptance to my first-choice program.   More info will come with the "official" acceptance, but they're providing a bunch of money as travel support to come out for their welcome weekend and the prof who wants to work with me (I think? She's the one that emailed me) is going to try to be there to meet up with me that weekend - she's on Sabbatical!!!
 
I am on top of the world. My mentor is BEYOND excited, as is my Mom. Oh my gosh!!! I'm going to graduate school!!!!!
 
Mentor is talking about possibly multiple acceptances, etc...   I feel so cool.

Oh gosh...the stipend. Mom: "So how much will you be making in graduate school?"
"Whatever they give me."
"Well, how much? 40k? 30k?"
"Mom, I don't know."
"I don't think they're giving you enough money."
"...they haven't given me any money yet, Mom. I haven't been accepted yet."
"Well, they'll be fighting all over you. One of them better give you enough money. Remind me where you applied again? I want to call them and tell them to give you more money."
"...no."
 
Yeah...