opulent

If I won the lottery, it would give me more reason to go to graduate school. I could do it, have fun, and not have to worry about finances. I would set up a scholarship fund and name it after myself (because I have always wanted something named after me, haha).

Probably not. I'm 35 and already have one masters and am interested in changing careers. I love to travel and just got back from Europe and wish I could just move there. I'm married so going to grad school there is not an option. If I won, we could just move to Europe, buy apartments in several cities, and not have to worry about jobs. Or maybe we'd both apply to programs abroad, just for personal enrichment and to meet people. But I would not be pursuing what I am pursuing right now.

I am 26 and I am the oldest grandchild. 9 months ago my cousin got married (i did not attend the ceremony because of the obvious reasons: cant stand my relatives asking curious questions like "So when are YOU getting married?", "oh poor girl, do you at least have a boyfriend?") and a week ago she gave birth to a little boy. At first, I was very jealous that she has it all: degrees (BS, MS), career and a family...
I am muslim, therefore my relatives find it very strange that I am not married at this age. They also find it awkward that I called off my wedding 5 years ago. I want to please them and be an exemplary girl, get married soon, have kids... but wait, it is my life we are talking about. I dont have to live my life just to make my grandfather happy. Of course I want to make them proud, but i certainly won't be making life-changing decisions based on my relatives' opinion.
Every person has his/her own happiness recipe. Yeah, my cousin is happy having: husband+kid+career. But I may not be very happy if I was in her shoes. First, I want to move to USA and start an academic carrer with a PhD, second, meet a nice guy and get married, have kids and be a respected professor in my field. So my happiness recipe is: PhD + successful academic career + living in USA + loving husband + healthy kids.
So, obviously, I set much higher goals than my cousin does. And I sincerely respect myself for that.

Determine your own recipe of happiness! What do YOU want? What will make YOU happy? Getting married? No, I dont think that an ambitios, self-sufficient person like you could be happy fully devoting herself to her family. From my experience, weaker people with low self-esteem get married early forming co-dependent families (and if your cousin is tend to be depressed, it is clearly a sign of lack of confidence). They think, it is easier to experience life supporting each other. Maybe they are right but I dont want to have a co-dependent family, I want to have a family based on mutual love and respect. I am sure the same applies to you.

We all eventually get what we wanted. Your cousin may have dreamed aboud wedding since she was 15 but you had another dream - getting into NYU. And you did it, congratulations! Now it is time for you to dream about the next thing and you will eventually get it! Concentrate on your own dreams and goals because only they can make you truely happy.

I'm so excited to finally be a part of this site, and even more excited to be find someone I can help perfectly!

I'm finishing my last credit hour at Temple for my undergrad Neuroscience and have been involved with Dr Chein's lab for a long time and know several of the other researchers in the cog sci. program. So if there is someone you are interested in knowing about send me an email and maybe I can help out with any apprehension.

The area around Temple isn't the nicest. To be honest when I lived off campus around the school every house on my block was robbed, and you'll hear of worse things happening. That being said, grad students DO NOT live around campus and being on campus is very safe. Mostly grad students live around the art museum area or northern liberties/fishtown, sometimes somewhere else in a much nicer place in the city where safety is pretty on par with most cities.

You can get to and from campus by riding the subway, which drops you off right by the building where most of your classes will be. You can also take a bus or even bike ridding in from other areas is safe, it's just spending time milling around outside campus or living in north philly that's unsafe.

We have a very nice school, and a really great cog sci. program. Safety concerns seem to scare some people away, but for grad students it's never really an issue. You'll only be around campus not in troublesome areas.

Let me know if you have any other concerns.

My, the response got shrill pretty fast. Very quickly:

mckee002:
1) 'beta male' is not the same as 'gay man'. I'm sure as a gay man in the Bay area, you could confirm that vast numbers of gay men are not at all 'beta males' as it is generally understood. I'm uninterested in the sexuality of my classmates, but in appearance and demeanor, there is a variance from a guyish guy type. I don't care if the guy is gay - I do care if I can't find a single dude who looks like he could throw a football in the park.
2) art history can and should be a serious discipline.
3) you and I will have to agree to disagree about the value of grievance studies vs. traditional art history. I don't buy your defense (the likes of which I've read a hundred times 'interrogating gender and race' and other nonsense). But you are probably in the majority, while I'm one of a few young fogeys, I guess.

runaway:
1) your icon is clocks, didn't recognize it as art. sorry about that.
2) rereading my #4 response for 'snide misogyny' - perhaps I was unclear. I don't think much so much scholarship is unserious because it seems to be practiced by women. Those were adjacent observations, but not related. As for attitude within graduate school, the not-so-serious approach to scholarship compared to other disciplines: surely that has some other cause than the sex of the student. I know plenty of female musicians, for example, who practice as hard and perform as well as the men.

artofdescribing:
1) if you can imagine, it's not worth a penny to me or anybody if you find my remarks offensive or presumptuous. I quite clearly said my observations were from limited experience - familiarity with three above average departments - and that would rather find out that i was wrong.
2) no doubt there are serious, ambitious, scholarly students. Great to hear you've met some!
3) sorry about the 'red flags' - you may find, one day, that pseudo-intellectual academic fads don't have quite the heft they once did. Think how quaint a Freudian reading now looks in most subject areas - not far from a phrenological one. I do expect there is room in the field, still, for those who aren't committed to nonsense of that sort. In fact, it's easy to find young professors teaching at good schools who aren't theory heads, and who aren't abusing good art with contemporary political hobbyhorses.

This is an interesting question. When I'm in classes with Seniors and first or second year graduate students, I often wonder what drew them into this field. This is my (admittedly limited) experience:
Almost all of them are female (in at least the three schools I've known). The few guys are usually beta males.
Most of the students don't have what one might call a driven, scholarly disposition (easy to see if you compare the atmosphere to a History seminar, or even moreso, to one in the sciences). It is more of the 'I like to read about this and be the art history person among my friends'. A pleasant niche.
Few of the students seem to have retained only a superficial familiarity with the art outside their range of particular interest.

Why do they move on to graduate study? Some combination of a naive sense of the job market (perhaps they assume they'll marry a guy with a job) and a gentle drift into something comfortable after the BA. After all, who wants to look for a job with a BA in art history??

The reputation of detroit being "as bad as it sounds" is founded largely on institutional racism and classism. I agree with StephanieJ. Detroit gets a bad rap. It's just as bad as any other major city, but it has felt the effects of an industrialized economy backsliding harder than most others. There are a lot of poor and street involved people in the city, and people equate these things with "bad." I've never felt particularly unsafe in Detroit, but every person has their own level of street awareness.

Campuses and the areas surrounding them tend to be little bubbles of student life and not always reflective of the city at large, as well.

Hello, I went to undergrad in detroit right by wayne state (an art school) and lived by wayne state campus and I loved it. There are certainly parts of detroit that one should be cautious of but midtown especially woodbridge is a great place to live. I knew my neighbors and cost of living was incredibly cheap. Also wayne state wants the area to be safe so if you live right around campus (not on campus) and something happens their security will respond much faster than the police. They work hard to keep the area around campus safe. I love detroit and I've always had a bad reaction when I tell people I live here. Yes there is a high crime rate but having spent 6 years here (as a white girl who walks by herself at night) I still feel safe and I am confident that if you are aware of your surroundings there is nothing to fear. Please at least visit and give detroit a chance. There is a wonderful young and supportive community here (especially in the arts) if you have any specific questions I will answer them to the best of my ability. I still live here (although now in Hamtramck which is a small city within the city of detroit) and spend almost all my time in mid town and downtown.

There are probably areas of Detroit where you will be safe, but it's reputation as a shithole is warranted. I have never heard a positive review of a Detroit visit, either. I've never personally been there (because I value my life), but my brother went this year. He was optimistic, that at least downtown Detroit had to be kind of cool. He was unimpressed.