repatriate

Hi everyone,

I am doing my PhD at a university that has a rather small PhD student population overall. My department itself has less than 10 PhD students, most of whom are not in my subfield (so we take mostly different courses, attend different talks because of our divergent interests, etc). And we are also outnumbered by a relatively larger MA program (most of whom do not end up writing theses, but doing an internship option which allows them to get internships in the government).

As a result, there are very very few opportunities for me to socialize with PhD students in my field (and the same goes for socializing with PhD students in other fields -- since there are very few inter-departmental events, etc.). I've often had to hang out with MA students. But lately, I've been feeling that I'm kinda "above" that crowd. There's been a lot of drama among the MA students, and I have had strained relations with a few of them myself. I feel that they are, in general, rather immature and childish, and that we really don't get along all too well. Most of them are still in that childish / undergradish partying/gossiping/badmouthing phase (actually, one of the PhD students still is, too), which really is not my kinda scene (I prefer hanging out with friends and having discussions and debates over beer, etc).

Do you hang out with MA students in your program? Should I avoid them in general? Do you feel like a PhD student who hangs out with MA students in general, gives the wrong impression to faculty, etc.? I mean, I don't mind hanging out with serious MA students. There are 2 MA students who have told me they don't like hanging out with their MA peers because they're immature, and prefer hanging out with the more mature/serious PhD crowd. What are your thoughts on hanging out with MA students? Also, what are your thoughts on getting involved in the department's graduate student association? Is that something that MA students usually do and PhD students don't? I'm kinda involved in that, but I'm wondering if I should withdraw from it? Do you think PhD students should distance themselves from MA students, and act more formal with them?

I'm aware that it varies by the kind of university one is attending, the nature of the program and the size of the department, etc. My department is fairly small (not counting the undergrads, of course) compared to other departments. My university is in a big city, located downtown, so yes, there are opportunities for socializing outside the university, but I'm interested in socializing with the university crowd.

Anyhow, your thoughts are appreciated.

Ooh, lots of great changes here - I like the new subforums, and the ability to organize threads by things other than recently updated. However, is it possible to add back the little button by the thread title which brings you straight to the posts you haven't read yet? That was a useful feature.

robot_hamster, I think you are really hitting on it in your last sentences. This really sounds like something you need to work out with your husband in terms of what is important to each of you. What are you and he each willing to give up--proximity, education, career, relationship? What's going to make you happy and satisfied will depend on your own values and priorities. How much will you be hurt if, after you finish the first year of your PhD far away, your husband decides it is too much to be apart but he is not willing to move? Is this something that might happen? Would you quit your PhD program and go home? If you don't pursue a PhD now and end up waiting many more years for your husband to finish, will you resent your husband or will you be able to see it is as a choice that provided you with something more valuable than a degree?


As to leaving a spouse behind, I did that--but only for a year, with three visits. Yeah, I hated not seeing my spouse, but I knew it was temporary, and definitely shorter than a PhD. Our relationship is also fairly calm and independent--we haven't fought in years, and we we can remain close even when doing our own things most of the time. Those things may not be necessary for successfully living apart, but I do think they made it easier for us.

One thing to consider is that living apart will cause you will each discover new patterns, habits, and personality features that will help you live alone. In short, you will each change a little bit. For example, I took to watching TV on my computer in bed to help me fall asleep. This was hard to do once I got back home and was sharing a bed again, and I had to get used to a different way of sleeping again. But we also both became more outgoing and talkative because we didn't have each other to rely on as much. Some people find these changes upsetting. When you live with your spouse, and they change a little day by day as you see them, you grow together, and it doesn't seem sudden. But when you see your spouse after five months, and they are doing new things you never saw before and talking more, etc., it can make you feel alienated from the person you thought you were closest to and knew the most. On the other hand, you can be pleased to see your spouse thriving (or sympathetic and supportive if they are not). How would you and your respond react to these kinds of changes in each other?

I really wish you and your husband the best in this decision. It sounds like a truly stressful and difficult situation. I hope that you will find the solution that fits you both best.

robot_hamster, I think you are really hitting on it in your last sentences. This really sounds like something you need to work out with your husband in terms of what is important to each of you. What are you and he each willing to give up--proximity, education, career, relationship? What's going to make you happy and satisfied will depend on your own values and priorities. How much will you be hurt if, after you finish the first year of your PhD far away, your husband decides it is too much to be apart but he is not willing to move? Is this something that might happen? Would you quit your PhD program and go home? If you don't pursue a PhD now and end up waiting many more years for your husband to finish, will you resent your husband or will you be able to see it is as a choice that provided you with something more valuable than a degree?


As to leaving a spouse behind, I did that--but only for a year, with three visits. Yeah, I hated not seeing my spouse, but I knew it was temporary, and definitely shorter than a PhD. Our relationship is also fairly calm and independent--we haven't fought in years, and we we can remain close even when doing our own things most of the time. Those things may not be necessary for successfully living apart, but I do think they made it easier for us.

One thing to consider is that living apart will cause you will each discover new patterns, habits, and personality features that will help you live alone. In short, you will each change a little bit. For example, I took to watching TV on my computer in bed to help me fall asleep. This was hard to do once I got back home and was sharing a bed again, and I had to get used to a different way of sleeping again. But we also both became more outgoing and talkative because we didn't have each other to rely on as much. Some people find these changes upsetting. When you live with your spouse, and they change a little day by day as you see them, you grow together, and it doesn't seem sudden. But when you see your spouse after five months, and they are doing new things you never saw before and talking more, etc., it can make you feel alienated from the person you thought you were closest to and knew the most. On the other hand, you can be pleased to see your spouse thriving (or sympathetic and supportive if they are not). How would you and your respond react to these kinds of changes in each other?

I really wish you and your husband the best in this decision. It sounds like a truly stressful and difficult situation. I hope that you will find the solution that fits you both best.

What do you think about email signatures? You know, where you have your email account add contact info at the end of every email:

MoJingly
Happy Graduate Program
University of Awesome
email: Mojingly@awesomeuni.edu
phone: xxxxxxxxx
fax: xxxxxxxx
name of first born: Thor
heritage: Antarctican
graduate of: University of Less Awesome, but awesome nonetheless

This is certainly an exaggeration but I feel like some people put way to much at the end of their emails. I HATE HATE HATE inspirational quotes at the end of them:

If at first you don't succeed, you probably stink at it.


And they are almost always a different color and very annoying. I feel like contact info is legitimate, especially in professional situations. But NO quotes for the love of all that is holy. PLEASE.

Actually, the real point to this was to ask you guys what you think of signatures at the end of emails sent from mobile devices. "Sent from my IPhone" for example. What do you think? Take them out? Leave them in? It could be nice to give reasons for potential typos or short emails, but I also think that you should be able to email well from a mobile device if you are doing it at all.

Teach me, oh wise GradCafe...

I went through a horrible time with my advisor and I was really upset that I didn't find all the truth about him during my visit day. The former grad students were afraid of telling the truth. So, after suffering through an advisor change, I decided to make a website to provide grad students an avenue to post (anonymous) experiences that they have had working/interacting with their grad school advisors. I would like this collection of posts to serve as a reference for prospective grad students to learn much more about prospective advisors qualities - all the stuff that isn’t necessarily apparent from their well manicured CVs.

Please help spread the word and also write posts so that prospective students don't go through the same hell I went through.
The website is: http://www.advisorsunclassified.com/

Thank you

OP: When I worked as a production editor for a large academic publisher, we did have our copyeditors check (and edit) references on journal articles. But there's a wide disparity in the quality/competence of copyeditors, and it becomes a huge headache at proofs for everyone involved (including yourself) if there's a ton of missing information in your citations. Plus, every change you request at proofs has the potential to go awry when the typesetter goes to implement the change. It's best to send the cleanest copy you can to a publisher, despite the presence of copyediting.

Most school webmail systems will allow you to change your settings to forward all mail sent to that box to a secondary address (e.g., your Gmail account). Typically what I do -- and what most grad students I know do -- is send the first email from the school account, then all subsequent emails from their Gmail account. Seems to work pretty well from what I can see, as long as your Gmail handle is your name or includes your name.

My advisor is also the dept head and he has no idea what the prerequisites for specific courses are. Consult the course catalog if you want to know, rather than expecting professors to know.

Again, this is the end of the semester. Your classes start in August or September, right? So it's not like this has to be handled right this second or things will fall apart. Wait until June then call/email again.

Honestly, I've never registered for classes as an incoming grad student before August. At both my MA and PhD programs, part of orientation was sitting down with your advisor, the DGS, and the grad program secretary to work out a course schedule for the fall and spring. After that, the secretary registered us for classes (PhD program) or we were cleared to go online and register ourselves (MA program).

Sure, you can ask your advisor. But, grad classes rarely fill up and, when they do, professors typically let interested grad students enroll anyway. So I guess I'm not sure what the rush to register is. Just because you can doesn't mean you need to. In fact, most of the students in my current program and in my MA program only registered for one fall class in the spring and then figured the rest out in August as school started.

I agree. We ought to write accessible text. That is a separate issue from what texts the GRE should sample from. The GRE should sample from the kind of texts you will read in graduate school. Unfortunately, many scholars do write like this. You will need to be able to read such writing in graduate school, regardless of whether or not it ought to exist.

It's a form of signalling (on your CV), but the associations (at least in my field) offer discounted conference admission, travel funding, research awards, grants, and fellowships to members. Many of them have great listservs, too, where you can keep up with what people in your field are doing, ask for advice, and find job postings. Some of the major psych associations even use grad students as reviewers for some of their competitions, which is a great way to get reviewing experience before you are famous enough review for journals. Basically, I'd say the memberships are greatly beneficial. But I have no idea how well this generalizes to political science associations.

I don't think the results of this study have been published yet, but I saw this video from this year's APS convention. Timothy Lawson had a poster on what coursework psychology grad programs looked for when selecting applicants and found differences depending on program type. He discusses some of those differences very briefly in the video, but hopefully there will be more details published eventually. It looks like he's done this kind of survey before and is updating the work.

robot_hamster, I think you are really hitting on it in your last sentences. This really sounds like something you need to work out with your husband in terms of what is important to each of you. What are you and he each willing to give up--proximity, education, career, relationship? What's going to make you happy and satisfied will depend on your own values and priorities. How much will you be hurt if, after you finish the first year of your PhD far away, your husband decides it is too much to be apart but he is not willing to move? Is this something that might happen? Would you quit your PhD program and go home? If you don't pursue a PhD now and end up waiting many more years for your husband to finish, will you resent your husband or will you be able to see it is as a choice that provided you with something more valuable than a degree?


As to leaving a spouse behind, I did that--but only for a year, with three visits. Yeah, I hated not seeing my spouse, but I knew it was temporary, and definitely shorter than a PhD. Our relationship is also fairly calm and independent--we haven't fought in years, and we we can remain close even when doing our own things most of the time. Those things may not be necessary for successfully living apart, but I do think they made it easier for us.

One thing to consider is that living apart will cause you will each discover new patterns, habits, and personality features that will help you live alone. In short, you will each change a little bit. For example, I took to watching TV on my computer in bed to help me fall asleep. This was hard to do once I got back home and was sharing a bed again, and I had to get used to a different way of sleeping again. But we also both became more outgoing and talkative because we didn't have each other to rely on as much. Some people find these changes upsetting. When you live with your spouse, and they change a little day by day as you see them, you grow together, and it doesn't seem sudden. But when you see your spouse after five months, and they are doing new things you never saw before and talking more, etc., it can make you feel alienated from the person you thought you were closest to and knew the most. On the other hand, you can be pleased to see your spouse thriving (or sympathetic and supportive if they are not). How would you and your respond react to these kinds of changes in each other?

I really wish you and your husband the best in this decision. It sounds like a truly stressful and difficult situation. I hope that you will find the solution that fits you both best.

robot_hamster, I think you are really hitting on it in your last sentences. This really sounds like something you need to work out with your husband in terms of what is important to each of you. What are you and he each willing to give up--proximity, education, career, relationship? What's going to make you happy and satisfied will depend on your own values and priorities. How much will you be hurt if, after you finish the first year of your PhD far away, your husband decides it is too much to be apart but he is not willing to move? Is this something that might happen? Would you quit your PhD program and go home? If you don't pursue a PhD now and end up waiting many more years for your husband to finish, will you resent your husband or will you be able to see it is as a choice that provided you with something more valuable than a degree?


As to leaving a spouse behind, I did that--but only for a year, with three visits. Yeah, I hated not seeing my spouse, but I knew it was temporary, and definitely shorter than a PhD. Our relationship is also fairly calm and independent--we haven't fought in years, and we we can remain close even when doing our own things most of the time. Those things may not be necessary for successfully living apart, but I do think they made it easier for us.

One thing to consider is that living apart will cause you will each discover new patterns, habits, and personality features that will help you live alone. In short, you will each change a little bit. For example, I took to watching TV on my computer in bed to help me fall asleep. This was hard to do once I got back home and was sharing a bed again, and I had to get used to a different way of sleeping again. But we also both became more outgoing and talkative because we didn't have each other to rely on as much. Some people find these changes upsetting. When you live with your spouse, and they change a little day by day as you see them, you grow together, and it doesn't seem sudden. But when you see your spouse after five months, and they are doing new things you never saw before and talking more, etc., it can make you feel alienated from the person you thought you were closest to and knew the most. On the other hand, you can be pleased to see your spouse thriving (or sympathetic and supportive if they are not). How would you and your respond react to these kinds of changes in each other?

I really wish you and your husband the best in this decision. It sounds like a truly stressful and difficult situation. I hope that you will find the solution that fits you both best.

robot_hamster, I think you are really hitting on it in your last sentences. This really sounds like something you need to work out with your husband in terms of what is important to each of you. What are you and he each willing to give up--proximity, education, career, relationship? What's going to make you happy and satisfied will depend on your own values and priorities. How much will you be hurt if, after you finish the first year of your PhD far away, your husband decides it is too much to be apart but he is not willing to move? Is this something that might happen? Would you quit your PhD program and go home? If you don't pursue a PhD now and end up waiting many more years for your husband to finish, will you resent your husband or will you be able to see it is as a choice that provided you with something more valuable than a degree?


As to leaving a spouse behind, I did that--but only for a year, with three visits. Yeah, I hated not seeing my spouse, but I knew it was temporary, and definitely shorter than a PhD. Our relationship is also fairly calm and independent--we haven't fought in years, and we we can remain close even when doing our own things most of the time. Those things may not be necessary for successfully living apart, but I do think they made it easier for us.

One thing to consider is that living apart will cause you will each discover new patterns, habits, and personality features that will help you live alone. In short, you will each change a little bit. For example, I took to watching TV on my computer in bed to help me fall asleep. This was hard to do once I got back home and was sharing a bed again, and I had to get used to a different way of sleeping again. But we also both became more outgoing and talkative because we didn't have each other to rely on as much. Some people find these changes upsetting. When you live with your spouse, and they change a little day by day as you see them, you grow together, and it doesn't seem sudden. But when you see your spouse after five months, and they are doing new things you never saw before and talking more, etc., it can make you feel alienated from the person you thought you were closest to and knew the most. On the other hand, you can be pleased to see your spouse thriving (or sympathetic and supportive if they are not). How would you and your respond react to these kinds of changes in each other?

I really wish you and your husband the best in this decision. It sounds like a truly stressful and difficult situation. I hope that you will find the solution that fits you both best.

The best advice I could offer besides the basic stuff that you already know (e.g., good grades, reference letters, admissions test scores) is to volunteer for a research lab in your field of interest. If you can somehow get a paid position that is even better. Students coming out of undergrad with research experience look far superior to those who have shown no initiative in this domain.

There's an article called "kisses of death in the grad school application process" that could be helpful. It gives specifics to avoid. Just google that phrase in quotes and it will come up.

So basically the only thing the UC Davis has going for them is a slightly higher GPA?

Considering how important research experience, good LOR's and a good personal statement are i would have to say the LAC student has better chances.

The grad school app process with so convoluted with some many idiosyncrasies its really impossible to accurately chance anyone though.

No, sparky, I can't argue that every single intro to American Government class is (or should be) taught the same way. But since Canon wrote the most widely-used intro to American Government textbook in American universities, it might stand to reason that his approach represents something of a core consensus among political scientists about what kinds of materials ought to be taught in a 101 class. The fact that you seem to suggest that your course would differ markedly from what most political scientists would teach provides some evidence, I would think, of why JDs are not often hired to teach these kinds of classes, except at marginal institutions.

Also, I do enjoy your arguments about what is and isn't appropriate material for intro classes as opposed to graduate school courses. I suppose that the fact that topics (like judicial behavior) in Canon's text are in fact being taught in community colleges might surprise you. Perhaps you've not been an undergraduate for a while, or you attended an especially inferior college, but this "level" of material is being taught in intro-level political science course by my colleagues and I everyday, and we generally find that students have no trouble following it. Perhaps we should dumb down to your standards, but I'd prefer not to.

But the bigger point is that, despite the fact that you suggest all political science theories and explanations are "made-up," the things you cite in response that you've apparently heard of ("iron triangles," "donkey voters") don't really represent the mainstream ways in which political scientists think about these issues anymore. I'd agree that a good class should encourage critical thinking, but I'd also argue that one especially good way to do that is to provide students with the major controversies in political science, and help them to parse them out. Canon's text, along with every other text I've used at this level, presents multiple approaches to answering questions like "how do people choose how to vote?" and encourages students to adjudicate among them. In my class, they leave with more than the half-dozen theories I remember from my law classes--they leave with a general notion of how our explanations for political phenomena have changed over time, and what that might mean for our future. They also learn how academic knowledge is produced, which is a crucial skill for teaching students how to think critically about the information they encounter (and I see you didn't really respond to the portion of my comments in which I defended the teaching of "methods" in intro classes).

The sad truth is that the course you propose between the lines would look a lot like an American Government course did before the behavioralist revolution of the 1950s: Focused mostly on institutions and laws, with little attention to how people act (strategically or otherwise) inside them. What you propose teaching sounds outdated, not particularly sophisticated, and doesn't really reflect all the things we know about how political systems function that we didn't 60 years ago. So why would anyone hire you, if they could get even a mediocre PhD? It sounds like you don't think students can handle complex material (and so would suggest they save it until "graduate school"), would offer atheoretical, oversimplified, and outdated explanations of political phenomena, and would generally not provide students with either the breadth or depth that a generically trained actual no-shit political scientist would.

So, perhaps the answer is this. An average JD (or you, based on my reading of your comments) might be qualified to teach a course entitled "Intro to American Government." But this class would not offer the same depth or breadth of material, would not involve any instruction about how political science knowledge is produced, would not offer the theoretical groundwork necessary for students to succeed in upper-level course, and would traffic in a limited range of outdated theories. Instead, what they'd get is "I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill" and some stuff on what the law says. Sweet. But I'm sure there'd be critical thinking, right?

PS. Lawyers don't really have a monopoly on the socratic method. But since you've shifted your argument some to one based on pedagogy (You PhDs teach all that boring theory, but I make them engage!), consider this: A actually balanced classroom approach involves more than socratic quizzing. At its best, an intro to American class can deliver the opportunity to help students create political knowledge, but working hands-on with polling data, or re-districting studies, or with elected officials, or any number of other primary sources. Even a mediocre class involves getting students to think like social scientists in some way or another. Are you a social scientist? Can you teach others how to think like one? Again, this is a reason departments prefer PhDs...

People are usually unwilling to answer that first question because of concerns that others will scoop their ideas. Most likely, the only things someone will share are papers already in press, nothing earlier.

If you'd really like to collaborate, my first suggestion is to offer your study ideas first and ask whether she'd like to run those studies with you, then see how it develops. This is also dangerous, because the person could decline and scoop your ideas. Definitely talk to your new advisor first. He/she might have advice or opinions about starting a collaboration somewhere else, such as wanting you to focus on your local work, not collaborate somewhere else.

Another option is to run a few studies first, then send her an email saying "These are the studies we've run. I know you do similar work. Would you like to compare notes? Maybe by combining our data we have a paper." But again, this is something you should run past your advisor.

My recommendation? Don't bother. Run your studies with your advisor and publish your paper the two of you. The other prof hasn't done anything yet and many "reading and planning" ideas never coalesce into actual studies. But you know she's working on it, so that's an incentive to work fast. And practically speaking, almost nothing exactly replicates something. There's always a way to make something look novel--with the theoretical framing or by running follow-up studies.

I agree. We ought to write accessible text. That is a separate issue from what texts the GRE should sample from. The GRE should sample from the kind of texts you will read in graduate school. Unfortunately, many scholars do write like this. You will need to be able to read such writing in graduate school, regardless of whether or not it ought to exist.

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Currently I'm doing two years of service with City Year New York and would go to college after next year. I want to go to a school in NYC, my ultimate goal is either NYU or Columbia. However, I wouldn't mind transferring..The New School is well known in NYC so transferring could be easier.

Some Pros..

-65% girls, a lot of them are 8/10+
-Great political science program(my major would be..)
-Dorming in Greenwich Village, NYC
-Transferring may be easier for me than going to a CC in NJ and THEN attempting to transfer to CU or NYU


Some Cons..

-Very liberal school, I plan to join the military..all I need to say
-Seems to have the douchebag artsy vibe to it

It all really depends on what you asked and how, but I think you advisor may have been acting from two concerns. First, it's not uncommon for faculty to be completely unaware of the course requirements for graduate students (unless they are the department chair or division head). Generally, you'll get this information from a graduate secretary or other graduate students or even the handbook. Second, as a graduate student, you are expected to be very independent, so rather than approaching your advisor and asking what you should do before you have done a substantial amount of independent work (in this case, reading the handbook, talking to the grad secretary, and asking other students), you should come up with a good plan or product and bring that to your advisor for approval (in this case, a list of courses for approval).

Still, some advisors don't see courses as important and won't be at all interested in which ones you are taking; other advisors will want to approve your courses each term. I don't think it's a red flag if your advisor is not interested in your courses or that s/he took umbrage with being asked to decide on the courses for you.