LingGrad2009

Probably so you make sure to use it on rent, rather than blowing it all on clothes (or camera gear, which is my weakness).

Law schools tend to prefer breadth of preparation. They are going to teach you law when you get there; they don't need you to come in thinking you already know it. For this reason, pre-law is often an inadvisable preparatory major. Look at the Western legal system: a huge portion of it, as well as all of its vocabularly, is drawn from Greek and Roman tradition (classics, history). My own major, linguistics, is also a strongly favored preparatory major due to its introduction to semantics and precise analyses of the details of language. Law schools welcome biology and chemistry majors because of the great deal of forensics evidence that is being presented in courts, and computer science majors because of the high incidence of computer crime and the current furor over distribution of intellectual property. From my own (brief) research as I considered a JD, all of these majors had higher acceptance rates than pre-law. In fact, pre-law is probably the only major out there that actually has NO application to field of law after receiving a JD. All it does is get you in, while the rest provide a foundation and direction for the rest of your career.

I'm glad I'm not alone on the DD/Mexican food fronts. To be fair to my area though, the ethnic food sections here are pretty extensive and well-appointed, so I'm better off than some of you.

I too am a Westcoaster transplanted easterly, and I agree that the food was one of the biggest differences. What gets me is the extreme lack of Mexican food (Chipotle? Seriously, that's the most authentic place around)? Apparently no one understands that tortillas are only partially cooked when packaged, and they NEED another 20 seconds in a hot skillet before they're edible. And when I first got here, someone told me the best coffee around was Dunkin' Doughnuts. I was dismayed to find out they were right. I need good coffee so badly that I'm searching for a connection to buy green beans from and just roast my own. If I can get someone in Hilo to ship me some green Kona, I'd be in heaven.

Generally yes, but in this case OLPC = One Laptop Per Child. The goal of all development under this umbrella was coming up with a laptop for under $100, so technology coming from it tends to be very reasonably priced. Witness the slew of great netbooks for $2-300 that are available because of OLPC development.

Get a job or go to church. Meet some people in the short time you have free, and those are two good ways.

I'm stuck in the Comcast ring of hell where I am now, but I move next week (yay!) for NewBigCollegeTown where I'll actually have options. I'm thinking of getting just a landline for use as (gasp) dial-up internet. I know, I know, how 1989 of me. But my university has a dial-up phone bank, so it's free as long as it's a local call, and it puts me inside the school network, so I have access to all the goodies without having to sign into each one. And in terms of keeping monthly expenses down it's hard to beat. So landline + free dialup for both phone and internet, and a nice VHF/UHF antenna for TV, and I have my entertainment bundle for ~$14/month. Not too shabby. Of course, I'd have to forgo the Hulu shows I mentioned above I'm also horribly sick today, so if I'm not making sense, that's why. As long as I don't lock myself into anything in this state.

I used Quicken Online for a three month free trial period. It was pretty well done and convenient, but in the end it was nothing I couldn't do on my own with a spreadsheet for an extra ten minutes a week, so I let it expire. I did use it to model my spreadsheet though. I hope that's not a copyright violation : )

This has gotten WAY off topic, since the original question was about TV/Internet/Cable bundles, and a bundle is almost always a VOIP system, not a landline. As for me, I recognize the benefits of the true landline, but the combination of circumstances where they'd be useful is too unlikely to make it worth the investment. The most common emergency situation people my age group get into is traffic accidents, and those, of necessity, happen away from the landline. I've called 911 about ten times in the last five years, and every time was from my cell phone when I've witnessed traffic accidents. I don't recall remarking that the cell network was ever down at any point in that period. I'd much rather take (and encourage others to take) the yearly investment of around $200 for a landline ($10/month is a rock-bottom price that most people don't get) and spend it on refresher Red Cross CPR classes, which are far more likely to be useful over the course of the investment. Or you could take one year's worth of that and get a ham license and radio, gaining access to the most reliable form of communication in existence, with the additional benefit of mobility. Or you could use it to install state-of-the-art smoke, radon, and CO2 detecters, reducing the risk of an emergency at home, or invest in defensive driving courses, reducing risk of emergency away. What I'm saying is the landline is useful, but seems to have achieved an almost holy status, to where people argue vehemently for it while ignoring a host of other minor investments that would have greater returns in safety.

Every time this thread pops up I get the urge to watch Big Trouble in Little China. And you know what ol' Jack Burton always says about fiscal irresponsibility in the Golden State . . .

Seminars are small classes where everyone discusses or takes turns presenting. If you record seminars you'll be expected, and probably required, to clear it with every person present. Even then, they might just disallow it completely, because even with permission, fledgling scholars might be intimidated by the recording and hesitant to participate. Besides, if there's something you don't understand in a seminar, you should just discuss it right then rather than puzzling it out on your own later.

My acceptance package actually included information about the local community college in case there were languages or any other subjects needed to brush up on.

Well, French and Italian have a really high degree of lexical and grammatical similarity, so if you take French you'll have an advantage in vocab and structure, and will just need work on the wildly different sound patterns. I had the opposite experience when I traveled in Italy; because I speak French, I could read Italian with little difficulty, but understanding it (I was only there for a week) was out of the question. Spanish and Italian are much closer in terms of pronunciation, but the grammar and lexicon have more signicantly diverged.

I know I am. Just tell them you need a couple of weeks to arrange the move and get settled in. Unless your professors have never changed jobs or moved, they'll understand. Two weeks is not a lot to ask at all.

I can't agree or disagree yet, because I don't start until next month, but your assertion begs the question that undergrad was fun to start with. I did not find it so. What I found it was fulfilling, particularly the final two years when I was working exclusively in my major. I am hoping (indeed counting on it) that grad school and a subsequent career in the field will renew that sense of satisfaction and the feeling that I was, for once, doing something where I belonged. I sure never got that sense in anything I was doing before or have done since.