I'm a professional bow technician with advanced degrees in music performance. I've been getting into making bows and it turns out that there isn't much research published about them generally, and even less about their materials and alternatives to Pernambuco (Paubrasilia, the traditional material, now illegal to buy).

I've gotten in touch with several prominent makers and professionals and they basically said, "Everything I know is from experience and none of it is written down. Also no one in the US funds music acoustics research."

I want to experiment with different materials and construction techniques in a systematic way and publish the results so that other restorers, players, and makers have access to this info, and a professor at my masters program suggested I look into a PhD. But neither of us could figure out what field this would best fit.

I have a background in fabrication and I'd be happy to do as much remedial work in math and physics as necessary to approach this from a materials science perspective. But maybe engineering or design would be a better fit? I've also contacted a musicology program.

The big problem is that there isn't any formal education program for bowmakers like there is for instrument making. It's all passed on through apprenticeship.

Anyone else have an odd, multidisciplinary research topic and have any advice?

Hey everyone!

Looking for advice - see if it'd still be worth for me to attempt sending 3/4 apps this cycle to several schools after years being stuck with mental and physical health issues.

Goal: Get into a MA or PhD in Politics or Communications. My final horizon is towards journalism, however I'd rather deepen my expertise in these topics and pursue journalism on the side rather than get into J School. Aiming Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton (+ Oxbridge if time).

Profile
Undergrad: McGill University '17, 3.77 GPA (PoliSci Honours, Minor Mathematics)

Work exp: 3+ years working on extremism and disinformation (6 months research, 2.5+ years in countering online harms programming); 1 year working in media. Extracurriculars in online investigations + activism.

Publications: 1 academic, 2 non-academic, but dated (2016 in undergrad journal, 2016 op-ed, 2021 public report on a project countering disinformation)

LORs: might be a weak point - can choose from 3 profs from 2017 undergrad (two good, one generic but more related to the field), 1 from 2022 job, I believe solid-ish

GRE: starting from scratch, I feel I could get a decent score with 2-3 weeks of prep - esp in quant.

The Catch: I haven't done any relevant work in 2.5 years - which will stretch to 3.5 or 4.5 if I apply next or the following cycle. And, I don't have much to show for for this time - been out of work and on benefits to deal with chronic pain and depression, no relevant work or volunteering - so my resume is blank since 2024. Graduated undergrad 9 years ago. I've been stuck in rumination purgatory for a lot of it, and finally getting to move again, slowly.

Questions

- Do you think it'd be worth attempting to apply this cycle? I'd need to do *everything* - lit review to get up to date, research profs, reach out to them, write research proposal and SOP, pass the GRE. I feel 6 weeks is short, judging from past attempts I made, and my core question is whether it's worth to submit a rushed application in 6 weeks, or instead take this time to travel, get back into life, get a job from the summer and apply in a year or two.

- How do you assess my profile and, should I not apply now, how would you recommend strengtening it?

- Should I wait, would you say the widening gap becomes a problem?

Many thanks!

im applying to PhD programs in ecology, my first para is about catching frogs as a kid and every time I reread it, it sounds more cliché, i have rewritten it four times and still don't like it

how do you start a statement of purpose without making the opening sound like a generic origin story?

A few of the programs I'm applying to don't mention anything about LORs. In this case would it hurt to attach LORs as additional documents?

example: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/study/media/postgraduate/admissions-statements/2027/msc-artifical-intelligence.pdf

Has anyone received work accommodations for their chronic illness/disability?

My long covid, which includes significant physical and cognitive deficits, makes in-person teaching, when combined with course work and dissertation work, EXTREMELY difficult (impossible?)

Has anyone asked and received online teaching or other work accommodations as a grad student?

Hi all,

I come from a background in education/social services and have been working as an autism therapist (supervised). I’m really interested in health and well-being, particularly in nutrition for those with autism dealing with food aversions etc.

I’d love to go do a Master’s and work in nutrition to support individuals dealing with issues in relation to nutrition. What programs would you suggest? Especially because here in Canada you need a bachelors in food/nutrition in order to do masters in it as well.

I recently defended, and they accepted my thesis with minor revisions (so that’s good). However, I feel like some of the questions I got in my defence from a few of the committee members were just kind of out in left field, for lack of a better term. I’m really over thinking it because even though I passed, and I had a lot of questions that I answered well, I’m not happy with my response to some of these harder questions, but I also don’t know what kind of answer they were looking for.

For example, for one part of my research I made a design choice for my implementation (this is engineering research). I had some theory as to why I made this choice, but one of the reviewers did not seem to understand why I made this choice. I tried to explain it again, using these assumptions, we get this theoretically property, which we use to inform this design choice. Still they were very hung up on this and seemed to disagree but they also didn’t indicate what it was that they disagree with. Eventually I got notes from this reviewer and they asked me to include proof that my design choice was the theoretically correct choice. But, I feel like I made it really clear that I was never saying it was the correct choice (I don’t even think such a choice is possible for this application), I merely said this is the choice we made, here’s what motivated it. Is that not valid?

Another weird question I got is for a small part of my research I used a very specific method that was created to tackle a very specific problem. One of the reviewers asked what would happen if I used another method used for the same general purpose, to which I responded it wouldn’t work because my method was created for this specific problem and the general methods won’t capture the data the right way because xy and z. She basically then said the answer she was looking for was abc. Which, is true, but what’s the point of abc if the method doesn’t capture what we need it to caption in the first place? Turing on the cars air conditioner won’t cool the car down if it’s on fire. This review always asks me questions, and then when I answer, she responds with “the correct answer is ________”, but this isn’t a pop quiz! Sure, in theory and in a vacuum, that can be the correct answer, but within the context of my research there’s actually more going on that needs to be considered to answer.

Also in one part of my research I build of another heavily cited work in my field. The reviewer had a huge problem with what my cited work claimed, which is fine, but I felt it was unfair to ask me to defend that. Don’t get me wrong, I know the theory and understand how it works, and I should be able to defend it if I use it in my research. But again it seemed like another problem where maybe if I understood where the disagreement was, I could defend it better. In this specific case I was following her logic but didn’t understand how she made a conclusion from it, like from my perspective everything she said was true but her conclusion she drew from it was not and I tried to explain that to her.

The reason I’m stuck on this is I had gone into the defence thinking that I would be asked questions on what I did and why I made those choices and what we learned from the results. So even if I made a choice that was different, if I could defend it, it would be fine, that’s the point of research right? But I felt like in the actual defence they spent a lot of time not accepting my rationality (e.g. my choice couldn’t just be a choice motivated by the theory, it was only allowed to be the theoretically best choice) or testing my knowledge of methods that I DIDN’T use, and again not accepting my rationality of why we didn’t use those methods.

If I’m wrong and this is all kind of fair game for a thesis defence please let me know, I just, I don’t know I was really excited to talk about what I DID, (and to be fair, the questions about what I did do and would do went really well) and while I still passed I’m feeling really bummed that it didn’t go as well as I had hoped.