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Is it normal for math grad students to be required to take summer classes to work?
My mathematics department apparently gets pressured by the university to have more people take courses during the summer.  We are also encouraged to take on TA responsibilities to make extra cash during the summer which is great.... except that they have this rule that if we want to teach/grade (or do any paid work during the summer) we have to enroll  in courses.  The options are slim and so is the stipend; I'm a grad student currently trying to prepare for my final prelim exam and do some research during the summer; I'd like to make a little extra cash.... but I crunched the numbers and it looks like I'll net about $600 for an entire summer, not exactly a living wage.
I should also add that our department (mathematics) brings more funds (in course work and its associated tuition) than any other department (I'm sure biology/chemistry pulls more in research grants), .... so it seems very tawdry of them to "get money back" by forcing us to enroll in classes.
So my question is: Is this normal?  I've spoken with some of my professors and they said it is not; but just curious what this community has to say and if this is ethical or are there any statistics on this sort of thing.

Do you pay tuition for these summer courses?

Yes.... the "fees" that aren't covered... quite a bit actually.  Also they won't give us an exact amount of what our waiver will be (only an estimate) and no specific time when they know it will come yet they want us to fork out money we don't have to pay the full cost until we get partially reimbursed

Here's an example of what I would expect in a grad program: http://gsas.columbia.edu/content/teaching-scholars-program  They get paid even if the summer course (they plan to teach) flops and there is no requirement to enroll in courses

Short answer: If you don't think the teaching offer is a good deal, and you don't want to do it, then don't do it. I don't know of other schools that require you to pay to take a class in order to be paid to teach, but I do know many departments where summer support is scarce. Also, it isn't safe to assume the mathematics department is responsible for these policies - policies are often set at the dean or provost level, with the departments required to follow them.

If the result of this policy is that summer teaching carries a very low net wage, I expect the department will quickly find itself without enough students to teach its summer courses.  As a result, they'd either have to stop offering those courses, or have higher-paid faculty teach them; either way would be a financial hit.  So I agree with Oswald's advice that you should just do whatever is right for you; the policy may quickly sort itself out as everyone else does the same.

Can you take a "research" or thesis course that has low cost and no formal responsibilities? Many (in the US?) universities require students to be enrolled in order to work as a TA or Graduate Research Assistant since those roles are reserved for official students. This includes summers.

I can take "research" once per summer... and it has the same cost as any other course.

Is one course enough to count as full-time enrollment and satisfy the requirement?

We have to take 6 credits (two courses).

The policy is not so bad if the net effect is that grad students do not teach during the summer and instead concentrate on their thesis/research work. One department at my University few years ago was put under intervention. One of the problems is that grad students were doing lots of teaching (from their point of view, the money was good) and not completing their PhDs in a timely manner.

I wonder whether this is somehow related to the university trying to preserve a legal argument that its graduate students are not employees, which could be relevant if the university is concerned about unionization.

This is the way it works in the University of Texas System.  Of course, tuition should be a part of the deal to make it worthwhile to the stududent.  This not always the case and advise against paying for the privilege of working for the university.

@OswaldVeblen It's possible that they are using this to recruit 1st year students to teach, who may potentially see a benefit to taking classes and discourage those students who should be working on their thesis, although your hypothesis is quite interesting (and possible)

Having observed several places in several different decades: summer funding is always weird and maybe non-existent or not-a-good-deal.
During the 9-month academic year, in the U.S., yes, indeed, people working as TAs/RAs have to be registered as students (because as other people said, these are student jobs), and this entails fees. Most often, tuition is included in the "benefits", but not invariably.
At every university I've been, grad students registered in the 9-month academic year did not have to explicitly register, nor pay tuition, in the summer, in order to work as summer TAs/RAs. This part is quite anomalous, and looks like a way for some layer of the institution to suck money out of people.
My experience indicates that there's never enough summer support to go around, which effectively creates a labor surplus, which, predictably, leads to certain abuses. For that matter, the usual double-time rate of summer classes is pretty nasty, and not fun to see. A bit taxing to teach, but almost uniformly near-disastrous for the students, who cannot simply "decide" to assimilate things twice as fast.
In some cases, the funding and flow of money for summer teaching/classes is different from the 9-month year, so it is not necessarily deliberately abusive, though possibly irresponsible or negligent, of your dept to not tell you your net pay. If it's really just 600 dollars, it's a ridiculous situation, yes.
But the net pay should be substantial, not next-to-nothing. That aspect strikes me as odd.
In summary, the situation you describe is unusual in that the net pay is so low. Having to sign up for courses and pay summer fees (or, worse, tuition) is unusual. The vagueness is less atypical, since sometimes control of summer classes is not in the hands of the department.

The policy of requiring you to take classes in order to work for the university is not normal, and I have not seen it anywhere else.
That said, the summer is a good opportunity for students to get outside jobs and/or internships.  As you no doubt know, there are very few jobs in pure math, and the jobs that do exist are extremely competitive.  In my opinion, It is best for a student like you to establish connections with possible post-graduate employers during the summer, rather than TAing a math course, unless the course you are TAing will directly help with your immediate educational needs (e.g. it is preparatory for your prelim or can help your eventual thesis).
Regarding the ethics of the university's behavior, there is very little
you can do.  Graduate students are in a very bad position of leverage
vis-a-vis the university, and this is especially true in disciplines like mathematics where many departments bring in many more students than can ever graduate (much less get a job), in part because of undergraduate teaching needs.

This is completely normal: every place I have been (albeit 3 departments) require Graduate Student Assistant (Research Assistants, Teaching Assistants, and general Graduate Assistants) to be both students and registered at the level of full time graduate students while working on those assignments. The reason being: Those jobs are student jobs.
My masters institution requires me to be registered for 8 credits a semester while I TA/RA/GA, which I pay student fees of about 2k a year on.
My PhD institution requires me to be registered for 12 credits a quarter while I TA/RA/GA, which I will pay ~750 a year on student fees.
That doesn't mean you have to take traditional classes: About 40% of my classes have been thesis hours and independent studies. For summer classes, I usually work out some sort of independent study that is very tangential from my thesis, meaning I can use it in both my thesis defense and perhaps even publish it.
So yeah, it's normal.
I also think its wrong to charge graduate students who are also employees student fees, but it is the way the books are drawn. Your student fees, I doubt, are so large that you cannot find a way to live off the summer stipend. My master's institution has the highest student fees that doesn't include healthcare I have ever seen in the USA.


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What to think of zero feedback at a conference
Is it commonplace to give a presentation at a conference and not have anyone ask a single question afterwards? What should one make of such silent feedback?

How many presentations have you done already?

What discipline are you? Are you in CS where conferences are the main publishing venues? Was it a excellent, good conference or just a workshop?

Did your presentation go right up to (or even over) the allotted time?  Often, when I chair a session, and no one asks a question, I ask one.  But only if there is time left.

As a former colleague of mine once said when asked about the reception of a conference presentation: "Glorious! They didn't understand a single word of what I said!". :^) Don't worry about the lack of feedback. It happens all the time

Conferences in different fields vary dramatically in their norms and practices. Without knowing what field you're in, it's impossible to say what is or is not unusual. But, presumably, you went to other people's talks at the conference: did they get asked questions?

It is also culture dependent.  In Scandinavia it is not uncommon that people do not ask questions from the floor.

Do you want questions? Make them ask. Pause and ask, "was that clear?" or "do you see why x is impossible without y?", "is anyone familiar with the work of X? Oh great, well our paper can be seen as a special case of it..." These are examples. Make eye contact and move around the room if you can.

@PatrickT: those are excellent comments, please post as an answer

@smci, thanks, but I see that Floris below says pretty much the same thing. :-)

@PatrickT your answer is way more constructive and less chiding than that one. Offer solutions rather than criticize to shreds. I totally recommend you post it as an answer.

@PatrickT you don't have the time, and the audience might take offense at being treated as "a bunch of undergraduates"...

@vonbrand, true, you want to assess the type of audience you're facing and adapt as much as possible!

This is extremely common.  Usually the session chair will at least ask a question to be polite.  But...
I am certainly disappointed when I don't get any questions after a talk.  Indeed, my primary gauge of the success of a talk (by myself or someone else) is whether it provokes interesting questions.  Whenever I have listened to a really great talk, I've always had many questions afterward.
In my experience as a member of the audience, the most common reason that a speaker gets no questions is that the talk is too narrowly focused and does not contain enough motivation or context.  That is, the audience cannot digest the talk in relation to other things they know, so they cannot form meaningful questions.
Thus the lack of questions is often a sign that you should spend more time on introductory material and present the meat of the talk at a higher level.  Often it is more effective to draw analogies and pictures or diagrams rather than to get lost in technical assumptions and extensive notation.  Your talk is an opportunity to advertise your research and provoke interest; it is certainly not reasonable to expect the audience to digest the details of your methods or results in 15 minutes or even an hour.  Yet most scientific talks still try to do the latter.  I believe this is why so many conference sessions are almost devoid of questions.

+1 This is absolutely my experience: no questions usually means a talk that the audience did not care about.  If they liked the material, they'll ask "future work" questions. If they disagree with points, they'll ask challenging questions.  If they think you're boring, incomprehensible, or hopeless, they'll ask nothing.

@jakebeal That is not really what David said. Or at least what David said was a lot more constructive. It's not just whether the audience cares about the material, it is whether the talk was so technical or detailed that they couldn't form questions.

I agree with this point. I am genuinely curious and interested by very diverse fields, even if very remote from mine. I often happened to be the only auditor asking questions during a whole track. When discussing with my collegues that also attended the same tracks about why they didn't ask any question, they usually say that it wasn't particularly interesting for them. On the other hand, in some fields like neuroscience, you often get lots of questions from layman people that didn't understand anything. So the motivation is primordial and not related to the actual value of your presentation.

Except for tier 1 and 2 conferences, its usual.
This can be due to one or more of the following reasons

The other participants know little or not related to your research topic
The other participants are more focussed on their own presentation
The session chair have limited or no knowledge of your presentation
The audience could not comprehend your presentation
This is also common at nearly all conferences when they are trying to wrap up the session if you are one of the last participants to present if earlier participants delay their presentation.

I doubt this is much to be bothered about. The main aspect is that your publication is to be visible to those who are interested online.

Yeah, that's why I don't go to that sort of conference.

I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but what's a tier x conference? E.g. I'll be going to 32C3 in December, what tier conference would that be?

Roughly Tier 1 means a top conference, Tier 2 is not top, but a fine place that nobody should be embarrassed to publish in, and Tier 3 is all the rest.

Or they were sleeping.

There are multiple reasons why you get no questions:

No time for questions (may or may not be your fault)
You are too intimidating to get asked a question publicly
Your talk was hard to follow but nobody wants to look stupid
Your talk was so simplistic that nobody cared to engage
You never made your subject interesting enough for your audience
Audience energy level low (time of day: too early/too late, dark room, too warm, too much food, not enough food...) - thanks J.R. for the suggestion!

I have seen instances of all of these leading to "no questions". But I STRONGLY believe the power of conferences is in the interaction: it is not just a one way passing of (perhaps incomplete) information from speaker to audience (although giving visibility to your work is part of the reason to present at conferences); but when a presentation (oral or poster) is interesting and engaging, it should bring out questions and comments from the audience. It should be your goal to get questions.
So while it is unfortunately common for there to be no questions, I would say in 90% of the cases that is because the talk/speaker missed the opportunity to engage with their audience and tap into the "hive mind". Only you know whether in this case it was "not your fault" - but more often it is. If so, then you missed an opportunity. People showed up for your talk, and you were given a precious gift of their time and attention. And you didn't take advantage of it.
Here is something to ponder: if you were a business and you wanted to hire 100 consultants for 15 minutes to listen to your latest ideas and critique them - what would it cost you? And how would you make the most of that opportunity?

This is not an exhaustive list, of course; there are other possibilities as well. One that crossed my mind (something neither mentioned in the question nor addressed the comments yet) is the time slot drawn by the speaker. When speaking in a session near the end of the last day, it's not uncommon to have a relatively quiet audience – people are simply burned out from sitting, snacking, and sitting some more for two or three days straight. Your "squandered" assessment is a possibility, but I'm not sure enough information has been given to unequivocally conclude that's what really happened.

@J.R. Good points - I have updated my answer.

It may also be that the audience hasn't had enough time to internalize your material in a way that leads them to even have questions. So one piece of feedback that you may take is that you have pitched your talk at too high a level and assumed too much knowledge about the subject in your audience. If that's the case, you may try bringing the level of your talk down a small notch to accommodate.
Also, depending on the niche that your material covers, people who are interested and well-versed in your area may have to go home, find a copy of your paper, and study it heavily before they can even formulate a question. I always work, when I'm session chair, to develop at least one or two questions to seed the Q&A part of each talk and try prompt some discussion. Even if my questions are kind of lame, they may spark some ideas in others (as well may your answer!).

To give a somewhat contrasting opinion to the answers and comments stating that this no questions are a common occurrence:
In the fields whose conferences I have been attending (all of which do not use conferences for publishing), if nobody asks a question, it is generally expected of the chair to ask one. Thus, zero feedback happens only rarely and usually is due to a very bad talk. The same goes if the chair only manages to ask a “lazy” question. As already mentioned in the comments, you can estimate what attitude your field or a particular conference by observing how many other talks get zero feedback.
Possible other reasons for this are:

Your talk is off-topic at the conference or the particular session (in case of bigger conferences). In the first case, it’s most likely you who is to blame; in the second case, it’s either you or the organisers.
The session or your talk are particularly badly visited. In this case, having a more attractive title and abstract may have helped.
There was a lack of time. However, usually even in those cases there is a call for “one quick question”. If your talk began as scheduled, it’s again your fault.

So, to sum this up: If you are at a conference where almost every talk receives feedback, you should really be concerned about zero feedback.

Agree. And if of most talks get zero feedback you should consider whether you want to continue attending this conference.

I suspect that the answer to the question depends on the discipline. My impression of the role of questions at mathematics conferences is somewhat at odds with most of the other answers and comments so far.

Questions at the end of a talk are a crude barometer of the level of audience interest in a talk. A lack of questions does not necessarily indicate a lack of interest.

After all, the (vast?) majority of the audience will not ask a question at the end of a given talk; this does not mean that the majority of the audience is not interested. Some of the possible reasons for not asking questions have been outlined in other answers. However, I disagree that a lack of questions is inherently undesirable, and in need of an explanation. Consequently, it seems a little strange to me that on the one hand one would try to manufacture questions for the sake of feigning interest, or on the other hand that one would try to coax questions out of the audience, as if they were too shy to ask.
My own response to an interesting talk is to want to read a preprint on the subject. Perhaps there is something that can be helpfully asked at the time, but as Bill Barth says, the audience may need more time to reflect on the material before a worthwhile question can be asked. When I ask a question arising from a talk it is often much later, possibly the next day. I've similarly been asked questions at conferences some time after my talk.
Moreover, often the questions that get asked on the spot, even the talk is by an eminent speaker, are points of clarification ('should that k be an m?', 'is this n the same as the n you mentioned five minutes ago?', 'are you (still) assuming G is locally compact?') While giving some assurance that the asker is awake, such questions don't necessarily show that the audience is grasping the subtleties that the speaker is hoping to convey. And if anything, the speaker should aim to make the exposition clear enough to minimise the need for questions of this sort.
However, if you find that you get significantly less feedback than other speakers do then it is worth exploring why, and the other answers give possible reasons.

Is it commonplace?
It's not commonplace but definitely too frequent, and not something
you want happen to you.
What to make of it?
If you want questions and feedback during or after your talk, make them ask.
There are several ways to do this, here is one approach: pause periodically, make eye contact, smile and ask if everything's okay, not as a rhetorical trick but in a genuinely concerned fashion: "was I clear about why we made assumption A?", "do you see why Q follows from P?" if you get a sorry look, you may want to slow down and clarify the points in question, but if you get a bored look and a confident hand wave, you may want to speed it up!
If you know someone in the audience, make eye contact with them. If there was an earlier talk on a vaguely related topic, name-drop "as we learned in Paul's stimulating talk this morning..." while looking into Paul's eyes with an over-the-top smile. If Paul enjoyed that, he may ask you questions during the talk, if only to remind everyone that he's that Paul.
Don't mumble. If English is your second language (or third or fifth), it is imperative that you speak slowly and loud and that you repeat yourself. Even if you've lived in the States for 20 years --- we probably don't understand half of what you're saying!
If you're a native speaker of English addressing an audience of non-native speakers, same thing: slow down, repeat. When you repeat, change the words ("x implies y", "y is implied by x", "if you see x, you'll see y" something like that)
One thing you can do if you're unsure of the type of audience you'll be facing, is to prepare a non-linear talk. In a non-linear talk, you have more slides than you plan to discuss, you have a method to access the desired slides when needed (e.g. dynamic links in a PDF or HTML presentation), and you ask your audience for their preference:
Early on in the talk, go something like "is everyone familiar with the works of x and y and their proof of the impossibility of z? Would you like me to go over the key points? No, great, let's jump right into the heart of the matter then..."
After you've summarized the best of your contributions, you can offer them another choice: "I know some of you are experts in the field of x, so you may be interested in seeing the details of our proof of y, or perhaps you've seen too many of these proofs (smile, pause, eye contact, controlled laugh to encourage them to laugh at the "joke") and you'd like to see our empirical results?".
To make sure you get answers to these questions, ask the more senior people (the junior people may not dare to take on the responsibility of nudging you one way or another). With a non-linear talk you should be able to adapt more easily to the audience and serve them the dish they want, so to speak.
One way to look at it is as a symptom of mismatch between speaker and audience. And one approach to this problem is to try to identify the cause of the mismatch. If you ask the right questions to your audience, you may discover the causes of the mismatch early on and, hopefully, address them. You have many great answers that discuss some of these possible causes. Hopefully you can now sense how to move forward.

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What do you wish you knew as a student before you became a researcher?
There are a number of lessons I learnt as an undergraduate which I wish somebody had told me much earlier.
Although each of you learnt different lessons with different notions of which way is the right, please share your findings and wisdom so that an eager reader would contemplate over your advice and would not regret avoiding later in life.

I think this question is essentially polling for opinion and thereby not a good fit here, albeit the answers being probably useful for many aspiring students.

However, as this seems to be such a useful opinion question, the rare use of Community Wiki seems appropriate here.

Research can be great, but I learned it can be so hard.
First, Google "should I do a phd" and then "should I do a PhD in ". There are tons of people who succeeded and failed in academia and writing about it, about what's it going to be in Academia, and so on. Two examples:

Nature's special on the point of a PhD
You and your research

Beyond that, here's a few things I've learned:

Being a researcher is a career job, not so unlike being a lawyer, a manager.

After all, a paper has to change the scientific knowledge on the
topic. You're going to teach respected scientists something they
didn't know and something they thought was wrong.
I hear that in life sciences, the career aspect can extend to people sabotaging
fellow researchers (that is, competitors).

Being more intelligent does not (necessarily) mean being a better researcher. If you're admitted to a decent program, you're more than smart enough for research. Managing your work (in all senses) can be more important, even though supervisors can help you with (part of) this in the beginning. But it's also about discipline and character:

Choosing a good question to work on (supervisors can help) - the question should matter (or you should make it matter, if you can).
Keeping an overview of what you're doing is important: otherwise, you might find an excellent solution to a problem which in the end is the wrong one.
Working enough on it (keeping focus among distractions of grad school can be hard).
How do you choose which way to approach a problem? Some approaches might not ever work, but others will only work if you keep at them long enough. So you need to be tenacious, and be able to change mind, depending on the moment. You need to delude yourself that you'll succeed until you do.

A good supervisor is extremely important. Nowadays it's extremely hard to start doing research "by yourself". On the one hand, there's too much written knowledge to navigate (literature). On the other hand, there are often unspoken assumptions which you won't learn from reviewers. It helps if he's available enough for you.
A supervisor must also fit you, character-wise. You mustn't be friends, but you need to function together, and neither you nor your supervisor study how to occupy your position.
Communication is extremely important. You're supposed to learn something and then tell your peers (and the world). And nowadays, if your peers don't get it, it's your problem (because your paper gets rejected). Hence, learning technical writing was very important for me.

Of course this is what I learned, which is influenced by my weak points, my experience and my field — I'm saying this because I'm sure somebody will disagree.
I'm a programming language researcher, so I invent and design stuff (programming language). And evaluating design is hard. So much that many ideas are not right or wrong per se - you can make it right or wrong by determined work (see also this). But other disciplines probably experience similar phenomena in different form.

"neither you nor your supervisor study how to occupy your position". I don't understand what this means.

I've seen a lot of people have a bad time until they realized this:

your supervisor/adviser is somebody you should work with, who can guide and direct your research, but after not so much time, you, not the supervisor, become the expert in your topic.
Supervisor is the more experienced researcher, and his expertise should definitely be taken into account. But, after months of research into the topic, you start knowing more about your specific problem than anybody else, and should not expect the supervisor to be a fail-safe book of infallible answers.

Another very important one that I'm happy was told to me:

you can't do research as a side-activity. In order to do it well, and to be happy... um... in your life, you have to love research in order to do research.
There might be jobs that are not your dream jobs, but are worth having because of other personal benefits (e.g. proximity to where you live, good salary, etc.) which you can do full time and have a happy and full life beside them, even if you're not working your dreams. Research is just too demanding and too exhausting to do if it is not the thing you want to do.

There is considerable potential danger in a novice' thinking that they will "become expert" in a few months. Certainly this is infeasible in contemporary mathematics. If it is possible even in a meaningful relative sense, I'd claim one needs a better advisor. And another danger is that if one has the expectation of "being expert in a few months", and has the sense to observe that this doesn't happen, one can (falsely!) judge oneself a failure. In mathematics, it would be extremely foolish to imagine that one becomes "expert" after some months...

@paulgarrett Maybe my wording was clumsy, but what I was talking about was "becoming an expert" in a certain problem/sub-(sub-sub-)-field assigned to you for your project (thesis, internship, whatever). It might be different in Mathematics, but with my field, even my short few-months internship projects in Computer Vision, while my adviser was always the far superior expert in the field and great for general advice, after a short while, I would know more about the specific project-related problems and challenges, feasible approaches than him/her.

Two key pieces of advice:

Learn to discern. You will encounter a lot of new information as a graduate student. Some of it will be absolutely illuminating; much of it will be of at most tangential benefit. Other papers and ideas won't be worth the paper they're printed on (or the bits of hard drive space they take up). One of your biggest challenges will be to figure out what's worth knowing, and what isn't. This will take skill, practice, and guidance.
Learn how to learn. As a researcher, the odds that you will be doing the same thing throughout your career are asymptotically small. Your PhD should not be just about picking up skills for solving a particular problem. Ultimately, it should be about learning how to become an expert in a field you haven't seen before.

Networking is crucial (it's not only a game of skill and hard work).
It works in two ways:

most opportunities (positions, workshops, fellowships) spread organically,
for everything you need to provide 2-3 recommendation letters; if you don't know professors who are well-known and respected in the place where you apply to, it may strongly affect your chances.

Don't fly solo. Having initiative, coming up with your own ideas and avenues of research is great, but find someone to take responsibility for you and your success - especially when it concerns funding and advocating for you in the department. Being a ronin grad student involves semi-recurring desperate searches for funding.
Don't get too distracted by side projects - they're sometimes quite useful, but it's easy to get bogged down in new shiny things, and a collection of unrelated musings does not a dissertation make. Similarly, don't be afraid of presenting the same thing twice - continually submitting unrelated, novel projects just leaves a bunch of half-done things gathering dust.

Responsibility, perhaps.  Funding, if possible.  Mentorship, certainly.  But "ownership"?  You've got to be kidding.

@JeffE "Taking ownership of a problem" is, I think, a pretty commonly used colloquialism at this point. And is much shorter to write than "Responsibility, mentorship, a role in advocating for you in the department, and viewing you as a member of their group". Do you also object when someone says "These are my lab members"?

There's a difference between taking ownership of a problem and taking ownership of a person.  "These are my lab members" means "These are members of my lab", not "I own these people."

Maybe it differers, but for me side projects turned out to be the most beneficial thing.

@PiotrMigdal My side projects too had pleasant outcomes, but I likely spent more time on them than I should have.

I've edited the language slightly

This and related issues were also intensively discussed on ResearchGate, see e.g.
http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_wish_you_had_known_about_the_process_of_doing_research_that_you_did_not_know_before_you_started_it
http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_things_should_supervisors_tell_their_research_students

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How can I find a PhD position to work on a highly specific idea of my own?
I know exactly what I would like to research within my field, however, the ideas are too specific and indeed one of my feedbacks for the reject of one of my PhD applications based on my personal statement was that the university did not have the staff researching my interests.
My friend told me that being too specific, I limit my opportunities. On the other hand, being more general I would risk that I would have to research what the supervisors tell me to and therefore postpone solving the question I am interested in.
What are general strategies for finding appropriate places for studying PhD for someone who has a specific research problem one would like to solve? I am afraid that I may face a similar problem later when searching for a postdoc or an academic place in some research group.

The area you want to do research in could here be of interest. The influence of the supervisor on the research topic varies a lot between subjects.

Sounds like you're the guy on the far left of this comic

You should look for faculty working in the field that you are interested in researching, and then pitch your research idea directly to them.
Make sure that you do a good job with a preliminary review of the literature for your idea and understand the professor's specific research interests, so that your letter does not sound like any of the hundreds of mail-merge messages that professors get every week.
If your idea is really worthwhile and you do a good targeted job of pitching it, changes are that someone will agree to work with you on it.  However, the reality is that most students come into a PhD without a really good sense of existing literature or the feasibility of their ideas.  It is for this reason that there is great value in being open-minded about your PhD thesis.
Many students make the mistake of thinking that the PhD should be the pinnacle of their career, solving some grand problem in human existence.  This might happen for a few figures in history, but, more typically, the PhD is the start of a research career and not the end of it.


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Why does academia.edu reserve the right to sell, modify, and "exploit" my papers if I post them there?
In academia.edu's terms of service, it says

By making available any Member Content on or through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, view, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site or Services.

This seems crazy, and posting anything there would clearly violate even the most lenient publisher agreement (for instance, many math publishers allow me to post the final paper on the internet, but not to sell it).  Furthermore, these terms seem potentially very harmful to the users.  What is their rationale for employing such terms?  And why would anyone in their right mind even consider posting a paper there?
Note (as of July 2016): this part of the terms of service have changed and seems slightly less horrific.  Though other parts seem more insane, and also in contradiction with each other, like they own all your intellectual property rights.

I'm not sure the question in the title is answerable, other than with: "because they can"

I get an empty page at that link...perhaps the server is swamped from AC.SE requests (although other pages seem just fine)? Perhaps they are reconsidering their terms.

I think the final question is a much better one....What is the motivation for people to post their papers there?

@EnergyNumbers I understand what you're saying, but they must know these terms carry some risk of driving users away.  What is the advantage offsetting that risk?

I would guess that the people running academia.edu haven't actually thought carefully about this issue.  Some people think of terms of service as boring, arcane lawyer stuff and don't pay much attention to them.  If such a person ends up running a business, then it might genuinely not occur to them that anyone would carefully read and care about these terms.  In that case, they wouldn't be intentionally making a risk/reward tradeoff, but rather just failing to recognize a risk.

I am not sure there is really a question here, but the issue is important enough it deserves a +1.

If I'm reading this correctly, these terms also mean that academia.edu has these rights over papers that are simply linked and not actually uploaded? If so, this is just brutal ...

It's not necessarily crazy for academia.edu to ask for these things (although, as I say below, I certainly don't think users should agree to these terms).  I imagine their lawyers advised them to use an agreement that covers all possible use cases as their business model evolves.  For example, if they decided to charge their users membership fees, and only users who paid the fees got access to the site and could view profiles and download papers, then that would be tantamount to selling the papers and other user data (so they couldn't do it unless they had permission to sell this content).  Posting ads on their web pages could be considered a form of commercial exploitation of the data, so they want to make sure they can do it.  They might someday want to change file formats, such as converting PDFs into future super-PDF formats, and having permission to modify content submitted by users guarantees that they could do this.  Even if they intend to take things down upon receiving requests from users, having irrevocable permission to post them means users cannot sue them for failing to take them down quickly enough.  Basically, this agreement says they can do anything they want, which is obviously very convenient for them.
For comparison, Harvard's model open access policy also retains very broad rights (although not the right to sell papers for a profit).  I believe the motivation is that universities can be trusted, and it's better for them to retain more rights than fewer, in case they need them someday.  See the notes to line 7 in the model policy for more discussion of this point.  Of course, the difference is that academia.edu is a commercial website, and even if they are trustworthy now, they might become less so in the future or be bought by someone untrustworthy.
On the other hand, even if it's not crazy for the site to ask for these rights, it's certainly crazy for users to agree!  I'm amazed that these terms of service are being used, and I assume just about nobody using the site has actually read them and understood that they are permanently granting the right to sell arbitrarily modified versions of their papers.  I hope you send them a complaint, as well as publicize this on the internet, because they need to change these terms as soon as possible.  In addition to being completely unreasonable, they clearly conflict with a large majority of copyright agreements for papers, as you point out.

is there a school of ethical-as-in-more-free-software-like lawyers somewhere that advises sane terms to companies, like not opportunistic-cover-everything-just-in-case-all-rights-reserved kind of terms?

Many, if not most, users of academia.edu have never read those conditions. There's a lot of automated promotion of the site, and people just click-click-click through it without being warned they are (supposedly) agreeing to all of that stuff. Actually, I am entirely uncertain those conditions would actually be binding.

It's "member content", not just papers.
Data analytics is a huge thing for web sites like Academia.edu. If they wanted to, for example, add advertisements on the sidebar, they might use your user data (post history, your messages, the contents of the post you're reading) to recommend ads that are relevant and pertinent to your interests. In that situation, they're using your member content.
If they come out with an advertising campaign talking to academics about why Academia.edu is awesome, maybe they'll have someone on camera with the web site in the background. That would be using the content in promotional videos. They don't want to have to ask the commenters for explicit permission to do that, so you waive that when you sign up.
Usually, it's not worth it for the lawyers to try to separate academic papers that are posted here from everything else, so they just say "member content".
If you don't like papers being there... then don't post your papers there.

The "General Prohibitions" Section of academia.edu's Terms of Service, starts as follows:

General Prohibitions
You agree not to do any of the following:
Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any Content that: (i) infringes, misappropriates or violates a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy; ...

Combined with what the question points out from these Terms of Service, their business model could even "secretly hope" to directly compete with scientific journals.

I think this clause means that if they sell your papers and the publishers sue, you will be liable -- not academia.edu.

@David Ketcheson By uploading to academia.edu you grant them rights that you usually are not permitted to grant -if your paper has already been published by a publisher. So you will have to choose: either publish it in a journal, or upload it to academia.edu. You cannot do both without breaking the Terms of Service of both parties. So, in practice they force you to choose.

@AlecosPapdopoulos But that's not how they say you should use their site.  They want you to upload journal articles (whether in pre-print or final form).  See, for instance, http://blog.academia.edu/post/53204075764/kindling-impact.

@David Ketcheson I give more weight to Terms of Service and to what they imply. Also I wrote about a "secret hope" i.e. a prospect which is not necessarily in their core business model. And if I am grossly misunderstanding them, then they should change their ToS yesterday -the other answers correctly noted their total incompatibility with the current publishing legal framework.

Preprints are often redistributable, and while you cannot post the journal version, you are free to do with your manuscript as you want.


text:
As a beginning graduate student I am not passionate about my field
Question: If I don't feel passionate about a field should I stick with it for at least my first year, or should I leave before putting my time in?
Background:
This fall semester will be my first semester in graduate school. This summer I am doing student research in space physics, which is the field I am pursuing in graduate school. I have also had 2 other summers of research in space physics. Not because I enjoyed the field, but more because they were easy research positions to get at the time.
When I had applied to graduate schools I was desperate to just get in, so I applied to space physics programs only, thinking I had a better shot.
I've heard transferring into a different program in graduate school is really difficult, and you can burn a lot of bridges that way, so I think my only options are to grit my teeth for the next 5-6 years/ try to find some passion in the field/ try reapplying to graduate school from the beginning/ or just get a job.

I suggest editing out the backstory about getting in after the fellowship award, and asking it in a separate post, if you want an answer to it. See Write one question per post.

I'm more passionate about cosmology and/or astrophysics (outside of our solar system), and I enjoyed quantum mechanics and Electrodynamics as an undergrad.

Edited title to make more clear.  "rising" (in the sense of "incoming") and "freshman" are not normally applied to "grad student."


text:
What should I do when a former student tells me about misconduct from one of their current TAs?
While I was a TA for an undergraduate CS course, I built up a good teaching relationship with a student who was struggling. By the end of the course, she had turned things around and was performing much better.
We hadn't spoken since I was her teacher until she reached out to me about a graduate student TA in a later course who told her that she was so bad that she should just leave the major entirely. His comments seem to have damaged her self-confidence and she chose to talk to me, rather than to the faculty. I'm not at the university anymore, but I remain personal friends with that student's adviser.
Is this generally acceptable conduct for graduate students? Should I let the professor know? I think it isn't really the place of a first-year graduate student to give such unsolicited "advice," especially in such absolute terms at a time when the department has made it a stated goal to be more inclusive to women and underrepresented minorities. For context, the TA is a man.

Is this an ongoing or completed course? If it's the former I would not mention it to the professor in question without the student's consent.

@Anyon - The course just ended.

@Alice - Do you mean someone like the ombuds? I'm not sure I've heard of an official "confidante" before.

When I became a grad assistant, the training I had alongside TAs started with "be supportive, and whatever you do, don't tell a student they don't belong in this major". Apparently one of the former (male) TAs had told a female student she shouldn't be in CS, and he got into some hot water (I don't know if sexism played a part, but it certainly was suspected). I'm still mystified that an instructor would say such a thing to a student.

What did the TA tell the undergrad?  For example, did they say something like "if you've been struggling and aren't enjoying this major, maybe you should try another?"?  Or did they say something like "you're horrible, just give up now!"?

@Nat - From what my former student told me, I understand it was something closer to the latter, though she didn't offer an exact quote.

@ArnoldF I just wanted to let you know I substantially revised my answer to address some comments (although the core is unchanged).

@ArnoldF Also, I changed your title to better reflect the question, which is more about what you should do now that she has brought this up to you, rather than just "Is this comment OK"? Feel free to rollback if you think your original title was more appropriate.

Is this generally acceptable conduct for graduate students?

I think you know it's not. To tell someone that they are so bad at a subject that they should quit is definitely rude and out of line for pretty much anyone in a supervisory capacity, especially if their advice was unsolicited. That said, if someone asked for a fair evaluation, telling someone they might be more successful in another field isn't per se inappropriate.

It seems possible the TA was rude to her because of her gender. Anti-women bias in CS is well-known, books have been written on it. Unfortunately, we don't know right now whether this colored his actions. But, it does mean you should encourage her to report his actions in case he has been similarly rude to other students, but especially women.
As for what you should do, I recommend you help her and be supportive if she decides to make a complaint. However, you shouldn't make it for her. I say this for a few reasons, in decreasing order of importance:

You've stated you didn't witness this exchange, so as it stands, this is an issue between your friend, her TA, and the professor. So all you have to go on is what she said. It sounds like we both believe her that the TA was very rude, but maybe there was a language barrier on either or both parts.
You're not a professional advocate. You don't want to do something wrong and sink her case for her.
It's my personal philosophy that it's not your place to try to take care of someone's grievance like this yourself.
Unless she is committed to anonymity, the professor is likely to want to talk to her anyway. You can't answer all his questions as well as she can. But if you are willing, offer to come with her to the meeting with him for support.
Gender affects every interaction we have. The possible  gender issues only make this case more delicate. I would suggest any man to not try to "handle" this issue for a woman unbidden. (It doesn't sound like you are, but a note for other readers).

I would only go so far as to offer to pass on an anonymous letter that you put your weight behind, if she doesn't want to reveal her name to the professor. I would just stay away from putting her complaint into your words.

I am male, yes, and so is the TA in question. But I don't see how my being female would make "handling" this any different. I doubt my former student would be willing to talk to faculty about this, since her self-confidence has been quite damaged by this TA. I will not say anything without her approval, of course, but should I offer to?

I think it is very important that you tell the supervisor that this kind of comment was made. You have no idea how many other people may also have on the receiving end or how many were of people who have been traditionally subjected to such comments or assumptions.  If no one speaks up, then change will never happen. You can read the stories of many women who have been highly successful in CS and been subjected to this kind of thing.  A TA is not in a position to do academic advising either. Recommend going to tutoring, that is appropriate. Making hurtful personal comments, no.

@ArnoldF I still wouldn't say it's your place to bring this up to the professor if you were a woman (or if you were both men), but in my opinion, men should avoid trying to solve women's problems for them. I feel like it happens too often that men feel women can't handle it (or the confrontation) and try to do it for them. I'm not accusing you of this, just a thought for you and future readers. But like I said, no matter the genders, my question stands, I just doubly advise you against it considering the gender dynamics.

@ArnoldF Again, I wouldn't offer to take point on this. I would offer to support her (including coming to talk to the professor with her, etc.), but I wouldn't suggest you do this for anybody. Maybe I would deliver an anonymous letter or something ... and put my personal weight behind it.

@AzorAhai - So, to be clear, she and I aren't friends. We haven't talked since I was her teacher over a year ago and she reached out to me now in part because of this, which is the only reason I think it could be my business at all.

@ArnoldF I suggest you clarify that a bit in your question. I would still suggest you tell her you'd be happy to help her fill out a complaint, or suggest to forward a letter from her "A student reached out to me and asked me to pass on her anonymous complaint to you, please see attached. I can vouch for the student's honesty." (for example). I would just avoid trying to put things in your words . Does that make sense?

Also I'd note that the asker's only information appears to be hearsay. Legally he is in no position to stand as witness against someone, and ethically he is on shaky ground as he may well destroy the other TA's livelihood over a misunderstanding or out-of-context statement, something he is in no position to be sure about. Further the value of anonymity here is questionable at best; unless the TA happens to have told multiple people the exact same criticism, it will be immediately obvious who report on him anyway.

I don't understand all this hand wringing over gender. A TA of any gender shouldn't be telling any student of any gender they're so bad they should quit. They should be making expectations clear and helping the student understand what to do to meet those expectations. Making this about gender bias when there is no indication of it will likely only perpetuate gender bias.

Report misconduct. If this person hadn't said something inappropriate but instead touched someone inappropriately, would you be all "I can't 'handle' this situation because I'm a dude"? I hope not. She came to you, unless she specifically said she doesn't want you to do anything, go handle it.

@glen 1) that sounds like an answer, not a comment on how I can improve my answer and 2) I would say the exact same thing about sexual harassment that the OP didn't witness.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Yes, I had that on my mind when I wrote my answer, but I didn't articulate it very clearly, I've updated my answer.

@candied_orange It's well-known CS is not very friendly to women in general. Any man in CS should be mindful of their interactions with women because of this. There is also plenty of research that show men underestimate women in the classroom. It's very plausible gender bias influenced this TA's actions, although it's far from clear-cut. My answer recommends keeping this in mind, but you'll note I don't ever recommend to go straight to the Title IX office or submit any sort of sex-specific grievance.

@AzorAhai assuming the woman is right and the man is wrong because of their genders IS gender bias. Keeping gender bias in mind does nothing to fix it. Respect complaints of it. Learn how to combat it. But don't cry wolf and imagine you're helping anyone.

@candied_orange The OP didn't indicate there is any reason to doubt the woman in the question, so I wrote from the perspective that we believe the complainant. I don't understand what you consider to be "crying wolf." For example, if the student goes forward with a formal complaint, her gender should at least be noted, in the case that this TA has been reported to treat women poorly in other instances. If he has not, then I would leave it up to the disciplinary committee to decide if there was any gender-based animus or whether the guy was simply a dick. I agree with everyone here we don't ...

... have enough info to decide if his comment was sexist, which is why we should leave it to people with more info to decide whether his actions were or were not.

@AzorAhai This answer is popular but, well, my mom finds it offensive. She doesn't like how it tells males to be treat a female differently when it comes to solving problems for them.  Nor how two men made a complaint about a man telling a woman, "you can't cut it", into a gender issue when the woman herself didn't say a single thing about gender. This isn't gender thing. It's a student thing. TA's are there to teach, not judge. BTW, Mom is a retired teacher. She says this is a failing TA. Please remove the gender bias from this answer. Otherwise it is an excellent answer.

@candied_orange Perhaps you misunderstood. I am not saying "do not tackle this because she's a woman, but if it was a man, go ahead" (that would be sexist). I am suggesting that the OP acts in a supportive role only especially because men have a habit of trying to solve women's problems for them. Now, obviously I have no idea whether the OP has a habit of doing this, but as you pointed out, everyone should learn how to combat gender bias, and avoiding bias in yourself is a good place to start, as is recognizing when discrimination may be occurring without it being pointed out to you.

I'm happy with my answer, but you and your mom are welcome to write your own.

@AzorAhai saying "men have a habit of ..." is sexist. You are creating an us vs them argument where it is uncalled for. You are simply displaying your own bias. Please reconsider. It makes us all look bad and it distracts us from helping the student with her real problem.

@candied_orange I disagree, or else I would have answered differently. Please add your own answer if you have any further thoughts.

@AzorAhai I'm not attempting to answer. I'm commenting to improve an answer. Please stop exploiting a provocative issue.

@candied_orange I am doing no such thing. This is no longer a good use of the comment space, but if you have any other suggestions, I'd be happy to consider them.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

I think it is very important that you tell the supervisor that this kind of comment was made. You have no idea how many other people may also have on the receiving end or how many were of people who have been traditionally subjected to such comments or assumptions. If no one speaks up, then change will never happen. You can read the stories of many women who have been highly successful in CS and been subjected to this kind of thing.
A TA is not in a position to do academic or career advising either. A TA recommending going to tutoring for that specific course, that is appropriate. Making hurtful personal comments, no.  Making aptitude and ability assessments, no.  Even without the added issue of potentially being sexist, the comment is out of line and inappropriate and contrary to good pedagogy in CS (see).
How you tell the supervisor is a somewhat separate question. OP is a former staff member in the department; he may have a relationship with the chair or with a faculty member who could potentially be helpful.
Of course you should not mention the student's name without permission. As suggested by @Azor_Ahal OP could ask the student to do an anonymous statement if she is not comfortable sharing her name but stating that she is trustworthy.  Depending on the department, I would suggest speaking with the immediate supervisor first, then potentially with the department chair especially if the supervisor seems dismissive.  Alternatively, if there is someone in the department who you know has been an advocate for people from underrepresented groups OP could ask that person for advice about what to do.

IMO, graduate TAs are in a difficult position w.r.t. this. If they were an undergraduate TA, they're peers of undergraduate students and this could be understood as a peer's joke. It might not be entirely appropriate, but I doubt the average undergraduate will think too much into that. If they were a faculty member, it might be considered real advice, which might be more problematic; but most undergraduates will at least agree that a professor would be in a position to give them advice.
But graduate TAs pose a problem: they're neither junior enough to be considered peers, nor senior enough to be in a position to give advice. So, I'd say, although none of the three classes of people mentioned above should give such advice, graduate TAs REALLY should not do so.
I would say that the behavior is not appropriate, and the TA should receive some sensitive training. But then it should be the student's issue, and you should encourage them to talk to the instructor and/or the department chair. Tell them about their potential options. But don't escalate this issue yourself; you are not in a position to report this either (just as the TA was not in the position to say what they said). If the student wants to do something they would be grateful to you; if they decide not to do anything, it's up to them.
PS: I have been an undergraduate, TA, and (weirdly enough) a college-level course instructor, but never a grad TA. But nevertheless I'd like to put in my 50 cents.

I agree that this kind of advice is counterproductive at best. Having been a teaching assistant as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, it would never have occurred to me to give my opinion of a student's competence because I am not equipped to assess it. The job is to teach students, grade, and answer questions about homework assignments, and that's it.

@ArnoldF Indeed; people should just do their job and not waste their time on giving unsolicited advice :-)

I believe the average undergraduate whom I've known (in my 20 years as a CS professor at a women's college) would be seriously affected by even an undergraduate TA telling them they don't belong in the major. I think it's as inappropriate for an undergrad TA as a grad TA.

@EllenSpertus: I agree. A TA is in a position of relative authority, even if (s)he may not feel like (s)he is. A few years later the student may look back and realize that the TA was not much older/more senior than the student, but by then the damage will already have been done.

Improper response from a TA: "You are bad and should consider another field".
Proper response from a TA. "You seem to be having a lot of problems here. How can I help?"
The TA, I'm sorry, is engaging in a kind of abuse that should not be tolerated. I suspect that in some places it is illegal. There are a lot of power/gender issues that might be involved in this, but even in their absence, no TA, and in fact, no Professor, should make statements like that if you have reported it accurately.
A professor might counsel a student by exploring the student's goals in comparison with the performance, but not the "perceived" ability. However, a judgement made and delivered is not the proper role of a Teaching Assistant. The person is undermining the work of the professor as well as the student. If a TA has concerns, they should be expressed to the professor in the course, not the student. Of course, lobbying for a student's failure is also improper.
If you are an academic yourself, or want to be, then justice should be one of your first concerns. The student is being abused.
While the above is harsh, intentionally so, the solution need not be.
The TA needs an education into (in this case) his proper role. You may not be able to provide that, but you might be able to initiate some change. You may not need to "rat out" the TA to the professor, but you could, perhaps, indicate to the prof that the student needs more positive reinforcement than (in this case) she is getting. You could give your own assessment as to her history and ability to work hard and get the job done. If you are asked to say more, use your own judgement about what to say. As you indicate you are friends with the advisor, it may give you more freedom to speak to the broader issues.
It may even be that the TA has an improper view of the student due to some unfortunate sequence of events that has resulted in improper generalization. Every student stumbles occasionally (most, anyway), and if that is visible, then an inexperienced viewer may read too much into what they perceive but that may not be generally true. You may need to be sensitive to this and you are likely wise to not think of the TA as a monster.
Another possible issue that may not involve gender or power is that the TA is likely extremely busy with his own education and may also have little training in how to deal with educational issues. That is not to excuse the behavior, but to recognize that the solution to the problem may require more than a quick fix. A good professor should spend time training his/her TAs in the finer points of student interactions, though that, again, may be a pipe dream.
Finally, another complicating factor, is that the TA, is just inexperienced in explaining things, having only one way to understand/explain it himself. The student asks a question. The TA gives an answer. The student says she doesn't understand. The TA gives exactly the same answer in the same or nearly the same words. This isn't helpful as any experienced teacher knows. But this, again, is something that the Professor, guiding TAs needs work on. Too many Assistant Professors, actually, have this same problem. Things are easy for them, since they just spent years learning it and are good at it. They don't yet have the experience to know that any explanation, no matter how fine, only reaches a portion of the students who hear/see it. Education isn't transcription and requires repetition as well as looking at things in different ways.
Finally, if you are unable to provide her continuing support and encouragement, you might be able to connect her to a group of other students (or help her form one). Study groups are common in many places and can be confidence builders.

Of course, if you believe it to be a form of harassment, not just abuse, you have a responsibility to deal with that, as well.

In my modest opinion, it is irrelevant who is male or female, or what the department's goals of diversity are. The purpose of an university should be to impart knowledge on students. If the TA was a girl saying this to a guy, the problem would be the exact same, as would be my advice.
The TA was out of line in this matter.
I've tutored younger students myself when I was a student. One was capable, and behind. I devoted more time to her than I needed, and she succeeded. After half a year I stopped tutoring her, and by that time she didn't need itanymore.
I've also tutored a guy who just wasn't smart enough for the course. What I did was just try and try again to explain the basics of mathematics that he didn't understood. I never told him he wasn't smart enough - that's the job of his mentor, if the mentor deems it appropriate. When his mentor asked for my opinion though, I was honest. But that's in private, without the student present.
This is, as far as i'm aware, how a TA should behave.
Now what can you do ? To the girl, contest the TA's opinion. Remind her that she was behind before, and with dedication and hard work she caught up with everyone. Even if it's not strictly true, tell her that she almost didn't need you. In any scientific field where experimentation and formula's are important, hard work will always be the most important qualifier, closely followed with being interested in the subject. Talent is 3rd at best.
Aside from providing her positive reinforcement, you can advice her to tell the professor. Perhaps that TA should be reassigned, or get a stern talking to from the higher ups. If he just isn't aware of how potentially damaging it could be what he said, it's a learning opportunity, and otherwise, it's the first step to removing the obstacle that he is for the girl and other students.
You can tell the girl you'll vouch for her when asked, but in the end, she's the one making the complaint. And yes, an official complaint is warranted.

I agree that in a vacuum the gender dynamics shouldn't play a role here. Unfortunately, given the disproportionate number of similar stories from female colleagues I hear relative to male ones, it's hard to discount the idea of some bias on the part of the TA. I'm specifically not calling him a monster/sexist/etc. He might well have been totally sincere, but informed by some wrongheaded generalizations he was taught early on.

It's not very polite to call a college student a "girl." They are adults.

@AzorAhai - did I miss some major change in the English language where girl came to mean a child?

@davor Nope, it's been like that for a while...

Not the English i'm used to, then. My apologies if you think it impolite. I assure you no harm was intended. As for the possible sexism, from your post it didn't seem obvious to me, although if he used derogatory terms you left out of the question, then it might be obvious to you. My rule of thumb in these cases: Do not assume bad intentions when stupid/rude suffices.

@AzorAhai - absolutely not. One of the primary meanings of the word is young woman. Do you think everyone who says they like girls is professing their pedophilia?

@davor I mean, if it was a kid saying it, no. If it was a 30 year old man, I would definitely find it odd. Anyway, this isn't the place to debate semantics. I left my comment for Jacco and they can do with it as they like.

My sister is 30, and I sometimes call her girl. (when others are around, otherwise we talk dutch). I'll keep your comment in mind though.

I disagree with the answer provided here by Elin (though I appreciate her views), so let me offer a contrary view.  Exceptional cases aside, a graduate-student is competent to tutor undergraduates in their field, and is competent to offer a view on the ability of a student in the field they are tutoring.  It is erroneous to suggest that assessment of a student’s ability during the course of tutoring is merely an “assumption”, or that a TA is not in a position to make assessments of aptitude and ability in a subject.  Arguably a TA might even be in a better position to assess the abilities of a first-year student than a professor, since the TA is closer to the level of the student, and can better remember the progression through those years of study.
So the issue here is that the feedback was unsolicited, and was very negative and discouraging.  This can sometimes occur in the context of a TA who is frustrated trying to explain material to a weak student.  I can certainly imagine a TA becoming so frustrated trying to explain simple material that this leads to a negative comment on the student’s abilities.  Personally, I try to err on the side of being as encouraging as possible, and I wouldn’t put things this way.  Depending on the full context, maybe this was bad teaching, and maybe the TA’s assessment was overly harsh (or maybe his assessment is right on the money).  At worst it is a bad reaction to teaching, but I don’t consider it scandalous.  Students at university are adults, and they should be able to bear exposure to a range of assessments of their competence, from the optimistic and encouraging, to the pessimistic and discouraging.
One thing to consider here is that academic instructors have a duty to their students to give candid assessment of their abilities and their work.  That needs to be done relative to expected competence at different year levels, and as an undergraduate, the expectation is low.  Students devote significant time and money to their studies, and merely being at university is to some extend to solicit feedback on your abilities (even if this hurts sometimes).  We do no favours to weak students by misleading them about their abilities and their prospects for success in difficult academic fields.  Particularly when dealing with very weak students, there is a fine line between trying to inspire and encourage struggling students, and misleading them about their prospects for future success in a field where they are showing low ability.  In this particular case, it is notable that the OP also describes this student as having struggled and required attention to perform better in his course.
Obviously none of the commentators here are in a position to make a judgment on this student’s abilities, other than to acknowledge what the OP has described.  We have two TAs who have formed the opinion that this student is at the weak end of the spectrum; one assessment being that she is of such low ability that she should not be in that field.  Maybe that assessment is right, and maybe it is wrong.  My advice to the student would be to take on board all feedback, but take the opinions of a single outlying individual with a grain of salt (particularly if that opinion was expressed in a context of frustration).  She should not be put off studying this field by one negative assessment of her competence, particularly if this is contrary to feedback she is receiving from other instructors.  At the same time, she should be realistic, and should treat this TA’s remarks as data, and be aware that she is probably on the low end of competency for her cohort, at this stage.  If she continues to struggle, and continues to attract negative assessments of her abilities, from multiple different instructors, she might want to rethink about whether this is really the right field for her.
The issue of sex/race/minorities, etc.: As far as I am concerned, it is utterly irrelevant that the TA is male and the student is female.  The propriety of his conduct stands or falls on its own merits.  The fact that the department wants to be “inclusive to women and underrepresented minorities” does not entail that there is any duty to soften competency assessments for those groups.  If this conduct was wrong, then it was wrong regardless of the fact that the student is female.
An additional point (update): To those in the comments suggesting that a TA should not make judgments on the ability of a student, a simple question.  Do you support the practice of allowing graduate students who are TAs mark assessments for the courses they teach?  I have observed this to be an extremely common practice at universities, so clearly, we do in fact recruit TAs to make judgments on the abilities of the students, through their observed work.
Edit: I initially wrote that the student here was in her first year; that was based on misreading the OP, who actually said that the TA is in the first year of the graduate degree (and has advised below that the student is in her third year).  This means that there is a much narrower gap between the student and TA, which means that the TA's opinion on the student counts for less than if the student was in her first year.

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What to write as a "current institution" in a postdoc grant form, right after PhD?
When submitting a postdoc grant application, what should an applicant write in the current institution section if they just recently received their PhD and aren't employed yet? It is the grant type that supports specifically recent and soon to be PhD holders on their further path rather than mobility or staff exchange (experienced researchers). Thank you.

Is it required that an institution sponsor you?  For a GRFP (graduate student), it doesn't go through an institution at time of proposal.  Many postdoc applications do require the name of the institution that will receive the money though.  If you can provide the sponsor name, that would help.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin Thank you for replying. Yes, I have the host institution where I'll move to work if I get the grant (in Europe). There is a separate field for a host, though, which is why I am confused.

If there's time before the deadline, you could contact the funding organization and ask for clarification.  I don't think you'll annoy anyone by doing so.
If not, then I would assume you would list the university where you received your PhD.  My guess is that the form creators were thinking of the situation of a "soon to be PhD holder", in which case their "current institution" would be the one where they expect to receive their PhD.  The only difference in your case is the timing, such that you've actually completed and received your degree (congratulations!) before filling out the application, but they are probably expecting this field to tell them the applicant's PhD institution.  Especially since, as you say, there is a separate field for the prospective postdoc institution.

I agree with the idea of asking the sponsor.  In the US, when you are between institutions, they usually want the institution that will receive the funding.  I am not able to comment on European sponsors though, if the host is already listed, you may be correct.  Asking the sponsor is the right choice here.

That's good advice. Thank you very much!

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Is international Ph.D. student's stipend enough to support a partner in the U.S.?
Something that is not clear by any kind of research is this:

Is associateship (which waives tuition and fees) stipend enough (annually 20k) for a student and his wife to take care of all their necessities and carry on during the whole Ph.D. period, without any other financial support?

I'm just asking in general and I know costs may vary a lot between different places. But since being a bit more specific is better, let's talk about the cities with medium cost of living according to Cost of Living Index 2018. For example, Columbus or Minneapolis is around 60 vs. New York that is 100.

Have you asked current students at the university in question about this?

I'm not sure that "is $X enough to live in city Y" is really an academia question.

I don't think so: usually, no.

I am hoping to start a grad program in one of those medium cost-of-living cities, and have been doing lots of research. Since it sounds like I'm more familiar with the US than you, I'll give you what I've learned.
This will of course depend on your standard of living. I assume because you are married, you would like to live in your own apartment/house and not live in one bedroom in a four-bedroom house. This answer is based on that.
As another caveat, I would say I'm moving from a very expensive area, so it's possible I'm overestimating other expenses based on my experience here.
At more than $30k (the value of some awards), I feel like I could minimally support myself and my wife (who is also going back to school). We also have a nice chunk of savings that we've been accruing for two years that helps me feel better about living on the stipend.
At less than that, around $25k, we would plan on my wife working 8-12 hours a week to supplement my income.
Those numbers are totally unlivable in high cost-of-living areas, like where I live now. I couldn't imagine trying to live here on less than $50k combined; and that's a totally unachievable PhD stipend.
Tl;dr:

< $20k - Not a chance, would expect my partner to work at least part
time
$20-25k - Doable, with decent savings and a few hours of work on your partner's side.
$25-32k - Much more doable, but still tight living
>$35k - As comfortable as you can be on a PhD stipend.

Cost of living is vastly different in some areas than others. Vastly. Did I mention vastly? I think that my daughter's stipend in the Twin Cities was around $30,000 and this was several years ago and in philosophy. It isn't an especially expensive city.

@Buffy What is your point? The OP asked about medium cost-of-living cities. I have been researching them, and this is what I have found about what stipends are livable in those cities.

An international student's dependent has no permission for work in the United States.

@AfshinSalehi In that case, you should take that into account when reading my post.

@AfshinSalehi Look into getting a J-1 visa instead of a F-1 student visa. If you're on J1, your dependent is eligible to apply for work authorization.

@AfshinSalehi I would wonder then, what your partner is planning on doing all day.

@Azor Ahai My partner is Ok with working but my field is Geography and thus my visa will be F-1. So the goverment will not let her work.

AFAIK graduate stipends are generally not federally tax-free.  For fellowships, the government will not withhold taxes, but I believe you are still expected to pay the taxes yourself.  I'd suggest checking this really carefully.

@NateEldredge Oh, you're right, I was confusing it with the tuition waiver not being taxable. Edited

@AfshinSalehi Are you sure about not being able to opt for a J-1 over F-1? I'm a US citizen so I have very limited exposure to our visa system, but I think it's quite possible you may be eligible for a J-1. If your partner would prefer to work it is worth looking in to further.

I know a student in philosophy who switched from f1 to j1 so their partner could work in the us. So I assume this should be possible in geography. However, be careful - the j1 visa sometimes has a 2year residency (in the home country) requirement after completion of studies.

If you're not in one of the big metro areas of Bay Area, Seattle, NY/NJ, SoCal-LA, DC etc. and you don't have children during this period, you should be able to survive. You'll have to watch every expense, esp. try to save on housing by living in a small apt. and not the most desirable area. This is assuming health insurance is fully covered for both of you. Housing and health insurance can be the biggest chunks of expense.


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Understand equations containing unexplained terms and/or undefined variables?
In scientific papers (main talking about STEM), surprisingly, there are many instances where authors introduce some mathematical equations and/or dynamical systems to explain a certain physical phenomena/system. However, they don't always define the variables they introduce. Just to a give the simplest example, they write y(x) = ax^2 + bx^3 + c, and it is clear that there is a reason why the equation contains the term  bx^3, but the authors don't explain why there is such a term, what the physical meaning of b is(i.e what it is quantifying), or what the term bx^3 is accounting for.
If the paper is relatively new, it is usually possible to just email the authors and hope that they will answer in a reasonable amount of time (if they ever intend to do). However, if the paper is older, it is quite likely that even the authors won't remember such details.
In the latter case, i.e in the case of an old paper, what should one do to understand such an equation containing unexplained terms and/or undefined variables?

First, a good paper will always define all symbols.  Second, it is possible that the info being conveyed is not the exact meaning of each term, but the general structure or relationship between the terms.  Third, it is possible that the equation is so well established that the symbols no longer require explanation -- no one define the integral  symbol for example.

@Prof.SantaClaus, unfortunately, there are a lot of bad papers out there that one still needs to read it, regardless of how badly written they are

Do the calculation yourself?

@astronat if the problem exists during the section where they propose a model, you can't go "back" and do the calculations because there is no "back".

It's not really possible to answer this question without a specific example of what you think is an offending paper.

This doesn't seem like a question that can have non-trivial answers ('work it out for yourself', 'find it explained somewhere else', 'give up'). One tip might be to carry on and read the rest of the paper - sometimes people miss things when re-drafting, and the explanation of 'why' gets separated from the place where it is introduced.

You will need to distinguish the cases that the paper is just "bad" and that the paper uses commonly agreed on concepts without explicitly naming or explaining them (this would make the "Preliminaries" section of some papers longer than the rest of the paper). The usual approach is to ask your advisor if you are a PhD student, ask the author whenever that is reasonable, or ask a peer or collaborator  with more experience in the concrete topic otherwise. If the paper is bad enough so that even without reasonable effort it cannot be used, then consider leaving it out.