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<p>//sighs, lines up behind DespSeekPhD</p>
<p>And even if your options are limited, you still don’t go fishing in the no-no pond.</p>
<p>What if you just hang out with one of your students so you can hit on her friends who aren’t in your class? That’s cool, right?</p>
<p>This is one of the most interesting threads that I’ve read.</p>
<p>As said numerous times before, it is wise for graduate students to avoid dating undergraduates, for the same reasons why a faculty member should avoid dating undergraduates (or graduate students for that matter). They may end up taking the class that you TA in (or any other supervisory situation) which leads to a conflict of interest.</p>
<p>As far as limited options go, if dating options rank high on a prospective graduate student’s list, isn’t that something that you should check out when you visit graduate schools that you were accepted to? (Not that I rank it highly compared to the quality of the school, the research performed, the advisors, the city, and numerous other factors, but you should know what you are getting into if dating is that important to you.)</p>
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<p>If by “cool,” you mean “tremendously sketchy but technically legal,” then I suppose you’re right… Still, I can’t imagine that this would end well for you at all… That’s going to weird the student out so immensely that I don’t imagine you’ll actually get anything out of it…</p>
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<p>I thought that was the definition. You know, as in: “All the tremendously sketchy but technically legal kids smoke.” :)</p>
<p>I seriously hope dilksy was being facetious too. I love this thread.:)</p>
<p>So another true no-no story: I knew a grad student who started dating her advisor, she ended up swapping advisors so that it would not be “as bad”. Anyway, towards the end she broke it off and met someone else and they got engaged. I think her thesis defense was probably one of the most tense as she brought her new fiance to it and her old advisor was also there. Good times.</p>
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<p>=O</p>
<p>I think we have a winner…</p>
<p>I think it’s fine as long as the two people aren’t otherwise affiliated. If the student is in the TA’s class, they should wait until the course ends before starting something. Would it be worse (or better, or no different) for a 25 year old grad student to date a 19 year old who wasn’t a student at all? </p>
<p>TAs are in elevated positions sure, but anyone’s reputation can suffer from a relationship. Symmetry isn’t required. Professional men date waitresses without putting their careers at stake.</p>
<p>(And no, I’ve never dated an undergrad.)</p>
<p>I think this is more of a male graduate student dilemma than a female one, since females are generally hypergamous so they wouldn’t even consider dating undergraduate males in the first place. If undergraduate females are out of question and single attractive graduate females are impossible to find, where do the guys turn? Should we just line up and turn homosexual for five years?</p>
<p>That assumes there’s guys that are worth dating in grad school. I imagine all the worthwhile guys would have managed to get girls, and all that’s left are the guys that are also turning gay out of desperation. :p</p>
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<p>There are 25,000 undergrads at my school, majority female. I think the agreed rule is to date outside the department. I would think that finding a mate who happens to be an undergrad, is different than specifically dating only undergrads. The issue, if an issue at all, is not as black and white as “no undergrads for grads.” Again, if all grad students only dated other grad students, we would have a very lonely world.</p>
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<p>Harsh, dude. Harsh. You are starting to sound like my grandmother. “Get married before I die! I’m knitting you a baby blanket anyway!” Sheesh. Lay off, already. ;)</p>
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<p>I think that you’re not really understanding the problem. The issue isn’t symmetry; it’s power. To use the waitress example, restaurant managers can’t date (usually) their waitresses. It’s the same thing.</p>
<p>I am always skeptical of guys who claim that there are no attractive women in <a href=“and%20it%20usually%20seems%20to%20be%20guys”>pool</a>. I guess if your department has a small number of people, this may be true in your department, by the luck of the draw (though I then have to ask whether the guy posing the question is a picture of attractiveness himself). I find it tougher to believe that there are no attractive grad women at the university. Or even undergrads whom you will never TA and thus have no power over (for example, a mechanical engineer and an upperclassman in art history with no interest in engineering).</p>
<p>It’s all correlational. Attractive females generally partied too hard during their undergraduate years to have the grades to get into a Ph.D. program. And from talking to current graduate students, the only time grad students get to interact with undergrads is if they are TAing them or if they work in the same lab (in sciences).</p>
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<p><shaking my=“” head=“” in=“” disbelief=“”></shaking></p>
<p>I sincerely hope you were being facetious.</p>
<p>Not really. It’s the same concept that Ivy League schools are generally considered to have unattractive student population as opposed to party schools. It’s a basic social developmental process that most people deny in fear of political incorrectness.</p>
<p>New_User- you are probably smart to not facebook right away, I know that my D was weirded out when some coaches facebooked her- others were fine, because it felt comfortable to her, but some, who she did not favour, she did not have any safe way to decline, so she made it her policy to use her public profile for all staff type people.</p>
<p>DD also had a GSI who did nothing wrong but did make her feel strange by asking her to help with an outside project, nothing untoward happened, but she was concerned that he might like her. It all worked out fine, but she felt weird and as the superior, you have to avoid putting the UGs in that situation of questioning your motives.</p>
<p>Even if it is okay in your schools culture to date UGs in a different department, I would not recommend the friends of your students, way to much gossip fodder there. Girls do talk, a great deal, with their friends about anything romantic, your experiences would be well known in your class- not a professional position.</p>
<p>How about looking for grad students in different departments?</p>
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<p>Firstly, men in general are assessed with less emphasis on their looks. Second, I assume you’ve never visited an engineering/hard sciences lab and not notice the lack of female population. For whatever reason, women are generally simply not very represented in these concentrations. I’m not saying men have better mental capacities in these areas or women don’t like physics/engineering. That is just how it is. </p>
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The usually more aesthetically pleasing graduate student females from the arts and humanities/social sciences are usually married/taken. Why else would they dare invest 5-6 years on a route with no set income and job opportunity in place? They have husbands/future husbands to take care of the family income.</p>
<p>I agree with the general idea. Male grad students should target art history females.</p>
<p>Somemom- I completely understand that, which is actually why I NEVER seek out students to add them, what I was referring to before is that I will refuse to add them even (especially?) when they initiate the process. </p>
<p>Case in point, one attractive female student asked to add me on myspace my second year teaching. I refused. She became almost belligerent sending messages begging me to add her, I told her only after the semester was over would I consider it. One day in class towards the end of the semester she told me she wanted to show me something on her page. Being that the quickest way to find her page was to go to my friend request page, I did so, at which point she reached over me and clicked the add button. Since it was the end of the semester and she seemed normal enough initially I let it go. Bad idea. She then proceeded to post pictures of herself on my site of her in her bed in her pajamas reading the text book for my class. Obviously I deleted them immediately. When I finally confronted her about it she told me I could just tell people that she ****ed me to get an A. </p>
<p>Funny, that was exactly what I did NOT want anyone to think. From then on, I just refused to ever add any of my students.</p>
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<p>Okay. Offended.</p>
<p>The situation is gender-reversed in my family. My husband’s plan in life is NOT to sit back and let me take care of the family income, despite his having invested 13 years in a music composition PhD, and despite the fact that I’m doing quite well as a structural engineer. I think your broad, sweeping generalizations as to women’s academic motivations are just as invalid, and I’m a little appalled that you would belittle these study-minded women by asserting the belief that they have no ultimate career goals in mind.</p>
<p>Not even going for the “science/engineering women are unattractive” undercurrent that we seem to be headed towards…</p>